At a special meeting on March 28, the Newton School Committee heard hours of testimony in a public hearing, after which all nine members of the Committee voted to reject a petition to establish an Academic Principles Advisory Committee. Two-hundred-fifty people had signed up to address the Committee in-person and via Zoom, the majority of whom expressed support for Newton public education and urged the Committee to vote down the petition. At the same time, the hearing served as a sounding board for a range of views about the system’s perceived strengths and weaknesses.
Although the School Committee’s vote was unanimous, members expressed their individual perspectives and recommendations for Newton Public Schools (NPS), especially in anticipation of the arrival of a new superintendent on July 1. Fig City News gathered comments from several Committee members after the meeting.
Ward 2 School Committee member Chris Brezski, in his first term, has voiced frustration with NPS over what he called the arbitrary decision to move the Horace Mann School from 697 Watertown Street to 225 Nevada Street — a much older building in need of multi-million dollar improvements. Having gone through the petition process to press for capital improvements to the 225 Nevada Street building, Mr. Brezski says petitioning is the step people take when they feel they are not being heard. While NPS’s Diversity Equity and Inclusion program was not specifically mentioned by the petitioners, speakers in the public hearing referred to it, he said. Asking if DEI is achieving its goals “is a question not necessarily a position,” in Mr. Brezski’s view. Looking ahead to the July 1 arrival of the new Newton School Superintendent, Dr. Anna Nolin, Mr. Brezski is optimistic: He has spoken to her and reported that “she understands that people need to be heard. Community engagement and community outreach are her strengths.”
Ward 3 School Committee member Anping Shen had thanked the speakers at the meeting, terming it a ”community education dialogue. Regardless of whether these views are personal, professional or even ideological, to me they are all educational.” Mr. Shen, and Ward 7 member Kathleen Shields, the Committee’s Vice Chair, are the longest serving current members, having both been elected in 2017. In addition, Mr. Shen is the Committee’s liaison to Families Organized for Racial Justice (FORJ). He explained that the three-year pandemic “exacerbated and exposed challenges many of our vulnerable students have experienced,” focusing programs and outreach “to the educational equity and social and emotional wellbeing for our needy student.” With the school system’s return to in-person education and the arrival of a new superintendent, Mr. Shen anticipates a return to the NPS focus on “educational excellence.” Mr. Shen has been an active participant in his children’s elementary, middle, and high schools PTOs, and for twenty-seven years, he served as an educational specialist at the State Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Paul Levy, first-term member from Ward 6, was the only School Committee member to abstain from the School Committee’s vote to support the recent operational override, and he has been critical of NPS, noting that parents lack confidence in the system. Nonetheless, he offered the motion that the School Committee deny the petition. In his remarks, he said he was sympathetic to people who feel marginalized and unheard and was critical of the intolerance shown to people who expressed divergent views. Expanding on his concerns, he said:
“The district has a less than satisfactory performance on two levels: 1) Communicating with the parents as to its intent and progress with regard to academic excellence; and 2) using data and rigorous analysis to support its curricular decisions. I’m hoping our new Superintendent is able to make progress on both fronts.”
Supporting his perspective, Mr. Levy offered, in his words, four examples that he feels demonstrate the system’s failure to provide data and analysis:
- Use of computers in early grades. The district made a decision to provide screen devices to every child in the early elementary grades. There was never an analysis of the relative and advantages and disadvantages of this approach–no control group experimentation, no statement of specific educational objectives, no measurement to determine if those objectives have been achieved, and no indication of concern about adverse impact on young students from increased screen time.
- Failure to analyze the causes of lack of progress in reducing the learning gap that is evident for Black and low income students. The district has had a multi-year effort to reduce these learning gaps, but there is no evidence of progress. Indeed evidence from MCAS scores indicates that the gap is persistent, with a significant difference in “meeting” and “exceeding” state standards. When asked what the district has learned from this multi-year effort, with the hope of learning what might produce better results, the answers were vague and inconclusive.
- Failure to meet the needs of above-average learners. Parents of elementary children who exceed grade level achievement in math and reading are told that the schools will provide supplementary materials and instruction to maintain the children’s interest and performance. When they request that kind of intervention, they are told that the schools have little or nothing to offer.
- Mixed classes for middle-school mathematics. While there can be a theoretical advantage to all children in a multi-level math class, there has been no measurement of results to indicate that this approach is working well for all levels of students.
Ward 8’s Cove Johnstone Davis, another first term member, is an educator who oversaw the partnership of five Massachusetts school districts collaborating to improve teacher training and enhance educational outcomes for students. She now works as a Project-based Learning Coordinator at Waltham High School. She believes the petition pointed to the need for more NPS engagement with parents. “I was pleased with the outcome of the hearing last Tuesday, but want to make sure that parent voices are heard and that we address some of the issues raised by this group of parents. For example, a decline in Calculus AP scores was brought up several times during the hearing. I will be asking Kathy Smith and the NPS team to look into our AP scores and report to the school committee at some point this spring,” she said.
Fig City News will report further on the public comments and School Committee members’ statements in the coming days.
