Rajeev Parlikar (Ward 1) expresses displeasure with quality of NPS Special Education
The June 12 School Committee meeting contained a busy agenda, including discussion regarding school lunches, the future of Ward and Underwood elementary schools, a presentation from the Special Education Parent Advisory Council, and a review of the 2022-2023 Superintendent goals including the pilot programs of reading curriculum.
The meeting began with a full public comment slate, including comment by Alison Lobron, the founder of the Parent Educator Collaborative in partnership with the NTA, who addressed the current status of the district’s contract negotiation with the NTA. She stated, “It is not the NTA’s fault that our community wasn’t persuaded to pass the override” and implored Mayor Fuller to allocate more City funding to educator compensation.
Following public comment, two of the four consent agenda items — items that are voted on without discussion — were identified as requiring debate and therefore were pulled from the consent agenda. For the first item, the Wellness Policy Revisions, Paul Levy (Ward 6) made a motion, which was approved, to add an amendment for NPS to study the feasibility of extending lunch periods from 20 minutes to 30 minutes. Mr. Levy cited research, presented by NPS parents who are experts in nutrition, demonstrating the benefits of a longer lunch period.
For the second item, Kathy Shields (Ward 7) suggested postponing the School Committee voting on the Ward and Underwood Task Force Mission Statement until the Task Force can reconvene to potentially amend its current draft Mission Statement memorandum. The School Committee members received substantial community feedback and concerns regarding the draft memo’s language citing that recommendations may come as soon as December 2023, and that one possible scenario is assigning all Underwood and Ward students to other elementary schools. This letter was sent to the School Committee by all of the Ward 1 and Ward 7 City Councilors.
The Newton SEPAC co-chairs then gave a presentation summarizing the year-end SEPAC report to the School Committee. The presentation, led by co-chair Eliza Spaulding, raised concerns regarding cuts in special services staffing in the FY24 budget and advocated for reallocating funding away from other uses and toward special education services. Ms. Spaulding further criticized NPS for special education students scoring lower than the broader student body on MCAS testing. Rajeev Parlikar (Ward 1), who spent 5 years as a SEPAC co-chair prior to joining the School Committee, thanked the SEPAC members for their service. He then cited the performance disparities between students with disabilities and those without, stating, “we haven’t made much headway in addressing those” and there’s “clearly more work to be done.” Anping Shen (Ward 3) asked about increased SEPAC outreach to non-English speakers, and SEPAC co-chair Jenny Klein-Sosa stated if the SEPAC had better access to NPS’s family contact information then the SEPAC could outreach more broadly.
After an update on the Franklin school reconstruction, Interim Superintendent Kathy Smith gave a review of the progress toward her annual goals for the concluding school year. Within this review, Assistant Superintendent for Teaching & Learning Renee McCall and Curriculum Coordinator for Reading Deana Lew presented regarding the four reading-curriculum pilots in the district this year. Ms. McCall announced that of the four pilots, the Expeditionary Learning (“EL”) curriculum was the most favorably reviewed by the NPS reading specialists. The presentation stated that a final decision will be made in the fall of 2023.
The full meeting replay can be found on NewTV here.
