Hoosac Valley School Committee Reviews School, District Improvement Plans
CHESHIRE, Mass. — The Hoosac Valley School Committee has approved an updated district improvement plan.
Superintendent Aaron Dean said his cabinet took feedback on the plan after the last meeting by adjusting some of the goals. He explained that the district can and should change the plan as the needs of the district and its students change.
"This is a live document," he said. "It has links to our resources, links to rubrics and links to our professional learning experiences that we're providing. And it will be a live document that will be posted on the website so people can see that this is the work we're doing."
In addition to the district plan, the committee also heard updates on the individual school improvement plans. The principals and assistant principals of all three schools provided the committee with progress on strategic objectives.
Elementary Principal Erin Beaulac said this year's school improvement plans hope to build off of accomplishments from last year. Specific to the elementary school, she said both students and teachers are responding well to responsive classroom, the school's social-emotional learning program.
"The focus on all three plans, just like the district improvement plan, is not to introduce a ton of new things, but to go deeper with where we started last year," she said.
At the middle school, Principal Chris Sposato discussed the success of the student support center. He said the center exists for students that request or need help, rather than as a punitive measure.
"We have the Student Support Center working better than ever," he said. "... We prefer it to be proactive. So if a student would like to see someone, for whatever reason, if they're just feeling a little anxious, if they're stressed out. Maybe they don't even know why, they're just like 'I can't do this right now,' they can request to the teacher to go to the SSC, the teacher will then assess the situation and do their professional judgment."
High School Principal Colleen Byrd said the high school has also opened a student support center this year. She said the center for the high school is close to the offices of the student councilors, so students can be available for them.
"What we have done at the high school so far, which has kind of been a soft opening of the Student Support Center, is that we've identified students who really need some extra support and we've already started building plans for those students," she said.
All three principals said they are working on increased community participation and better communication with families. Each spoke highly of Erica Girgenti, the district's family and community engagement coordinator and the work she has done this year.
"She has been phenomenal at coming in, taking pictures and publicizing all these events on social media. We've gotten a lot of great press from that, which is a small but, I think, powerful thing," Beaulac said. "She herself has also helped branch out to the community at large for these events and getting volunteers, getting donations, getting people to show up. That has been something I've been very aware of this year."
Committee Chair Michael Mucci spoke highly of the principal's work on the improvement plans and their efforts to benefit the district.
"To truly see the six of you come here on the same night and show the vertical alignment and talk through the process. There really is, for myself and hopefully most of the committee here, a deeper appreciation. You are actually writing this, you are actually putting this together. It is organic documents that's adapting to what we need at the school to really improve the school, which is what I think a lot of us are here for."
Tags: ACRSD, Hoosac Valley,
