Superintendent Marcus Ware discusses his district priorities to the School Committee during its Sept. 18 meeting.
Reminder Publishing screen capture by Tyler Garnet.
CHICOPEE — With the school year in full swing, Superintendent Marcus Ware presented his district priorities to the School Committee during its Sept. 18 meeting.
Ware said the theme this year is Chicopee Connect: Bridging Our Learning Communities.
The five priorities that Ware has been talking about since convocation include English language arts, mathematics, student attendance, student conduct and social emotional and mental health students.
The emphasis focus on English language arts and mathematics is supporting students with disabilities and multi-language learners.
Ware explained, “The reason why we actually have an emphasis focus here is we know that when we look at our data, we see that our students with disabilities and our students identified as multi-language learners are not achieving as much as in their counterparts, that means other subgroups.
Chronic absenteeism, which refers to missing 18 days or more in one school year, has risen by 72% in Massachusetts since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. DESE attendance priority schools were identified if their chronic absentee rate was higher than the statewide pre-pandemic rate and if they did not make significant strides in decreasing it.
As of March 1, the state chronic absenteeism rate was 19.5% and Chicopee Public Schools was 28.2%. All of Chicopee schools except for Szetela Pre-School and Chicopee Comprehensive High School have been identified as attendance priority schools.
Ware talked about the work being done to reduce that percentage.
He said, “Since [the coronavirus pandemic], we talk about getting kids back to school as well as reducing chronic absenteeism and so we are talking about the efforts in our schools around that. We are talking about the efforts in our school around that and I know we have increased efforts to reduce the factors that contribute to chronic absenteeism.”
Last school year, teachers and staff spoke out at a School Committee meeting to highlight multiple events where students were verbally and even physically abusive towards teachers.
Ware said at the Sept. 18 meeting that the emphasis focus for student conduct is investigating and implementing alternatives forms to discipline.
He said, “I know we have increased efforts to reduce the factors with student conduct which is something that we’ve been talking about all last year and we’ll continue to talk about and that looks like the work we’ve been doing already where in Mrs. [Carol] Kruser’s office under student supports, we’ve been talking about streamlining the actual works on how we document conduct, who follows up with conduct, as well as how do we offer alternatives to suspension, as well as supports for students who outpace our services.”
Since Ware took over as superintendent, he discussed he would start the strategic plan work and stated that there have been conversations with the Collaborative for Educational Services.
He discussed this collaboration with CES and said, “So that we can actually fit the needs of our district to what their services look like. So in the coming weeks you can expect that there will be a member from CES here to present to the School Committee about the services offered, a brief approximate timeline as well as who will be involved in that process.”
When discussing the importance of social emotional and mental health, Ware said, “Social emotional and mental health for our students which we call incorporates the whole child. I know that we have had reference about the trails curriculum which is directly from the Caselle standards for those who are aware of it, that actually taps five different priorities when it comes to treating the students under social, emotional and mental health.”
Social Emotional Director Abbey Tenczar and Cruser have been working with extended leadership as well as city councilors to elevate and highlight the benefits of having this curriculum in district.
Ware said the next steps include completing the district improvement plan and providing it to the School Committee and Superintendent’s Evaluation Subcommittee, have principals complete school improvement templates and present them to the School Committee, provide an update to the School Committee on strategic plan prep with collaborative for education services and collaborate on evaluation standards for the 2024-2025 academic year before discussing the agreed upon standards for evaluation.
A letter was sent to the leadership team and community to refer to priorities on a regular basis.
Ware said, “So more to come on this but what you see on here is the five priorities that I will reference back to periodically.”
