WILBRAHAM — The Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School District began its school improvement plan presentations at its July 1 meeting with the first two school principals discussing recent achievements and specific goals for the coming 2024-25 school year.
These presentations represent a return to individual school-focused plans following the unified school plan that was created during the coronavirus pandemic for the district, Superintendent John Provost stated. Within the individual plans, the schools are able to target specific concerns with knowledge of available funds while aligning with the district’s overall goals.
Mile Tree Elementary School Principal Alison Petit began the presentations by thanking the school’s council as well as parents, staff and teachers who helped to create the improvement plan. She explained that school’s improvement plan covered both achievements during the 2023-24 school year and goals for the 2024-25 school year.
For recent achievements, Petit stated that the Mile Tree had worked to better identify student growth through gathered data, improve the school’s offering of literacy and math tier two supports and integrate positive behavior interventions.
Focusing on three areas of needed growth, Petit outlined five goals for the school in the coming year. These goals centered on creating growth in social emotion learning, communication and school offerings.
The goals included increasing the “sustainability” of teaching through professional development and work across all three tiers of support, creating a positive school culture, evaluating programs through analysis by the school intervention team, better communicating student learning to families and working to increase leadership skills in teachers, Petit stated.
The second presentation was by Principal John Derosia for Wilbraham Middle School. In his presentation, he highlighted three goals: increasing student engagement through developing a new schedule, bettering students’ view on education by improving school climate and increasing community engagement, and allowing the school to offer more rapid support to students through better use of the multi-tiered system of support.
Similar to Petit, Derosia also thanked those who took time to support the improvement plan creation, including parents, the data team and the leadership team.
He described how the school has worked to improve its climate through events called “shut down the school” when classes finished early on Fridays to allow students to share a break with staff. Other 2023-24 achievements that he mentioned were the school’s partnership with the University of Massachusetts for Project SOAR and “The Morning Show” when the morning announcements were livestreamed by students and staff to increase engagement and enjoyment.
Committee reorganization
At the July 1 meeting, the School Committee also completed its reorganization vote. During the initial vote, the committee was unable to select a chair with the vote split between former Chair Michal Boudreau and former Vice Chair Sean Kennedy. When the vote was retaken later in the meeting, all members were reelected to their former positions with Boudreau as chair, Kennedy as vice chair and Lisa Murray as clerk.
