October Post

This month's post will highlight the recent Coordinated Program Review (CPR) from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), a reminder about "Snow Day" procedures, and many "Did You Know?" items. Please remember to look at  #medfieldps to see all of the positive events in our schools.

Members of the SEL Task Force at a recent goal setting meeting.

Medfield Gets a "Great" Review from DESE!

"Medfield had a great Coordinated Program Review.", was how the meeting with DESE's Matthew Nixon began. Nixon was in Medfield last week to review the report with School Committee Vice Chair Jessica Reilly, Director of Student Services Mary Bruhl and me. Mr. Nixon spoke highly of the students, staff, parents and programs in the district.

The CPR takes place every six years to review the compliance with Special Education, English Language Learners, and Civil Rights. Each of these focus areas has many criteria for compliance. After the document review and onsite visit, DESE provides districts with recommendations to get the district into full compliance. In my over 25 years in education, I've seen this process move from a "gotcha" to the current and much appreciated collaborative process of assistance. There are findings of non-compliance in every CPR and we were no different. Some items were partially implemented and a few were not implemented. We will have one year to correct any items not fully implemented with most just requiring a tweak to our current practice.

 A special thank you to our Special Education Department, ELL Educators, and office staff for their many hours preparing for the review and uploading the required documents. The full report will be available on the DESE website and on our website in the next 7-10 days. In addition, a presentation by Mary Bruhl will take place at the November 5th School Committee meeting. 

School Cancellations, Delays, Dismissals...

We will once again utilize the Blackboard-Connect System to notify parents if school is closed, delayed, or dismissed early. The phone call will be sent to each household and parent cell phone number that is currently on file with the district.

Yes...it will be here soon.

In addition to the phone call, the announcement will appear on:

• Twitter @JeffreyJMarsden (I actually do this first...so follow me!)
• Facebook (Medfield Public Schools page is linked to Twitter)
• Television Stations: Boston 25, WBZ 4, WCVB 5, and WHDH 7
• Our district website: www.medfield.net

Please remember that there will be times when school is not cancelled, delayed, or dismissed early and the weather is still inclement. Those days will feature slower travel for buses and cars, but will not necessarily require a change in the normal schedule. Important:  If you feel it is unsafe for travel, you always have the option to keep your child home.

Did You Know?

• Meghan Glenn was recently appointed to the Medfield School Committee during a joint meeting of the Medfield Board of Selectmen and Medfield School Committee.
• Medfield was well represented at the recent MassCue Conference held at Gillette Stadium. Marjorie Heim, Diane Horvath, Neal Sonnenberg, Kerry Cowell, Julie Lowerre, Kelly Bertschmann, Christy Callahan, Marissa Foley, Maura Condon, Bethany Robertson, Steve Grenham, 6th grade student Adeline Keaveney and School Committee member Leo Brehm all presented at the two day conference attended by over a thousand educators.
• Anna Mae O'Shea Brooke and Jessica Reilly of the Medfield School Committee will hold an "Office Hour" on 10/25 at the Blake LMC from 7:00PM-8:00PM.
• The Superintendent's Parent Advisory on October 24 at 9:30 in the Blake LMC will focus on our Challenge Success initiative. Special thanks to the MHS PTO and MCPE for their support.
• The Medfield SEL website is a great resource for parents and educators.

Congratulations to Diane Horvath for receiving a 2018 Pathfinder Award!

Welcome to 2018-2019 School Year!

The 2018-2019 school year is off to a great start! We are very grateful for the financial sacrifice our community made on behalf of our students and the school department. The FY19 override reduced class sizes, added key staff, and provided the funds needed for our feasibility study. Thank you to everyone!

This blog post will highlight two important Social- Emotional Learning (SEL) initiatives; a new Homework Policy and Challenge Success. There is also an update on the Dale St. School project.  Please remember to check #medfieldps to see all of the positive events happening in our schools!

First day of school at Dale Street!

New Homework Policy Approved 

The Medfield School Committee unanimously approved a new homework policy for the district on Monday, September 17th. This policy was a collaboration among the Medfield School Committee, the SEL Task Force, students, teachers, and administrators. In addition to providing consistency with homework expectations and allowing for family time around vacations and holidays, the new policy articulates the responsibilities that students, educators and families have with homework. Emphasis is placed on students being assigned "meaningful" and "relevant" homework. The policy will be the subject of faculty meetings in the next few weeks with full implementation in October. A special thank you to the collective minds that worked many hours on this important policy. Read the full policy here.

Our teachers were working hard on Medfield Day!

Medfield Sends a Team to Challenge Success at Stanford University

A team consisting of students, a parent, teachers and administrators spent the weekend of September 14-16 at Stanford meeting with leading researchers and school districts from across the country to learn strategies for stronger schools and healthy, successful kids. Medfield now joins  Dover-Sherborn, Wellesley, and Weston as Challenge Success school districts. Thanks to the parent representative Nicki Gustafson, students Erin Sullivan and Sophia Gustafson, and staff members Orla Berry, Zach Barrows, Dave Worthley, Stephanie Worthley, Heather Mandosa, Nat Vaughn and Robert Parga. The Challenge Success Team will be meeting on a regular basis and will have two visits from our Challenge Success "Coach". The entire Challenge Success Team will attend another training in May.  We look forward to learning more from Challenge Success as we work to implement positive changes to our schools and community.  Special thanks to MCPE for supporting a grant for this important training. More information about Challenge Success can be found here.

Dale Street School Project Update

Thank you again for supporting the feasibility study funding at both the Annual Town Meeting and the election in June. During the summer we submitted the required documents and attended a meeting with the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) to discuss a certification of enrollment; essentially trying to reach an agreement on what size the new school will be. We were informed that enrollment projections done by MSBA are a lot higher than expected. MSBA projects a Grade 3-5 school (one of the options MSBA will examine during feasibility) at over 800 students. This is significantly higher than the projections we received last year. According to MSBA, a driving factor of our increased enrollment projections is the large number of families that move into Medfield with children under 5 years old. An important point to consider is only projects and developments currently in the Medfield pipeline (permitted, approved) were included in these projections. Any future development at the site of the former Medfield State Hospital was not considered in these projections. If the projected numbers come to fruition, we will need to implement creative solutions to best utilize building space prior to opening a new school. We will be working with the Medfield School Committee, Medfield Permanent Building Committee, and School Building Committee during the next few months as we begin to solicit public input and conduct other feasibility study activities. Project information can be found here.

Watch For:

• A new app later this fall that will be the single source of information for the MPS
• A dashboard that highlights the progress of our strategic plan, "Medfield 2021"
• The first Superintendent's Parent Advisory is scheduled for October 24th at 9:30 AM in the Blake Library- All are welcome!

Scenes From The #Class of 2019 Senior Cruise!

Parents, teachers, and community members working together at a recent SEL Task Force meeting.

It is amazing that another school year will soon come to a close. Our last day of school is scheduled for Monday, June 18th. This month's entry will highlight the FY19 Budget and the Dale St. Feasibility Study. As always, please search #Medfieldps to see the ongoing curation of the positive events in our district.

FY19 Budget- Question 2 on the June 11th Ballot

Thank you to the residents of Medfield for their overwhelming support of our budget at the Annual Town Meeting (ATM) on April 30, 2018. Please remember that this was only the first phase of approving our FY19 Budget. The next phase is approval at the June 11th ballot election. If ballot Question 2 passes, our budget will increase to the amount approved at the ATM. If Question 2 does not pass, the budget will be reduced by $1,043,521. This is more than an elementary class size issue; Blake Middle School and Medfield High School will also have significant impacts. To read about potential reductions needed to get to a 3% budget and to view all of the FY19 Budget documents please click here.

Dale Street students spending some time in the library.

Dale St. Feasibility Study- Question 1 on the June 11th Ballot

Thank you to the residents of Medfield for their overwhelming support of the Dale St. Feasibility Study at the ATM on April 30, 2018.  As you know, we were accepted in the Massachusetts School Building Authority program for new school construction. In order to move the Dale St. School Feasibility Study forward, Question 1 must pass at the ballot on June 11th. Please click here for all of the information related to the Dale St. Project.

Other Items of Interest

• Medfield High School graduation is Sunday June 3rd. Congratulations to the Class of 2018!
• Click here for a recent WBUR story on Franklin, our service dog at Wheelock School.
• The Medfield Coalition for Suicide Prevention has created flyers to advertise Interface. We have distributed this information to all of our schools and area businesses. 

February Post

As our nation tries to heal from yet another horrendous school shooting, I spent a lot of time over the February break thinking about the tragic events in Parkland, FL. It brought back all of the awful memories of Columbine and Sandy Hook. I have to wonder if our country has finally reached the “tipping point” on this issue. I really thought change would result from Sandy Hook, but I'm hopeful this time our country will do something to protect kids, teachers and school staff. This is obviously a very emotional and complex issue with many, many layers. One thing is for sure in my mind, arming our teachers is not the answer.

In Medfield, we have worked hard over the past several years to put safety measures in place. We have collaborated with the Medfield Police and Metro-LEC (Norfolk County’s SWAT team) to implement lockdown (safety) drills in each school. These drills have served as risk assessments and improvements have been made in each school. Window shades and interior locks have been added, shelter in place areas have been changed, and internal communication methods have been improved. Last year, all teachers and staff participated in a very intense (and uncomfortable) afternoon of active shooter training with Synergy Solutions and the Medfield Police. This training focused on keeping our students safe in the event of an active shooter in our schools. The very realistic training included “live” gunshots and a variety of scenarios for us to practice and react to in real time. Although many teachers and staff were very anxious about the training, the feedback was positive as our teachers and staff now have new strategies to handle this type of situation.

Additional safety measures have been added throughout the district including a full time School Resource Officer, a capital investment in security cameras, restricted access to buildings, and others that most people, by design, would not even notice. On the advice of law enforcement, we never share our plans publicly or post them on our website.

The security in our district is always evolving, evaluated, upgraded and the “plan” is never complete. Over February vacation, I was able to attend a workshop with the former superintendent of Newtown, Ct. He shared some “lessons learned” that I am anxious to share with our staff and the Medfield Police as we continue reevaluate and improve our response. One of the biggest takeaways from his workshop was to remove the “It could never happen here” mentality from our community. The data tell us that most of the school shootings have happened in communities with fewer than 10,000 students.

In addition to security measures, our focus on social emotional learning is equally important. Our schools have teams of counselors and teachers in place that meet regularly to support students and work with families that need assistance. The addition of counseling at the elementary level, a school adjustment counselor and a Director of Social Emotional Learning have helped us provide greater support to students and families. Our Social Emotional Task Force is currently working to make recommendations for various improvements for the children and adults of our school district.

We look forward to working with our students in the coming weeks as they advocate for meaningful change in our country. Our goal is to support and guide our students through this real life civics experience. The district is committed to keeping communication open among students, principals, and parents as we work through the next few weeks.

Please don't forget to follow #Medfieldps on Twitter or to Google #Medfieldps to see all of the great things going on in our schools!

 FY19 Budget

The FY19 budget process continues to move forward as we meet with the Warrant Committee this evening (2/26) at 8:00 PM at the Medfield Public Safety Building.  After receiving input from parents at our public hearing, School Committee Chair, Maryanne Sullivan asked us to develop another budget that decreased class size and reinstated the three middle school positions that were originally cut from the FY19 Budget. Our current budget request is an increase of 4.89%. All current budget information can be found here . 

In addition to our operating budget, please be on the lookout for information regarding the Dale St. Feasibility Study that will be discussed and voted on at the Annual Town Meeting on April 30, 2018 at Medfield High School.