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!
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| 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.
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| 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!
