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Wayland High School to shrink academic support center staff; district seeks ways to preserve services
Summary
The academic support center at Wayland High School will lose a full-time teacher due to retirement and not be replaced for FY26, prompting administrators to reassign intervention duties, rely on peer tutoring and consider restoring staffing if extra revenue arrives.
Wayland High School administrators told the School Committee on Jan. 30 that the Academic Support Center—used for targeted academic interventions and peer tutoring—will see a reduction in direct certified-teacher staffing for FY26 because of an upcoming retirement.
Allison, a district staff member who oversees high school programming, summarized the center’s history and current functions: an academic support coordinator and a certified teacher had been providing day-to-day intervention for roughly 100 students scheduled into the center. The coordinator also handles monitoring, case consults and National Honor Society peer-tutor coordination; the teacher provided daily direct intervention and maintained progress tracking.
Administrators explained the retirement will reduce the center’s certified teacher staffing from two adults to one. Allison said the center currently serves about 100 students, mostly 9th and 10th graders, and that the certified teacher “has been instrumental…supporting the students directly, 6 blocks a day.” The committee discussed whether other content-area interventionists (math, English, social studies and science) would absorb parts of the lost support. Administrators said math (.6 FTE split across staff) and a 0.5 English intervention teacher will continue; smaller social-studies and science intervention fractions may be harder to maintain because of reductions in other departments.
Administrators described multiple strategies to preserve services: (1) rely more heavily on classroom teachers and targeted professional development so teachers can deliver interventions in class, (2) maintain peer-tutoring coordinated by the academic support coordinator and (3) prioritize the Academic Support Center for any additional revenue the district might receive in the spring. Committee members pressed administrators to protect the center’s core functions, noting it plays both preventative and remedial roles that can reduce later referrals to special education.
Administrators said they will present updated staffing and sectioning data after course sign-ups later in the spring; they also said they are exploring whether an incremental revenue increase would enable restoring a second certified teacher in the center. No formal staffing changes were approved at the meeting; the committee’s discussion was part of the FY26 budget review.
