School committee hears quarterly update on literacy, inclusion and family-engagement work

Assistant Superintendent Gosselin and district staff reviewed the district’s first-year strategy-plan objectives at the Jan. 27 workshop, focusing on accelerating literacy and language acquisition, reducing opportunity and achievement gaps, and enhancing family engagement.

On literacy, staff described the Learning Acceleration Network (LAN) walkthroughs conducted by a TNTP coach: 23 classrooms were observed during the coach’s second site visit and staff reported increases in student engagement measures compared with the first visit. Staff said site-visit data track core actions such as use of high-quality texts, standards-aligned questioning and student ownership of thinking; they told the committee that the largest gains were in students “doing the thinking” (core action 3) and that additional calibration is underway to raise the quality and sequencing of questions.

Staff also described a K–4 ELA pilot: teachers are piloting three curricula (CKLA, EL Education, and the 2023 Wonders edition), each of which is standards-aligned and reviewed by EdReports/CUREE. Staff said the pilot includes publisher-led professional development and planned collection of teacher feedback prior to a curriculum decision.

On inclusive practices and opportunity gaps, staff summarized Blue Engine coaching at the high school for co-taught classrooms and said trainers are developing model co-teaching pairs; Collaborative Problem Solving training for staff (a train-the-trainer program) is in its final phases and I Decide sessions for students referred for substance-use infractions have been delivered after school and on weekends with grant funding.

For family engagement and mental health, staff highlighted a NEOS collaborative conference visit at Methuen High School (preliminary and final reports were referenced) and new caseload-monitoring spreadsheets developed by counselors. Staff reported that, among Tier 2 and Tier 3 students receiving services, 95% showed social-emotional progress and lower percentages showed academic, attendance and behavioral progress; 213 referrals have been made to external services (Care Solace and Cartwheel) to augment in-district supports.

Committee members asked for more detail and linkage to budget implications. Member Donovan proposed trimming packet frequency for some recurring items and asked staff to prepare trimester reporting and year-on-year budget comparisons; staff agreed to meet with Member Donovan to refine the committee’s preferred report formats. Members also raised implementation questions about pacing in the curriculum, walk-through methodology and the timing of benchmark literacy data (staff said benchmark results will be presented at the next quarterly meeting once absentees are included).