District begins educational-plan drafts and school tours ahead of designer onboarding

Dr. Galusi (Medford Public Schools administrator) said the district has started work on the educational plan to guide design decisions and asked administrators to prepare initial drafts so teachers can be engaged when they return. "The ed plan is a really critical, component of this work," she said, and added administrators were asked to draft answers to two core questions: what the district is doing now to deliver curriculum and how it would like teaching to look in a new building.

Consultants and district staff arranged building tours for educators to see other high schoolsso Medford staff could gather ideas. Dr. Galusi listed recent tours: Dover High School (New Hampshire), Waltham High School and Attleboro High School. "There's been a nice cross section of administration that's gone to some of these tours as well as, educators, and also some of those educators are on on union boards within the teachers union," she said.

Why it matters: The educational plan defines programmatic requirements that the architect will use for space planning and the feasibility study. Dr. Galusi said the plan breaks responsibilities down by department so principals, curriculum leads and other administrators know which sections to draft for the September submission.

Next steps: administrators are expected to complete draft sections next week so teacher teams can work on them when school resumes; the educational consultant from Left Field (Adele) and other Left Field staff will continue to support drafting and alignment with the feasibility timeline.