Hello Everyone,

 

What follows is a fairly long update about where things stand for the Middle School Review after the recent rounds of feedback. The key points are outlined below, and additional details follow for those who would like them.

 

Thank You

First, thank you to everyone who participated in the process so far. This includes folks who responded to surveys, participated in focus groups, discussed ideas with colleagues, and everyone who provided thoughtful feedback in any way. Throughout this process folks have been thinking carefully about how this work will impact themselves, their colleagues, families, and students. We all appreciate your engagement and consideration.

 

I would also like to offer special thanks to Joanne Shaughnessy, Charles Chang, and Tham Tran in the data team for compiling enormous amounts of data about staffing and schedules so that the team at New Solutions K-12 had high quality information for their assessments.

 

Lastly, I want to thank our working group and the team from New Solutions K-12. The work so far has been thoughtful and thorough. Additionally, New Solutions K-12 has been incredibly responsive to our specific needs and any shifts we have needed to make to accommodate the process.

 

Key Points:

• The draft schedule proposal is not going forward.

• There will be no district-wide changes to school schedules for the 24-25 school year.

• Schools will continue to schedule as their building requires.

• Work will continue developing a more ambitious plan that effectively incorporates our goals.

• This will take time to ensure that all the details are accounted for, including staffing, workload, professional learning, and student experience.

Additional Details

 

What We Heard

This most recent round of feedback was clear and consistent. Folks said, quite clearly, that if we make changes to our middle school schedules, we should make changes that get us great schedules, not just marginal improvements.

 

Both our planning discussions and your feedback clearly say that to have great schedules, we need:

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  A more common experience for middle school students to ensure greater and more equitable success at BHS. 

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  High-quality intervention for those who need it to support our district’s commitment to equity and academic achievement.

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  A greater level of student voice and choice to improve engagement.

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  A greater level of SEL as identified in the strategic plan.

We also heard that folks see little value in gradually shifting schedules over a period of a few years. The feedback we received clearly encouraged us to plan carefully and take a larger bite all at once.

 

As you might expect, building a plan that can thoughtfully embed high-quality academic intervention, student choice, and SEL will require careful planning so that these changes do not overwhelm our educators, students, or families.

 

What Does This Mean?

We are going to take your feedback and build a new plan. The draft that was proposed is not going forward. This means we are not planning any large changes to middle school schedules across the board for the 24-25 school year.

 

As always, individual schools may adjust schedules to meet their needs, but we don’t think we have time to make large district-wide changes for 24-25 in a thoughtful manner.

 

This also means that the work of the Middle School Review is not over.

 

What’s Next?

We have two primary next steps.

 

First, we will work with principals to examine what small adjustments they might be able to make to their schedules to bring us closer to a common experience. We predict that these will mostly show up as minor adjustments to existing schedules that get us one or two small steps toward consistency.

 

Second, we will continue to work toward the great schedules that folks are asking for. We expect that in order to align all of the details of staffing, space, workload, and budget this will take an additional year or two of continued research and planning. The feedback clearly showed a preference for taking our time and doing this well, and we intend to honor that feedback.

 

Many of these potential changes will need to be discussed in collaboration with the BEU. We will be working with the existing Joint Labor Management Committee (JLMC) to examine the workload implications of intervention, student choice, and increased SEL curriculum. This collaboration will help ensure that the changes are implemented in a thoughtful and measured way to staff, families, and students.

We are conducting a final round of staff and family focus groups seeking input on possible options for middle school schedule and program revisions. While previous focus groups and feedback sessions discussed broad options, these discussions will be asking for feedback on some specific options as we transition from design to implementation. Please use this link to preview the ideas we are seeking feedback on.

Please use this link to view available focus group times and RSVP.  These discussions are optional and completely confidential.  

If you can’t make any of the available focus groups but want to share your feedback in another way, you can do so via survey.  Please use this form to indicate interest in this option, and we will email out the survey once it is available in mid-December.  This survey will be completely anonymous and confidential.

Full List of Available Focus Groups

 

Curriculum coordinators and district-level leaders	TBD	Rescheduled
Principals and vice principals	Tu 12/19	2:45 - 3:30
Core content and world language teachers	F 12/15	1:45 - 2:30
Core content and world language teachers	W 12/20	2:45 - 3:30
Core content and world language teachers	Th 1/4	2:45 - 3:30
Special education and English language (EL) teachers	F 12/15	1:45 - 2:30
Special education and English language (EL) teachers	W 12/20	2:45 - 3:30
Art and PE teachers	F 12/15	1:45 - 2:30
Conservatory teachers	F 12/15	1:45 - 2:30
Guidance counselors	F 1/5	1:45 - 2:30
Parents/families of current 6-8 students	Th 12/14	5:00 - 5:45
Parents/families of current 6-8 students	Tu 12/19	5:00 - 5:45
Parents/families of current 6-8 students	W 1/3	5:00 - 5:45

 

We are conducting a round of focus groups connected to Stage 2 of our middle school review that will provide a chance to offer input on the future vision of middle school schedule guidelines in the district. These focus groups will be facilitated by staff from New Solutions K-12 and responses will remain confidential.

If you are interested, please RSVP using this link.

 

For additional details and context, please read below:

As the school year begins, we are continuing our Middle School Review work with Stage 2: DESIGN.

 

In the DESIGN Stage we will use the information gathered during the DISCOVERY Stage, along with research on best practices for middle grade students, to determine how we might improve our middle school program. This Stage will focus on generating ideas and prioritizing them so that we can develop an implementation plan rooted in our community values and research-based practices.

 

The DESIGN Stage itself will consist of two parts focused on Scheduling and Staffing and we will be narrowing the list of priorities for change and developing strategies for meeting those priorities.

 

For additional background on the project, including the report and presentation from Stage 1: DISCOVERY, please see the other posts on this page.

 

Full List of Available Focus Groups

 

Unlike Stage 1, the DESIGN Stage will consist of two parallel work streams focused on scheduling and staffing respectively.

 

Part I: Identify and Finalize a Prioritized Set of Improvements to Middle School Programming and Schedules

The ultimate goal of this part of the work will be to create two short but impactful lists: first, a set of programming and scheduling practices that will be consistent across all middle schools in the district; and second, a set of programming and scheduling practices that schools will have flexibility in implementing based on school priorities and student needs.

 

Part II: Establish Clear Middle School Staffing Guidelines

In many ways, staffing and scheduling are two sides of the same coin. Schedules cannot be created without clarity on staff and staffing practices, just as schedules cannot run without staff. To further help guide and inform scheduling and staffing in the district beyond the scope of part I of the work outlined above, New Solutions K12 will also help the district create a set of staffing guidelines that reflect the nuances and differences of the middle schools in the district. It was determined during stage I of this work that there is no universal expectation or definition of what constitutes a “full” workload for middle school classroom teachers, which results in uneven use of teacher time and talent.

New Solutions K12 will partner with district leaders to address these findings by establishing a clear set of middle school-specific staffing ratios and class size guidelines.

Note: New Solutions K12 will not be party to any collective bargaining agreement (CBA) discussions and the work within part II assumes no changes to the CBA—only that the district leadership will, with our help, set clear staffing and workload expectations within the current CBA.

 

 

The DISCOVERY Stage is complete and New Solutions provided the district with their final report. The report and summary can be accessed at the links below and to the right in the Current Progress section.

 

Middle School Review DISCOVERY Stage Report and Summary

 

Additionally, New Solutions K-12 Presented a summary of the report to the School Committed on March 16th, 2023.

With all the focus groups completed, the New Solutions K-12 (NSK12) team is now completing their analysis, recommendations, and final report.

 

The following steps are a presentation of the executive summary to PSB leadership, a presentation of the complete report to PSB leadership, and a summary presentation to the school committee. These last presentations will finish our Discovery Stage.

• Executive Summary Presentation to district leadership Wednesday, February 15
• Full Report Presentation to district leadership Wednesday, March 8
• Presentation to School Committee Thursday, March 16

 

The results of this review will be considered throughout our strategic planning process during Spring 2023. The strategic plan will then potentially inform how we approach the Design Stage of the Middle School Review. As the strategic planning process is confirmed, additional information and opportunities for staff and community participation will be forthcoming.

The next step in our Middle School Review is a pair of student surveys: one for middle school students and one for high school students.

Both surveys are quite similar and ask students to reflect on their middle school experience including what is working well, what is challenging, and what might be improved.

You can preview the survey questions below:

MIDDLE SCHOOL QUESTIONS

HIGH SCHOOL QUESTIONS

These surveys are optional and all results will remain confidential. Our partners at New Solutions will be processing the results and reporting on trends and patterns. Individual student responses will not be identifiable.

We will be posting links to these surveys as canvas messages for students so that they can take the survey at their own convenience without disrupting class time.

The overall middle school review will consist of three Stages to take us from initial fact finding and data collection to implementing possible changes and revisions. All three Stages will include multiple opportunities for stakeholder engagement.

 

This plan is subject to change as we learn from each Stage and as circumstances dictate.