The Sept. 9 School Committee meeting highlighted a revisitation of the upcoming Wayland Public Schools District Goals for 2026-27, the music pilot, and state requirement changes.
Superintendent of Schools David Fleishman said the Portrait of a Learner initiative will focus not only on academics but also on the development of the student as a person. The focus is balance and joy. In its second year, it will evolve and become more operational while being synched and mapped into the curriculum.
“We’ll be doing more work internally around getting feedback and beginning to think about how we operationalize this,” Fleishman said. ”More of the work will be internal but we will be including some meetings in October and November and will get feedback from the community that way.”
Chair Erin Gibbons recommended a midpoint check-in draft while finalizing the Portrait initiative to ensure that it aligns with the curriculum this year before the Sept. 9, 2027, launch.
Betsy Gavron noted that new state graduation requirements that will affect the current eighth-graders. While the majority of students are currently meeting the new Common Core regulations, some will need additional coursework. Some changes include end-of-the-year assessments that align with coursework, new AI component, financial literacy component, portfolio or capstone built around a certain discipline, and volunteer or work skills requirement. Unlike the MCAS, these requirements will not prevent a student from graduating.
“We are going to create a working group throughout the year because tracking this is also going to be a large component since you don’t just have to pass particular courses, you have to have particular assessments aligned with those courses,” said Gavron.
Other district goals included examining screen time in the elementary and middle school levels, transitioning the monitoring of cell phone usage, and finding ways to maximize the impact of the Spanish Immersion Program in middle school to ensure that students are progressing toward their proficiency goals. A challenge for the program at the middle school is that there are three other languages being taught there opposed to having everything solely in Spanish and English at Loker.
The committee voted unanimously to approve the WPS District Goals for the 2026-27 academic year.
The committee discussed the upcoming Loker music pilot program. School committee member Jessica Traue requested a rubric or something that would track the changes happening at Loker which could measure them with more consistency and transparency.
“I know I came into this process late, and you had already been looking at all of these variables,” said Traue. ”But when you can’t provide that control, we need more transparency because I don’t want to be sitting here in April or May and then hearing that [something] went forward with no way of knowing if the measurements have been met or not, or we are not moving forward because they haven’t been met. So I just wanted to say that it would be helpful if in the coming months we could see those specific items that we are looking at.”
The music fee for Loker families for music instruction was reduced from $150 to $90 based on time reduced from the upcoming pilot.
The group discussed the new Protect Act which mandates procedures for schools when working with civil law enforcement, fire, and nurses. Further information will follow at the Sept. 21 safety meeting. There was also a proposal for the School Committee Annual Report to be completed by Sept. 30.
The meeting kicked off with three residents — professional musician Penny Wayne Shapiro, WHS Alum Joshua Nuspl, and Madeline Domville — expressing concerns over the upcoming Loker music pilot during public comment.
