INTRODUCTION

This is one article in a series out of four concerning the school improvement plan.

The school improvement plan is a document that every school in Massachusetts is required to create and make public every year, according to Headmaster Deborah Holman. This year’s school improvement plan was released a couple of months late do to the amount of work that went into it.

“Brookline High School needs it, badly. It has taken three years of my being here to really see how the school is operating and what it needs,” Holman said. “We are just at a point that, not only faculty, but also students can see the direction of where we needed to go, in terms of the district vision of educational equity.”  

Holman said that the plan was created by the school council, which meets monthly and includes parents, students and faculty. The plan was developed during the spring and summer of 2015 and completed in the fall. The plan is available on the town of Brookline’s website and reproduced below.

Holman said that the plan focuses on changing instruction and culture at the high school, and less on creating new systems. The goals outlined in the improvement plan fit roughly into one of four categories: racial equity, academic and financial support, mental health and administration.

Check here for the entirety of the school improvement plan:

http://www.brookline.k12.ma.us/cms/lib8/MA01907509/Centricity/Domain/25/Heath%20School%20Improvement%20Plan%202015-%202016.pdf

Administration

Dean administrative structure

According to Alexander, administrators will be focusing on how to handle growth in student population over the next few years.

Read here for more coverage on the space expansion issue at the high school:

Where will they go?

Common planning time

The goal for a common teacher planning time is to create a master schedule for faculty for the 2016-2017 school year. This will allow for teachers who teach the same class, for example all freshman Geometry teachers, to have at least one free block in common where they could collaborate on their plans for their classes.

Qualitative data gathering

There are plans to collect students’ stories about their experiences at the high school from student focus groups and use that data with the faculty to reflect students’ voices and what they want from the school, especially in terms of racial equity. Another goal is to create templates to measure progress made on course enrollments and test scores.

Academic Standards Committee

The Academic Standards Committee (ASC) is an existing? group of faculty and administrators at the high school that reviews potential new courses. The ASC also presides over online courses and materials to see whether they can be used to receive credit from the high school. It also reviews possible schedule changes, and how they can accommodate for the influx of students in the upcoming years. The ASC would be appointed to review any possible graduation requirement changes. According to Alexander, the committee has to ensure every student graduates with an education that they can take advantage of.

School improvement plan committee

The school improvement plan describes the creation and implementation of a committee to oversee the carrying out of this plan. They will establish benchmarks and monitor the carrying-out of the plan over the next few academic years. There are also plans to increase financial support from the town and support from the public schools’ human resources department.