Dear Shrewsbury Families, Colleagues, and Community Members,
In recognition of today being Lunar New Year, I want to wish all of you who are celebrating a happy, healthy, and prosperous Year of the Snake! Many community members celebrated this past Sunday at the annual festival put on by the Mass Beijing Chinese Language School, where our Mandarin world language classes from Oak and SHS performed and student members of the National Chinese Honor Society volunteered. As a reminder, today is a date in our “No Homework” Calendar, so no homework assignments are due and no assessments requiring studying will be given tomorrow, Thursday, January 30.
Please read on for important information about bullying prevention and intervention, the importance of attendance at school, and a reminder about our schools and immigration law.
Bullying prevention and intervention:
As stated in our recently updated Bullying Prevention and Intervention Plan, our school district “will not tolerate any unlawful or disruptive behavior, including any form of bullying, cyberbullying, or retaliation.”
Preventing inappropriate behaviors and intervening when they occur has been a key focus of our strategic goals this year. This has included professional development for staff in Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports (PBIS) and the Collaborative Problem Solving approach.
The School Committee recently voted on updates to the district’s policy and plan regarding bullying prevention and intervention. I invite you to view a summary of the plan and read these documents here: https://schools.shrewsburyma.gov/district/bullying-prevention-intervention.
Please also note that this update includes a new online form to report suspected bullying, which is linked here and on the page above. A link to a hard copy form is also on the website. For more information about ways to report suspected bullying, please go here: https://schools.shrewsburyma.gov/district/reporting-a-suspected-bullying-incident.
I ask that parents speak with your children about the seriousness of this issue, your expectations for their behavior, and to enforce appropriate access to and use of technology, including social media and artificial intelligence. The updates to our policy and plan affirm that our schools will address inappropriate behaviors, including bullying and cyberbullying, in a manner that can have serious consequences for students who act in this way. Parents can find resources to talk to your kids to help prevent or respond to bullying on our bullying prevention website, including these.
The impact of good attendance at school on learning:
You may have seen news reports today that the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) shows that academic performance of students across the U.S. continues to lag behind compared to prior to the pandemic. While Massachusetts public schools continue to be the strongest performing in the nation, progress has not returned to pre-pandemic levels and achievement gaps remain significant. Here in Shrewsbury, we do not have district-level scores for the NAEP, but the MCAS scores from last spring showed that while our performance is very strong relative to the rest of the state and the nation, we have seen a similar trend in our state testing scores.
One of the key takeaways from the reporting about the national test results is that absenteeism has a significant effect on achievement; as the head of NAEP put it simply, “Students who don’t come to school are not improving.” Our educators and support staff are putting in tremendous effort to help all of our students succeed academically, but for students to benefit from their skillful teaching and support they need to be in school. Thank you to families for making every effort to ensure that your child has strong attendance. As we are just past the halfway point of the school year, schools will be analyzing students’ attendance records, and they will be reaching out to families of students who are at risk for being chronically absent.
In case you missed it – information on schools and immigration law:
Last week I sent out information regarding how immigration laws affect our schools. You can read the message here. Our legal obligations have not changed, and the key messages are:
- Our schools’ highest priority is educating all of our students well in a safe and supportive environment.
- Immigration enforcement is the responsibility of federal agencies, not local school systems.
- Our school district complies with all local, state, and federal laws.
For more details, see the message link above.
Thank you for your continued efforts and support as our schools do their very best to help all of Shrewsbury’s children and young people thrive.
Respectfully,
Joe Sawyer
Superintendent of Schools