Concord School District officials are proposing adding 22 new positions next school year, many of them focusing on the safety and well-being of students.
Among the proposed additions are a school safety compliance official, which school board members say will help implement the recommendations of an independent investigator that reviewed how the district was responding to reports of sexual misconduct last year.
Also proposed are six new special education teachers, two social workers, a guidance counselor at Concord High School and a family home visitor that would focus on supporting kids who need extra attention at home before they reach school-age.
Educators say the positions proposed in the budget are aimed to address a growing need among students for more social-emotional support. They say they are seeing concerning behaviors in the classroom, from physical violence to emotional outbursts, often times from young children being exposed to trauma at home.
The $88.5 million budget would be a 2.85% increase from current spending. If the budget passes as proposed, the tax rate would increase by 29 cents ($15.31 to $15.60), or $72.50 on a $250,000 home. To make way for the new positions, the budget proposes cutting at least 10 education assistant positions that haven’t been filled in recent years, creating a savings of at least $275,000. Officials also propose hiring permanent substitute teachers for each of the elementary schools, which will help reduce the pot of money that is spent on substitutes each year by at least $10,000.
In addition, the district is benefiting from $861,739 from the state in stabilization and adequacy aid, part of a $138 million increase in education funding for this and next fiscal year that was approved by the Legislature this fall. Districts have been warned that the funding is not permanent, Concord School District Business Administrator Jack Dunn said, something officials are taking into consideration when planning for the future.
“We are very cognizant of that and are aiming to create consistency in trying to keep the rates low,” Dunn said. In the meantime, it’s a big help, he said.
The school safety compliance position would oversee the district’s response to reports of discrimination, harassment, bullying, retaliation and sexual violence. He or she is expected to identify and address any patterns and systematic problems revealed by those complaints, and provide training to staff and students.
The compliance officer will also be the Title IX coordinator for the district, a job that was previously included in the Director of Student Services position. District officials said they believe the workload is too much not to be its own full-time position.
The school safety compliance officer is proposed to cost the district $137,462.54. The school board has been open about their support for this position. The job has been posted and candidates are being interviewed, according to Interim Superintendent Frank Bass.
Filling the position is a priority for the district, given the recommendations the district received from independent investigator Djuna Perkins.
Perkins, a former prosecutor and chief of the Boston District Attorney’s Domestic Violence Unit, was hired by the district over the summer to investigate administrators’ handling of sexual misconduct reports brought to them by students after a teacher was arrested for rape. She said in her recommendations that a Title IX coordinator should be responsible for investigating reports of gender discrimination in the district, including reports of misconduct.
Previously, Title IX complaints were most often investigated by building principals in the Concord School District. Perkins wrote in her report that in general, principals and superintendents are not a good choice for a person to investigate possible Title IX complaints because of the inherent conflict of interest in their jobs as disciplinarians.
The position would exist at the district for at least a year. Next November, the board would conduct an analysis of how the position is working out in the community.
This year, teachers were vocal about a need for more support in the classroom.
A letter signed by 275 educators from across the district’s schools submitted to the school board in January said that teachers are experiencing an emerging trend of concerning behaviors from students, including physical assault, emotional outbursts, and damage of school supplies. Many of these behaviors are coming from elementary-aged and younger students, officials say.
Teachers say that calls to administrators for help during a crisis are not always answered and that resources that are meant to be devoted to support special education students are being used on managing these crises in the classroom.
Proposed in the budget are six special education teachers, one for each of Concord’s elementary schools and one for Rundlett Middle School. The cost of those positions is estimated to be $597,490.
“The board needs to choose between funding positions that are removed from the classroom, like behavioral consultants, and bringing in more positions that will make a difference for special education and regular education students,” Concord Education Association President Michael Macri said. “We need to engage people who are actually doing the work.”
Also proposed in the budget are two social worker positions, one for Beaver Meadow School and one to be split between Abbot-Downing School and Christa McAuliffe School, amounting to $199,163.60. A guidance counselor is being proposed at Concord High School for $99,581.81 and an occupational therapist that would provide additional support for Broken Ground School and Rundlett Middle School for $61,567.21. Three educational assistants are being proposed to support kindergarten at Mill Brook School for $91,236.42.
One way the district has aimed to improve students’ social-emotional health has been by reaching children before they reach school age. For around five years, the district has been offering programming in its six family center sites, where parents can bring children below the age of five for educational programming centered around arts and crafts, music, stories and play.
The district also received grant funding to start a home visiting program. Two part-time employees are visiting parents who need extra support. One of those workers focuses on child development, and the other on new American families who need English language support.
“What’s happening is we have kids starting kindergarten who don’t speak any English,” Assistant Superintendent Donna Palley said. “They’ve lived here, they’ve been born here, but because they’re home with their moms primarily, and their moms don’t know any English, they’re coming out seeming like brand new ELL kids. So we’re thinking, learning a new language, you’ve got to learn it when you’re a baby, than when you’re older.”
The district is now proposing its first full-time home visitor to focus on students’ social-emotional and behavioral needs. They say they hope this position will give students support they need to mitigate some of the behavioral challenges that are being seen at the preschool, kindergarten, elementary school level. The cost of the position will be $108,360.80.
“There’s just a lot of needs,” Palley said. “We’ve been hearing about that. We want to start with the littlest kids because it makes sense to not wait until they’re grown up.”
The school board also tentatively approved a sabbatical proposal from a teacher, Dr. Barbara O’Brien-Lane, who teaches second grade at Beaver Meadow School. Her project will focus in part on training teachers to work with students who have had adverse childhood experiences. The cost will be $52,454.22 to cover O’Brien’s classroom while she is working on her project.
The district is also hoping to add a custodian position, a nurse and an assistant principal at Rundlett Middle School.
The custodian will be based at Concord High, but float to other schools, when needed. The district has been relying on outsourcing and overtime for both the custodian position and the nurse position up until this point, Dunn said at a Feb. 10 meeting. The custodian position will cost the district $66,610.27. The nurse position will cost $88,928.60.
Another extra cost is the funding of a piece of Clint Klose’s position with the Theatre and Film program with the CRTC. Portions of it have previously been funded by grants. The expense of the position is offset by the revenue for CRTC.