Medfield Schools Roundup: Woodland Theatre Company, FY13 Budget Update and Virtual Schools

The buzz around the Woodland Theatre Company’s recently formed partnership with Medfield High School has been overwhelmingly positive.

The company debuted in Medfield with its three-day production of "Cabaret" in the Lowell Mason Auditorium at the end of January and will be providing workshops to interested Medfield High School drama and theatre students.

Medfield High School senior Andrew Velichansky is involved in drama and theatre at MHS and spoke highly of the school’s involvement with Woodland Theatre Company. Velichansky, who is the stage manager for the MHS drama club, worked with crew members during Woodland Theatre’s production of "Cabaret."

“It was a great experience,” Velichansky said. “It was a great learning opportunity for me to be able to work with professionals back stage. I also got to know everyone on stage as well. That was really exciting.”

Woodland Theatre is expected to provide workshops at MHS after students in the high school’s theatre society perform a musical in March.

“Woodland Theatre is possibly going to run some workshops with us,” Velichansky said. “It’s a mutual benefit that we help them while they’re here and they are going to run both workshops for backstage and acting. They have professional directors and cast who are going to be helping out. It’s a great opportunity.”

Bob Maguire, Medfield Superintendent of Schools, explained the workshops are part of the rental agreement the company has with the school district for using the Lowell Mason Auditorium.

“[Woodland Theatre Company] didn’t have enough funds because they are still a start-up to cover rental of the Lowell Mason Auditorium,” Maguire said. “So the idea of the workshops came about. We basically worked out an in-kind approach on how to calculate the rental so that they could be successful and it’s got a mutual benefit that the kids are actually getting to participate in the production.”

Woodland Theatre Company’s next production in Medfield will be “Guys and Dolls” in May.

“It’s really exciting to go to work with them,” said Velichansky.

Some Concern From the State Regarding the FY13 Budget

Maguire told the School Committee at its Feb. 13 meeting that there was nothing new to report regarding news from the town on the school department’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal, which calls for a less than one percent increase. However, Maguire did express some concern with what’s going on at the state level.

“I think the concern right now in the state is related to what really is happening with the legislature on the budget,” Maguire said. “It appears the governor’s budget is imbalanced at this point and he has basically recommended that Chapter 70 local education aid remain stable and unrestricted local aid also remain at level funding.”

Maguire said while Governor Deval Patrick is increasing Chapter 70 funding for some districts in the state, Medfield is not one of them and the governor’s budget assumptions currently have an imbalance.

“Basically, there’s some additional revenue in the form of some different taxes that the governor is anticipating that he would get to fund the budget at the level that would meet what he’s recommending,” said Maguire.

There has been some debate at the state level, according to Maguire, as to whether or not there will be tax increases in the Commonwealth, namely the “sin taxes.”

“One of the things that actually came out [Feb. 13] is Town Administrator Michael Sullivan was having conversations with [State Representative] Denise Garlick and they’ve already started to talk about if they don’t have the appetite to increase those taxes … they might look at other areas of the budget and one of the vulnerable areas that we’ve heard from our representative is the Circuit Breaker,” Maguire said. “That has been a pretty good form of funding, both for our budget as well as budgets around the state.”

Concerned the Circuit Breaker may be impacted if there’s no increase on sin taxes, Maguire recommended the committee reach out to Medfield’s state representatives and senators.

“I know that’s an area of concern and something we may want to start weighing in on,” Maguire said. “We’ve been trying to schedule some meetings with our state representatives and that doesn’t look that’s going to happen until April 9 now. We might want to be reaching out to them with some other communication between now and then.”

The most likely form of communication from the school committee to its state legislature will be a formal letter expressing support of the Circuit Breaker.

“I think [the committee] may want to send [state representatives and senators] something expressing the value of the Circuit Breaker or the importance of local aid at all levels,” Maguire said. “There’s a lot of concern still out there for being seen doing anything with tax revenue. I think [the legislature is] struggling. I think they know the importance of getting local aid level funding this year. We’ve been through four years of pretty tough decisions.”

Charles Kellner, director of finance and operations for Medfield Public Schools, explained the purpose of the Circuit Breaker.

“Circuit Breaker is a reimbursement program, so we are getting money this year that is reimbursing us for our costs from last year,” Kellner said. “We are budgeting next year’s revenue based on this year’s costs.

“If [the state] changes the formula on how those costs are reimbursed as the budget may require them to do, as it has in the past, the legislation in creating the circuit breaker program said the legislature is to reimburse cities and towns for certain special education costs up to 75 cents on the dollar. The term is subject to appropriation.

“It hasn’t been 75 percent for a number of years based on the fiscal realities of the state. If they reduce the funding that’s available, say to 45 or 40 percent … we’ve budgeted at 50 percent, trying to be conservative … if that is reduced then it is based on last year’s costs and we would feel it in the year’s budget coming forward.”

Virtual Schools Not Scoring Well in Standardized Testing

Maguire discussed a piece of legislation regarding virtual schools in Massachusetts that he found alarming with the school committee at its Feb. 13 meeting.

“This bill is quite frankly extraordinarily concerning to me and basically there’s legislation that’s been moving through the house and the joint committee of education, which is to basically to create 10 virtual schools in the Commonwealth with the idea that there would actually, in the end result, be 19,000 students enrolled in the schools,” Maguire said.

Maguire cited cost and performance as two main concerns regarding this legislation for virtual schools.

“[Kellner] processed [the cost per pupil in virtual schools] out to about $7,300 per student,” Maguire said. “So if you actually look at the math of it being 19,000 students [multiplied] by $7,300, it exceeds $130 million in funding to go to these online virtual schools.”

While Medfield participates in a hybrid module of about 30 virtual classes being taken at the high school, the concept of 100 percent virtual schooling is an entirely different module and not one Maguire sees value in.

“This is looking at having students 100 percent enrolled in these virtual schools,” Maguire said. “The one experiment going on right now in the Commonwealth really happened as what I would describe as some quirky legislation that developed under an innovation school. Basically a school gets founded in Greenfield that has 500 students in it and it is the current example of a full-time virtual school in the Commonwealth. It has students enrolled in it, grades K through 8 full-time, online, on computer.”

Maguire said he reviewed the test scores of the Greenfield school and was not impressed with the results.

“I was able to get a hold of their MCAS results, which aren’t highly noted anywhere and they are not good,” said Maguire. “This is something that we are really concerned about. I had a conversation with Denise Garlick back in December about it and she was the one that actually brought this to my attention.

“This was very much under the radar in a way that was very baffling to me. It was actually kind of shocking that something of this magnitude and this amount of dollars was actually not having much of a discussion at all.”

School Committee Approves Concussion Policy

The School Committee voted to make its interim policy on head injuries and concussions the district’s final and acting policy. The committee similarly changed its Head Injury and Concussion Response Protocol to a final and acting policy.

“There were no significant changes to what was voted the interim policy,” Maguire said. “We were required under regulations that were passed this summer to have a policy in place by Jan. 1. Then it was required that we not have an interim policy approved but a formal policy in place. We had some time to go back through the interim policy and presented the policy to the school committee be adopted as the final policy.”

Maguire Hopes to Conclude Wheelock Principal Search ‘Soon’

Maguire provided an update on the Ralph Wheelock School principal search, saying the administration is continuing along with the process and he hopes to successfully complete the search “soon.”

“My team has interviewed the candidates that were forwarded to my level with a team of several administrators,” Maguire said. “We made the decision to actually travel to one of the site’s of one of the candidates.”