Share This Article
The Sudbury Public Schools (SPS) School Committee continued to press the administration to stand up a “bridge” program for summer 2025 during their January 26 meeting. The administration had previously attempted to eliminate the SMILE and Explore summer programs, while restructuring the Extended School Year (ESY) program down to a four-day program.
Feedback from the community led the school committee, in recent meetings, to advocate for the district to maintain some form of summer camp program for one more year, and ideally retain the five-day schedule.
One major concern had to do with families who are planning their summers and evaluating childcare options. Those decisions are typically made around this time of year, especially as summer camps open for registration. With news of the SPS programs being terminated in December, the notice provided to families wasn’t satisfactory to the majority of the committee.
After a lengthy conversation between the committee and the administration, no firm decisions were made. Superintendent Brad Crozier made it clear that the administration heard the feedback and was working to stand up a summer program. However, the program that was proposed followed a four-day schedule, which the committee was not ready to accept. Once of the challenges Crozier cited was the lack of staff interest in working a full five-day week during the summer. He anticipated challenges in filling the summer positions if the district was hiring for a five-day program. There was some discussion of advertising positions for both a four-day and five-day program, but it was unclear exactly what next steps were to be taken.
Throughout much of the conversation the administration once again put the onus on the committee to provide detailed instructions about the program. As the committee members provided feedback or input, the administration would raise concerns about the viability of those ideas, but did not immediately offer many alternatives, other than the initial program they proposed, that might meet the expectations of the committee.
“But this is not a committee asking you to run an ineffective program for a summer. It’s the committee asking you to own the change management piece.”
SPS School Committee Member, Betsy Sues
The conversation concluded with member Betsy Sues setting clear expectations. “I just want to be clear because I don’t want a mischaracterization of what the committee is trying to accomplish here. So, we are asking the administration to put together a bridge program for the year. I think we’ve always been open to the discussion about the effectiveness [of] summer programming. The point of the bridge program is to make up for the lack of change management by the administration, in my viewpoint. So it’s to create the offramp.”
Sues continued by spelling out what got the district in this position. “And the reason we’re in this place, that I absolutely understand is challenging because you’re trying to figure out what pieces of this program to stand up, the cost, how to get the staffing… But this brings us back to the point of — you acted on a decision far before we approved the budget impact. So some of these decisions go back to October. And I don’t want to belabor the point because this has been discussed already. But this is not a committee asking you to run an ineffective program for a summer. It’s the committee asking you to own the change management piece.” (3:19:54)
The committee concluded its meeting by opting not to vote on the annual budget book. Members expressed a desire to get more information from the administration on issues like tiered initiatives, or just more time to go over the book, before voting. The district has its annual budget hearing with the Finance Committee on Monday, February 2, so the Finance Committee will have very little time to review what is ultimately still a draft budget book. For those interested in following the budget conversations, the Finance Committee meeting information is available here.