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I attended the school committee policy sub-committee meeting on Wednesday, November 22nd, and something happened that should concern all Sudbury parents.
As documented in the Sudbury Weekly, a member of the School Committee, Mandy Sim, believes that the school committee should not be creating policies outside of those set forward by the Massachusetts Association of School Committees (MASC). This shocked me. It is not the job of MASC to define the entirety of the school policies that are needed in Sudbury; that is the job of the Sudbury School Committee. To be clear for those not familiar with MASC: MASC is not a governing body. MASC policies are resources, not rules or restrictions. MASC itself acknowledges that each community is expected to adapt and define policies to meet their own needs. The Sudbury School Committee has the power to define and approve policies outside of the MASC policies, and it has done so before.
What worries me is that this coming Monday, November 25, there is a school committee meeting where they will discuss “Subcommittee Appointments and Charge”. There is a very real possibility that the “charge” of the policy subcommittee could be officially defined as a much narrower scope, e.g. to revise current policies to meet updated law. Or, Karyn Jones, the School Committee member who argued that MASC policies should be minimum and not a maximum, could be removed from her appointment on the policy subcommittee. Why do I think this is a possibility? This is not the only current school committee member who has said that the School Committee has to stick to the MASC policies.
If either of these two things happens, important policy proposals that the community is asking for are stopped immediately.
Guardrails on cell phone use in schools? Forget about it, there’s no MASC policy on that.
Holding the school committee accountable for putting in a good faith effort to liaise with SEPAC? Forget about it, there’s no MASC policy on that.
Guidance on how to support our transgender, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming kids? Nope, no MASC policy on that.
It doesn’t have to be this way. These policy suggestions haven’t come out of nowhere. They have been proposed in response to numerous conversations and emails from citizens in Sudbury, including myself. MASC-developed policies are meant to be a bare minimum, not a maximum. Sudbury parents are asking for our kids to have more than the bare minimum. The SPS School Committee should not be tying its own hands when it comes to one of its core functions. If you think that the SPS School Committee should be open to considering policies beyond those written by MASC, write to the school committee about your concerns regarding limiting SPS policies to only MASC policies: school-committee@sudbury.k12.ma.us or better yet, share your thoughts at Monday’s School Committee Meeting.