It was an overwhelming success, said Food Service Director Jill Henesey to the Marion School Committee on January 6. The most successful launch of a pilot breakfast program in the history of the Tri-Town school districts when it came to participation, said Superintendent Doug White.
“This is the greatest turnout I’ve ever seen,” said White. “Usually you get maybe 75, 100.”
The new breakfast program, which was recently a huge hit at Rochester Memorial School, delighted students with its assortment of cereals, yogurt, homemade baked breads and, of course, the celebrated smoothies at Sippican School.
“The first three days were phenomenal,” said Sippican School Principal Lyn Rivet. During the first day, the school served breakfast to about 150 Sippican students, climbing up to 210 on the second day, and staying steady into the third. “The children were expressing how much they loved it – especially the smoothies were a huge success.”
Rivet said students, parents, and teachers all responded with positive feedback, so now Henesey and the rest of the administration are holding discussions on how to fully implement the program at the school and continue to serve the students breakfast every morning.
“I think the huge outpouring of kids shows that this was something we needed,” said School Committee Chairman Christine Marcolini.
Committee member Christine Winters wondered how the “grab and go” aspect of the program, where students bring their breakfast into their classroom, fit in with the policy of no food allowed in the classroom.
“How is that being overlaid with the program?” asked Winters.
Rivet said students that have been bringing food into the classroom during the program’s first few days properly disposed of all trash and sanitized desk areas to rid them of possible allergens and other substances like gluten.
White said, as the program starts up and stabilizes, the majority of students would be eating in the cafeteria.
As a busy parent, committee member Kate Houdelette said she appreciated the program and her kids did as well.
“It was such a huge hit with my kids and their friends. They were ready for school way earlier,” said Houdelette. “It was such a great addition, and we are thrilled with how it rolled out.”
As for any extra staffing, a concern of Winters’, the four existing bus monitors were brought in to utilize the remaining time of their paid one hour to supervise students, incurring no further costs at this time.
“We will have to look at whether four people is enough to bring in the entire school,” said Rivet. She suggested a walking or exercise program to run concurrently with the breakfast program like RMS has to keep students occupied while other students eat.
However, said White, should further staffing be needed, the food service program is a self-sufficient program and revenue from the program would cover the cost of any extra labor.
In other matters, all four Tri-Town school districts are struggling to find more substitute teachers, and White has proposed increasing the pay as a way to attract more people to the Tri-Town schools. He suggests raising the pay for substitute paraprofessionals from $70 to $75, non-certified substitute teachers from $75 to $80, and certified teacher substitutes from $80 to $85 per diem.
“Do you feel this increase is significant enough to make a difference?” asked Houdelette.
Going forward, said White, “This puts us more in line with other districts around [Marion].” Hopefully, he said, the higher rate will make the pay more competitive with other districts when potential substitutes consider which assignment to take in the morning.
Rivet said last year there were two occasions when paraprofessionals assigned to special education students were pulled to stand in for absent teachers because of a lack of substitute teachers, and there were several teachers who were out long-term as well.
Winters, looking over a spreadsheet of other district pay rates, commented that Marion did not seem to be too far out of the ballpark.
“We don’t really seem too outside the pale,” Winters said.
A concern, though, said White, is the January 1 state increase of the minimum wage, which could entice potential substitute teachers into other fields of work, since a paraprofessional position in Tri-Town pays about $8 per hour at this time, said White. Municipalities are not required to raise the minimum wage.
Another issue that could account for the shallow pool of substitute teachers is that other districts have subscribed to a digital system of employing substitute teachers who can select their chosen assignments online from a list of available assignments.
Winters suggested holding off on making any pay increases until committee members and budget subcommittee members had further time to talk about it, but Houdelette disagreed, saying anything the committee could do right now to help alleviate the sub shortage would be prudent.
“I think that it’s relatively little money,” Houdelette said. “It’s not an enormous increase.… If it helps the school, I don’t think we should wait.”
Marcolini agreed with Houdelette, proposing the committee vote only to increase the pay for the remainder of the school year and vote later on how much of an increase to adopt for the next fiscal year. However, she found no issue with holding off on a vote until next month.
“I don’t think waiting 30 days is going to make or break us,” said Marcolini.
“I’m happy to wait,” said Houdelette, “I just don’t see it being a tremendous hardship to the budget for the next several months if it eases the stress at the schools.”
Houdelette made a motion to adopt the $5 pay increase on all three levels for the remainder of the fiscal year, but the motion received no second.
The committee decided to wait a month for a vote.
The Marion, Mattapoisett, and Rochester schools will also be moving toward a more “standards-based” report card for Grades 1 through 6, preferring to shift away from the old “A, B, C, D, F” report cards.
In another matter, the state has reduced time allotted for PARCC testing, and the testing window for the exam will be April 25 to June 6.
Grade 3 will have two 90-minute timed sessions to finish their tests and one 75-minute session in ELA, and three 60-minute sessions in Math.
Grades 4 and 5 will have three sessions of 90 minutes to finish the test in ELA, and three 60-minute sessions for Math.
Grade 6 will have two 110-minute and one 90-minute testing period, and three 80-minute testing periods on Math.
Also during the meeting, Rivet presented the state 2015 Accountability Report for Sippican School, which will remain a Level 1 school for another year. Despite the rigor of the piloting of the new PARCC exam, students still exceeded the target mark of 75 in three areas, with the exception of the students with disabilities category scoring a 62.
“It’s still something to be very proud of,” said Marcolini, “and I think that next year will be even better. You learn as you go.”
The next meeting of the Marion School Committee is scheduled for February 3 at 6:30 pm at the Marion Town House.
By Jean Perry
