Williamstown School Gets Bump in Enrollment
 Williamstown-Lanesborough Public Schools Superintendent Rose Ellis gives a PowerPoint presentation at Wednesday's meeting of the Williamstown Elementary School Committee. |
Principal Joelle Brookner told the WES Committee on Wednesday that between school-choice families, families who have moved into the district and families of pre-kindergarteners and kindergarteners without older siblings already in the school, WES has 88 new families included in its pre-K through Grade 6 population of 435 pupils.
The number even impressed the district's superintendent of schools.
"Wow, that's a lot," said Rose Ellis, who joined Brookner in a wide-ranging presentation to the board about where the school is and where it is going.
"There were years when we were very stable and didn't have new families coming in to any extent."
Overall, WES' enrollment grew from 418 children at the end of last year to 435 on Sept. 10. But Brookner said she expects that number to climb by Oct. 1, the commonwealth's official reporting date for school populations.
Brookner and Ellis brought the committee up to date in a number of areas besides enrollment. They touched on the continuing education activities of WES teachers, discussed improved technology, explained how staffing numbers have been adjusted to meet changing student needs and presented for the committee's approval the school's long-range improvement plan.
The plan is the result of a meeting of teachers, parents and staff earlier this month and looks at four major areas: student achievement, curriculum and instruction, assessment and parent involvement and community building.
Within each of those four categories, the plan sets out specific objectives, and Ellis said she will be back before the committee in the spring to report on how well each of the objectives were met.
A couple of the objectives involve plans to empower students at the school.
"We would like to identify student-driven learning opportunities," Brookner said. "We'd like to help students find their passion."
Meanwhile, the "community building" goal is moving beyond parent-teacher cooperation.
"We'd really like to find ways to expand opportunities for students to find ways to be leaders," Brookner said. "What are the civic and service-learning projects already going on at WES and how can we add to that?"
In other business on Wednesday, the WES committee gave final approval to several policy changes driven by a 2011 state law identifying gender identity as a protected class in Massachusetts' anti-discrimination law.
The phrase "gender identity" was added to seven different district policies covering topics ranging from nondiscrimination to equal opportunity employment to instructional materials.
"These [changes] were basically recommended by the Massachusetts Association of School Committees," Ellis said. "The new anti-discrimination statute requires us to add gender identity to the list of categories that can’t be discriminated against. This has come to all school districts as a requirement."
Tags: enrollment, WES,
