WESTFIELD – While their next official meeting isn’t until next Monday evening, the Westfield School Committee will be meeting tonight for a professional development workshop of sorts that has been a long time in the making, according to Committee Member Diane Mayhew.
“I’ve been trying to get the committee to agree to a workshop for three years now,” said Mayhew with a chuckle this morning.
The workshop is set for at 6 p.m. at Westfield Vocational-Technical High School’s Tiger’s Pride Restaurant and will include Glenn Koocher, one of the directors of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees.
Topics for the session will include the committee’s self-evaluation, along with the superintendent’s new evaluation, and improvements to both communication dynamics and operation protocols on the committee.
“It’s called a ‘Tune-up and Tool-up’ workshop for school committee members,” said Mayhew, adding that the committee has already addressed the new superintendent evaluation once prior. “This tune up workshop gives us a better idea of how to roll it out (the evaluation) this year.”
She added that the committee’s self-evaluation should be a yearly event, but that last year was the first time the committee had completed one since she had been elected.
“Sometimes the subcommittees get so involved in what they’re doing that the evaluation doesn’t get done,” said Mayhew.
“The first time we were kind of raw on it, as some of us weren’t exactly sure on how to fill out all the grids and such. It is in a lot more detail than we were used to in years past,” said Mayhew. “The school committee evaluation will tell us how good we’re working together as a team and it will explain in more detail our working relationship with Superintendent (Dr. Suzanne) Scallion.”
Mayhew explained that the workshop will also help the school committee elaborate on some of the district’s goals as 2015 moves forward.
Meeting efficiency and whether the committee is effectively monitoring all of the data the committee receives during meetings will also be discussed.
A member of the committee’s Policy Subcommittee along with Dr. William Duval, Mayhew added that improving engagement with the community is something she believes the committee can work on as well.
“I think we do it to a certain point – we ask the community to come to the meetings, but I don’t think we get a good response,” she said, stating that Koocher will be on hand to guide the workshop. “It’s going to be a very low-key, casual meeting.”
Mayhew said that the workshop technically has to be listed on the city’s website as a meeting since all committee members are present and added that if community members want to come sit in on the workshop, they are welcome to do so.
