Chair Diane Mayhew (left) and Dr. Bill Duval make up the Westfield School Committee’s Policy Subcommittee. (Photo by Peter Francis)
WESTFIELD – To an untrained eye, a gathering of the Westfield School Committee’s Policy Subcommittee may seem uneventful.
For the past three years though, Diane Mayhew and Bill Duval have composed this small but vital component of the city’s School Committee, and have worked exhaustively to evaluate, reevaluate and bring to the full committee innumerable policies for the district.
“Deciding whether the policies that are in place right now are still viable in today’s world,” said Mayhew, the subcommittee’s current chair, when asked of the most difficult aspect of the subcommittee’s job. “We use the Massachusetts Association of School Committees (MASC) as a reference guide for us. They have online policies and help, you can email them any time with questions about a policy.”
Duval, who taught for 32 years in the Psychology Department at Westfield State University, has served on the subcommittee for the past five years, while Mayhew, the mother of three children who went through Westfield public schools, has served on the subcommittee for the past three years.
The two have alternated the chairmanship every two years as per subcommittee rules, and travel together to various MASC workshops to keep their eyes trained for policies that both work and need revising.
Mayhew added that the subcomittee receives lots of help and input, such as when new health policies come up. In addition to the template provided by the MASC, the other obvious guide for the subcommittee’s policy formation is the law of the land.
“Changes in Massachusetts Law greatly affect our policies.” said Mayhew, citing the district’s sex discrimination policy. “We have had to change the wording a few times on this one to now show gender identity, which is big across a few of our policies. As committee members we have to keep up on these changes to make sure we are following Mass. general laws.”
She added that MASC has all the latest changes and are very good in making sure that all the districts in the Commonwealth are updated. “However, it is up to the individual committees to adopt the new changes or make amendments to their existing policies.” Mayhew said.
“You can’t get too crazy with policy,” she said, mentioning one policy that she and Duval have taken out of the book three times. “But honestly, can you actually cover everything? Policy is never done. It’s an open book, and theres always things that will come up and need to be changed.”
At the moment, bullying and cyber-bullying policies are of particular interest to Mayhew and Duval.
“(Cyber-bullying) is a huge one,” Mayhew said. “We’re now not aiming at just student-to-student harrassment.”
“For example, a kid waiting for the school bus, where he’s waiting is school territory. So if a neighbor is yelling something at that kid, that’s bullying. It’s not just school staff – it can be anybody else,” said Duval. “The thing is, you make a policy thinking it’s going to cover all the things you think you’re going to cover, and inevitably something comes up.”
“It’s teachers and custodians and it’s anybody walking down the hallway,” Mayhew added, referencing a situation relayed to her by North Middle School Principal Chris Rogers about bullying that occurred in front of the school.
“He couldn’t do anything because the bullying happened just far enough off the property where he had to call the police,” she said, adding that district policy covers field trips in which students travel on a bus as well.
“It’s something thats been going on for a long time. Theres nothing new about more or less bullying in schools today,” said Westfield High School Principal Jonathan Carter. “What we see is that there is a lot more education, prevention and support within the school system, more than ever.”
Carter, who served as principal at three high schools in Springfield and Holyoke prior to arriving in Westfield, said that the amount of bullying occurring at WHS is no worse or better than at those schools.
“Anytime you get a lot of people in a large building, you’re going to have relationships, people they don’t get along with,” he said. “Technology has escalated it to a whole new level, where rather than do it face to face, someone can do it from the comfort of their home and post something for the world to see.”
Carter does look on the bright side, and said that technology has made it easier for authorities to address cyberbullying.
“The district has done a great job at addressing it. Every school in the district has a protocol that we follow with regards to bullying,” he said, referencing robust state legislation that has been implemented to deal with bullying. “There’s a lot of best practices and legislation out there to help schools.”
When asked what issues they believe are on the cusp of becoming hot-button for the subcommittee, Duval and Mayhew agree that updating the district’s social networking policy is imperative.
“It’s going to be staff, which includes any staff in the building.” Mayhew said, citing the possibility of district employees ‘befriending’ students online, which she refers to as a ‘big no-no.’
Duval added that the policies discussed by the subcommittee are the jurisdiction of the full committee.
“We have to bring everything we did today before the school committee and they have to understand what they’re voting on,” he said. “And we have to listen to any changes they may want to make.”
“But that’s why the (school) committee is good – we have our tech guys, we have our finance guys, we have our policy people. We’re very well rounded as a whole.” Mayhew said, adding that she hopes the district’s policies will be up on the school department’s website by the beginning of next year.
“We want to make available to as many people as possible.” summarized Duval.
