| Dear Families, The Holliston School Committee is Seeking Volunteers! Over the next few months, the Holliston School Committee will be developing a plan to adjust busing and the start and end times of the school day for the 2025-26 school year. This change is being driven by a combination of continued parent feedback as well as in response to the increased learning time outlined in the 2024-2027 teachers’ contract. With the passage of the override this week, funding for this contract is now in place and the contract is officially official. As outlined in the MOA, the student day for Miller, Adams, and the High School will increase by 15 minutes and Placentino will increase by 10 minutes. Additionally, the district will shift from three start times down to two. In order to ensure a broad array of voices and more opportunities for input from all stakeholders, we are taking a different approach than the changes that occurred in 2019. Instead of creating a subcommittee of the School Committee, the School Committee will be forming a separate Advisory Committee that will include representatives from school administration, teachers/staff, parents/guardians, and school committee members; it will report back to the full School Committee. This advisory committee, working under the guidance of the administration’s experts, will work to ensure that potential issues with prospective plans are raised up as early as possible. Ultimately, once a final proposed plan (or set of different alternative plans) is reached, the Holliston School Committee will seek broader community feedback and engagement before voting on a final solution. Per the new contract, this final decision must be made by January 1st, 2025 so as to give parents, guardians, teachers, and staff time to plan for any changes in schedules. The Committee was officially created by the HSC last night, and is similar to the Tuition Free Full Day Kindergarten committee that was created a number of years ago. It is a formal advisory group, sworn in by the town clerk, with publicly posted meetings and subject to Open Meeting Law. We believe that this will further increase the transparency of the process. We are looking to try and get parent/guardian representatives (one, possibly two) from each school and hope you will consider participating. If you are interested, please fill out the form linked here if you are interested in joining this advisory committee Given the short timeframe, we are setting a Friday, September 20th deadline for submissions with decisions finalized at our September 26th School Committee meeting. Teacher/Staff volunteers will be sought separately. For your planning purposes, the first meeting of this committee will be on October 1st, 2024 at 4:30PM. Please expect meetings to occur weekly for 4-6 weeks, likely on Tuesdays at 4:30PM for 1-2 hours. While we are not making attendance at all of them mandatory, we certainly prefer volunteers who can make most of the meetings and tried to find a time that we hoped would work best for both staff and parents/guardians. Thank you in advance for your consideration. Sincerely, The Holliston School Committee |
| It is the policy of the Holliston Public Schools not to discriminate on the basis of race, sex, gender identity, religion, national origin, color, homelessness, sexual orientation, age or disability in its educational programs, services, activities, or employment practices. |
