School Committee Approves School Resource Officer Program for 2024-25
In a divided vote at their September 19 business meeting, the Acton-Boxborough Regional School Committee narrowly approved an agreement between the Acton-Boxborough Regional School District and the Acton Police Department regarding the School Resource Officer program, an action that effectively continues the School Resource Officer program in the Acton-Boxborough Schools for the 2024-25 school year.
The School Resource Officer program is a national program that promotes safer schools as part of a community-building strategy. Acton-Boxborough School Resource Officers are local police officers who are specially trained to work with children and adolescents in school settings.
The approved memorandum, which describes and formalizes program goals, requirements and practices for the School Resource Officer Program, brings Acton-Boxborough into compliance with Massachusetts state law and incorporates recommendations of the Acton-Boxborough School Resource Officer Subcommittee which were approved by the School Committee on January 18, 2024.
The total vote count was 12 to 9.5, with Acton members Campbell, Kremer, Schmidt, and Schwartz and Boxborough members Fowlks and Klein voting to continue the program and Acton members Bloomenthal, Ramchandran, and Wilson and Boxborough members Kaja and Parikh voting against it. School Committee votes are weighted according to the Regional Agreement, with each Boxborough member casting one vote and each Acton member casting 2.5 votes.
While members expressed their appreciation for the work that went into program improvements, division continues to center around strong Committee sentiment both among members who support eliminating the School Resource Officer Program and those who acknowledged strong community support for retaining it.
Acton Boxborough Awarded $64,000 Teacher Diversification Grant
The Acton-Boxborough School District has been awarded $64,203 in competitive grant funds from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to strengthen recruitment and retention of a diverse educator workforce. AB was among fifty-three Massachusetts school districts receiving a total of $3M in state grant funds.
According to Deputy Superintendent, Andrew Shen, the number of certified teachers employed in Acton-Boxborough who identify as Asian/Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latino, Black or African American or Native American fell from six percent to almost four percent in the last two years and is well below the District’s goal of ten percent. Shen reported the award will support the District’s renewed effort and commitment to build a strong, high quality teaching staff with broad representation that reflects the diversity of the District’s students and families.
The grant provides funds to bolster recruitment and retention with financial incentives that include signing bonuses, relocation assistance, retention stipends, and loan payment reimbursements to attract and retain top talent in a highly competitive labor market.
“The idea of using financial incentives to engage in recruitment and retention for a specific group of people is new territory for us, especially in a setting where collective bargaining reigns, and yet there are districts who have done this already and to whom we have reached out to see if these are strategies that we think can also be effective here,” Shen said. “Diversity begets diversity, so it’s about how to develop that first critical cohort that then empowers us and strengthens our recruitment abilities.”
Committee member input included the following: Member Schmidt voiced concern regarding potential unintended consequences of offering financial incentives to specific subpopulations of employees outside of the collective bargaining process. Member Wilson wondered if a better strategy would be to focus on diversification in leadership positions. Member Campbell asked Shen to anticipate how large a critical mass of diversified educators needs to be in Acton-Boxborough and if that impacts how we direct grant funds.
Shen noted, “The idea of maximizing compensation may be just as important in a candidate of color’s calculus as anyone else when deciding whether or not to accept a job offer, but it is important to note that there is not one single lever that you push on really hard to solve this; rather, there are multiple levers you push on at the same time.”
School Committee Approves New Cell Tower for Charter Road Campus
After an extended deliberation at their September 5 and September 19 business meetings and extensive input from students, families and community members, the School Committee voted to approve construction of a cell tower to improve cellular connectivity for the Charter Road campus.
Members who voted for the project included Acton members Bloomenthal, Campbell, Schmidt, Schwartz and Wilson and Boxborough members Fowlks, Kaja and Klein. Acton member Kremer voted against the project, and Acton member Ramachandran and Boxborough member Parikh abstained.
The vote, originally slated for September 5, was postponed by consensus of the School Committee in order to invite additional community input, get a better understanding of the health risks posed by non-ionizing radiation emissions, and review alternatives explored by the District.
Prior to their vote, the Committee heard a presentation from Don L. Haes, Jr., an independent consultant with an expertise in radiation safety who had also presented to a group of high school students earlier in the day. Haes reviewed regulations on exposure limits and required protective measures from the Federal Communications Commission, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and spoke to concerns about exposure. “If you want to lower your exposure on a daily basis,” Haes said, “you have to have more towers. That’s just the way it is. That’s just physics. The closer you are to a tower, the lower the power demand on the cell phone which means the lower the exposure of the user.”
During School Committee deliberations prior to the vote, Acton member Schwartz, speaking in support of the project, noted that “according to antennasearch.com, there are 59 towers and 90 antennae within 3 miles of where we sit right now. The tower under consideration is plugging a hole for an area that doesn’t have great service. This is a conversation about safety, not from being sixteen percent of the FCC limit, but about our ability to safeguard connectivity to our families, friends and children when something awful happens.”
Member Campbell concurred. “I appreciate the extended conversation on this. The Town of Acton’s [draft] Hazard Mitigation Plan anticipates that power loss due to storms will remain a major threat that disrupts communication. To me, this tower is a good solution to the problem we are trying to solve. The FCC limits that we’ve been looking at and saying are too high are actually tighter than well-vetted, commonly accepted standards. It is important to me to ensure that our leadership has the capability to know what is going on in the District, call for extra resources if they need to, make decisions, and get that information out to families. I am comfortable with the research and the science.”
Diane Baum is the School Committee beat reporter for the Acton Exchange.