AMHERST — An initiative to address absenteeism by encouraging Amherst Regional High School students to participate in a new Saturday morning program is among proposals for educational improvements this school year.
Known as an attendance buyback initiative, Principal Marc Gomes, who began his tenure at the school over the summer, said he wants to ensure all students are getting to the state-mandated 990 hours to graduate.
“In order to hold students accountable and to hold expectations, we want to give students the chance to buyback any days that are unexcused,” Gomes told the Regional School Committee last week.
Under the proposal, the program would run from 9 a.m. to noon, where students would be able to get their educational priorities straight and appreciate the importance of being present for classes, Gomes said. The Saturday program would also have a credit recovery component for students to make up any D’s or F’s they have earned in classes, which is another way to be held accountable.
“As I’ve been saying, Amherst Regional High School should be a blue-ribbon high school and that’s what the plan is, but we have to fix around the edges first, before we go in,” Gomes said.
Many of the major priorities at the high school for the new school year are more conventional, such as upgrading core instruction and having one-on-one tutoring to address specific academic shortfalls, as well as increasing English Learners’ 10th grade MCAS scores in English Language Arts and mathematics and having a vape intervention program.
Superintendent E. Xiomara Herman said staff participating in the Saturday school program would be hired through postings negotiated with the teachers union, the Amherst Pelham Education Association. The Saturday school is not a new idea, as it was supposed to be done previously, she said.
Herman said unexcused absences are a concern, and district leadership is trying to give opportunities for students to recoup education, and to earn additional support, in a different setting and at a different time.
As the new school year begins at the regional schools, Herman wrote a memo to the school committee about continued accomplishments across the district as her third and final year as the district leader.
“When I reflect on where the district was when I began and where we are today, I see
meaningful progress,” Herman wrote. “We have strengthened systems, advanced major projects, improved procedures and continued working to create greater stability and accountability across the district.”
She noted there are 802 students enrolled at the high school and there has been a 96.2% attendance rate so far, just a little short of the nearly 97% attendance rate at the middle school, where there are 388 seventh and eighth graders. Those students have been joined by sixth graders from Amherst at the Chestnut Street Academy, housed in the same building.
One of the new programs at the middle school is the pilot of an Advanced Spanish course, designed to accommodate students who have graduated the dual-language Caminantes program in the Amherst schools. Caminantes only extends through Amherst’s sixth grade.
Juan Rodriguez, the middle school principal, said 15 seats are reserved for former Caminantes students, with the remaining 10 seats for students from Amherst, Pelham, Leverett and Shutesbury who already have the necessary skills in Spanish. The school is in the final stages of filling the roster, with that class to begin soon.
Rodriguez described “palpable energy” throughout the building. He added that the middle school is close to being at full capacity of teaching staff for supporting students as well as possible, with two teachers and two paraeducators awaiting hire.
Rodriguez said the middle school is continuing the “Joy and Justice in Education” program through the Collaborative for Educational Services in Northampton. That is designed to bring equity-centered practices to the school.
Improvements are also being sought after looking at i-Ready and MCAS scores for students, with the aim of what he called strategic interventions for academic acceleration.
“While we were above the state average on those indicators, it’s not good enough,” Rodriguez said.
The one letdown for the new school year is that the funding for the after school VELA scholars program was not renewed.
But the middle school intends to build on progress from last year, when it reestablished a school council and remains in the midst of a school improvement program.
The other secondary school in Amherst is Summit Academy, the public day school that is housed within the high school. There are 28 students enrolled there.
The district is still seeking an interim principal to lead the school after Diane Chamberlain left after a year in the role for a position at Amethyst Brook School.
Tom Simon, new director of Student Services for the district, said he’s in the final stages of hiring that principal.
