The Newton Public Schools Teaching and Learning Department is launching a new, tiered model for middle school parent-teacher conferences this school year, it announced at a Newton School Committee meeting on Monday.
“This proposal here is a tiered response to a conference schedule that, at the core, does increase what all families receive from us mid-year,” said Maria Kolbe, Newton Public Schools (NPS) director of multi-tiered systems of support.
NPS doesn’t budget any after-hours time for teachers to conduct parent-teacher conferences, so teachers in Newton have been spending “team time,” preparatory blocks designed for meetings with other teachers, on conferences. As a result, teachers are unable to hold typical meetings with their colleagues in the first six weeks of each calendar year, Superintendent Anna Nolin said.
“Right now, six weeks of team time for teachers to plan, prep, and intervene and design instruction is taken over by the conference schedule,” Nolin said.
The start of the calendar year is also the time at which teachers obtain mid-year assessment data about their students, administrators said. And since conferences supplant “team time” during this period, teachers are delayed in implementing that data into their classrooms. Adjusting the conference schedule will resolve this issue, said Gene Roundtree, NPS assistant superintendent of secondary education and special programs.
“The idea that we will be gaining six weeks of collaborative time means that when we get our winter assessment results, our teachers are going to have a lot more time to work together to interpret those results and then make the instructional adjustments that will accelerate growth to a better degree,” Roundtree said.
The plan is broken up into three tiers. Under the first, “universal” tier, all caregivers will get the chance for a conference in the fall, rather than the winter. In addition, families will receive regular progress reports and a new mid-year report addendum. Teachers and students will work in conjunction to create the addendum, which will include further details about the student’s progress.
Caregivers of children in the second, “targeted support” tier of needs will also have the chance for an individual mid-year conference with their child. For families in the third “intensive support” tier, Roundtree said that teachers will be able to offer even more interaction.
“For our students where the instructional evidence indicates that we need more intervention, we would be able to prioritize communication with those families,” Roundtree said.
For Ward Five Member Emily Prenner, past parent-teacher conferences have felt awkward and unproductive.
“The middle school conferences are like speed dating,” Prenner said. “So I’m happy to hear that we’re making this change. It makes sense to me.”
Nolin reassured families that the district will remain engaged in family outreach, despite the changes.
“It’s not, ‘We’re not talking to parents,’” Nolin said. “We’re substituting this model while we try something with our families and in our staff, and we’ll take notes and survey data and see how it went.”