School Supt. to be Evaluated by School Committee

Evaluation First in Three Years

– Allison Goldsberry

School Superintendent Roy Belson will receive a formal evaluation by the School Committee, the first in three years for the superintendent.

The evaluation follows an inquiry made by the Medford Transcript that revealed Belson had not been evaluated since 2005. A formal evaluation by the School Committee is required by Belson’s contract, which is renewed annually.

Belson will be evaluated in several different areas including personal characteristics, educational leadership, management, and his relationships with his staff, the School Committee, parents, and the community.

He will be rated on a scale from one to five, with five as the highest rating, in such things as honesty, enthusiasm, vision, knowledge, and communication.

Belson, a former teacher, has been the School Superintendent in Medford for over a decade.

SPED Director Calls for More Inclusion; Full-Time Adjustment Counselors

Pupil Services Director Beverly Shea, new to the job this year, has made a point to meet with special education teachers in each school, and she has found that special education students need to spend more time with their regular education peers.

Shea said some special education students will benefit from a more inclusive education model, and she is working with school principals to make that happen next year.

“I discovered that while the district offers ample opportunity for special ed. students to receive instruction in small, pull-out classes, by contrast, while some opportunities for these students to be educated in an inclusive setting do exist, particularly at the middle school level, these opportunities are relatively limited in the district at the present time,” wrote Shea in a report for the School Committee.

Shea has begun working with Andrews Middle School principal Tim Blake on an inclusion plan for that school, and some practices are already in place.

Shea also called for full-time adjustment counselors in her report in an effort to improve mental health services at the schools and to save the district more than $100,000. The district currently uses part-time counselors, a practice Shea says leads to inconsistent care.

Medford’s Pupil Services Department is scheduled for review by the State Department of Education, and DOE officials will visit the schools sometime in June.