SPRINGFIELD – In an effort to prepare students for their post-graduation livelihoods, the School Committee reviewed updates to the district’s Portrait of a Graduate strategic plan.

Chief Information and Accountability Officer Paul Foster provided an extensive layout of the program via a slideshow presentation. “The Portrait of a Graduate represents Springfield’s community-created vision of what every student in the Springfield Public Schools should know and be able to do by the time they graduate high school,” said Foster.

Foster detailed the process behind the initiative’s development. He explained that the district collaborated with 2,000 members of the community, including students, parents, teachers, administrators and community leaders, starting in Sept. 2019. “We genuinely wanted to hear from the community…We took hundreds of pages of notes and translated that into our Portrait of a Graduate,” said Foster.

The information officer said he and his team concluded on six core tenants from the outreach process. The program’s pillars – learning, communicating, persistence, thriving, leading and working – define skills the district wants each student to possess upon graduating, according to Foster. He also stressed that each of the tenants aren’t strictly developed within schools, with students encouraged to further gain skills through communal endeavors.

Foster shared that a first draft for the Portrait of a Graduate was released in September 2020. The draft was shared with 700 members of the community who advised the project’s development. “Since that time, we’ve been doing a lot of work to make sure the community is aware of the Portrait of a Graduate,” said Foster, who also revealed that the programs will be reinforced through art and writing contests within the school district.

He also laid out a strategic framework to ensure strong student performance. Foster stressed the essential role that community partnerships, student wellbeing, rigorous curriculum, detailed educational assessment and educator success have upon the Portrait of a Graduate program.

“The goal has always been to have students graduating career-ready,” said Foster. The information officer noted that the district will continue to collect feedback on the plan before submitting a final strategic plan in Summer 2022.

Paraprofessionals Call for Livable Wages

The School Committee Public Speak Out period followed a familiar trend, with a majority of the community voices highlighting the paraprofessionals’ unjust wages in the district. The paraprofessional community has advocated throughout the fall’s Public Speak Out periods to advocate for merit pay bonuses and a more suitable collective bargaining deal. “We were in people’s homes on a daily basis when it was against what was recommended to the population of the city and the country,” said Springfield Public Schools Student Engagement Specialist George Blake.

City Councilor At-Large Tracye Whitfield also joined the speak out period to affirm the paraprofessionals’ efforts. “We are at an unprecedented time where we’ve had more funding than we’ve ever had…[paraprofessionals] are a part of the city and do hard work for our children in the City of Springfield. They deserve some type of merit hazard pay,” said Whitfield, who stressed the significance of having a more communicative approach going forward on essential matters.

The School Committee will host their next regular meeting on Dec. 16.