Littleton School Committee seats Finance Committee representative, defers calendar vote

LITTLETON -- February 8, 2024, Littleton School Committee unanimously seats a new Finance Committee representative and punts a contested school calendar to its next meeting. The board voted 5-0 at its February 8 meeting to appoint Mike Prue, a pharmaceutical industry consultant and former Parks and Recreation Commission chair, to the School Committee's Finance Committee seat, replacing Tyler Gray, whose term had lapsed in May 2023. The bulk of the meeting was consumed by debate over whether to shift three professional development half-days and both conference days from Wednesdays to Fridays in the proposed 2024-2025 calendar; attendance data presented by Director of Teaching and Learning Beth Steele showed average student absences of 184 on prior-year early-release Fridays versus 109 on Wednesdays. LEA President Kelly Hart warned during public comment that a Friday conference day "sends the message that conferences don't mean as much," and that educators are not at peak learning capacity on Friday afternoons after a full week of teaching. The committee also heard first-year updates on social-emotional learning programs at both the middle school, a homegrown advisory curriculum called Connections, and the high school, which is piloting the national CharacterStrong curriculum in its first year of full implementation.