School Committee in brief: Updates on WPS’s special education program, Valor School 

Interim Assistant Superintendent for Special Education and Student Services Lisa Kingsley presented findings from the March 18 professional development day for K-12 special education teachers to the School Committee at its April 15 meeting. 

Kingsley said staff identified common priorities and goals during exercises held as part of the professional development day. 

More specifically, staff members identified helping students manage their emotions as well as develop planning and organizing skills as priorities. 

Staff members also said the school needs to better help students through the challenges that arise during the transition from elementary to middle school. “There are new unspoken and spoken rules when you’re moving between buildings and between levels … Waltham is not alone in that,” Kingsley said. 

Kingsley said the special education department will create norms for individualized treatment so that students will receive appropriate levels of care depending on their needs, a move prompted by the feedback she heard from staff. 

Presentation addresses questions, concerns about Valor School

Mayor Jeannette A. McCarthy and school faculty earlier this month raised concerns about the student selection process for Valor School, the city’s competency-based, flexible public high school.

In response, Assistant Superintendent Shannon Conley gave the School Committee an overview of the admission process. 

Conley said there is a lengthy admissions process for WHS students seeking to attend Valor. The process includes a student application, a home visit and an “empathy interview” to determine whether the student could commit to Valor’s requirements. Conley said because Valor’s enrollment is capped at 55, extra care is taken to make sure students are not enrolling hastily and taking spots from others who are more prepared for the program.

According to Conley, enrollment happens during three specific windows: August, the end of October and the end of the second quarter. Conley also said WHS staff have access to the number of vacancies at Valor and are able to refer students. 

She noted that Valor is only in its second year of operation and that staff members are still building guidelines and procedures suited to the school’s student population.