Letter of Opinion from some Dale Street School Staff...

Dear Voting Members of Our Medfield Community:

We are writing to express our support for the new elementary school to be built at the Wheelock campus.

Over the past three years, in addition to teaching your children, we have put our heart and soul into planning The New School. The architects hired for the project, Arrowstreet, held meetings for every department within the school on numerous occasions, including teachers, custodial staff, food services, specialists, guidance, office staff, etc. Arrowstreet listened and designed an incredible building that came directly from our brainstorm sessions. We are grateful for that. We are excited about the Wheelock campus and the future opportunities that it holds.

The new elementary school at the Wheelock campus is a place where twenty-first century learning and progressive education can blossom. It was designed for Medfield students, and created by the educators who work with them every single day. In constant collaboration with Arrowstreet, we designed a new school that has state of the art facilities, STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math) classrooms, flexible seating options, PBL (Project-Based Learning) areas, breakout rooms, classes clustered together so that teachers can best support students, enough classrooms for every teacher to have his or her own, and SO much more. If this project continues on the path voted on unanimously by the School Building Committee, the Medfield School Committee, and the Medfield Board of Selectmen, it will without a doubt be life changing for students and educators and it will continue to make Medfield a first-rate school system.

As educators, we support this specific location because we firmly believe it offers important educational benefits. We see firsthand the unease students display with the transition to three different school campuses from PreK-5. A new school built on the Wheelock campus offers a smoother transition between grades (2-5), will help ease the hardships of constant transitioning, and makes travel between schools easier for families and shared staff. A new school on the Wheelock site provides accommodations for the different needs of the many learning styles that students come to school with each day.

As you may imagine, it is complicated for teachers in different buildings to communicate with one another and for shared staff to travel from building to building. At the Wheelock campus, shared staff can walk from building to building and no longer rush across town to get to a class or support students. Special Education teachers can coordinate services with specialists and instruction will be more cohesive. Instead of being choppy, programs for interventions will be seamless at a 2-5 campus. This consistency will positively impact student growth. More benefits are that teachers across four grade levels can easily consult with one another, share resources between libraries, and create learning opportunities for older students to help mentor younger students. The bottom line is that there will be more opportunity for face to face collaboration and communication as opposed to the disconnect we find in our current setup.

Another benefit of the Wheelock site is the various opportunities for outdoor learning. We spent much of this school year adapting our teaching to utilize outdoor spaces. These lessons align with our Massachusetts Science and Technology Curriculum Framework domains in Animal Science/Ecosystems, Earth’s Systems, and Earth and Human Activity. Currently, we still face spatial demand challenges with such a large school population. We find outdoor education and project based learning to be at the forefront of our pedagogy. These are incredibly valuable hands-on experiences that impact the collaboration between students and staff, and something we only hope to expand upon in the future. The larger site at the Wheelock campus provides opportunities for outdoor classrooms to be more frequently utilized, space for students to set up composters, participation with the Victory Garden, and a walking path to use as students and staff employ our grant funded Walking Classrooms. If the new school is built on the Dale Street campus, we will have minimal open space. There are no, nor will there be, walking paths or outdoor learning classrooms for students, and there will be limited fields surrounding the school. An advantage to living in a beautiful town like Medfield is the opportunity for kids to learn science directly from nature. The Wheelock site provides this experience for students.

As a grade 2-5 campus, Wheelock students will also benefit from many of the academic advantages that the building has to offer. For example, students will utilize the outdoor classrooms, walking paths, new gymnasium, new stage, new music room, breakout rooms for occupational therapy and other state of the art facilities. Creating a campus that supports children in grades 2-5 will positively impact students, teachers, and shared staff. It will be a wonderful place to learn and to teach.

It is important to consider, if the new school is built on the Dale campus, many students and staff will be learning and teaching out of trailers or modular classrooms for a minimum of eighteen months. Learning and teaching out of trailers poses safety risks for students and staff as they will be learning and teaching in the middle of a construction site. It’s also important to think about the fact that the students that will spend fourth and fifth grade learning in a trailer are the same students who have had to deal with remote learning during COVID. In addition to all of the educational benefits, building the new school at the Wheelock campus eliminates having to teach and learn in trailers.

The Town of Medfield is fortunate to have the support of the MSBA. If the new school at the Wheelock site is not approved, the process to build a new school will be significantly delayed. This delay will last several years, depending on where the MSBA would put our project in their queue. To think about Medfield children missing out on the educational benefits of the Wheelock campus is devastating.

In our educational opinion, building the new elementary school at the Wheelock campus is what’s best for our students. Kids deserve this school. Let’s make it happen.

Respectfully Signed,
Eileen Callahan,Grade 4 Special Education Teacher-Medfield Resident
Kiersten Cole, Library Aide-Medfield Resident
Margot Hayes, Grade 4 Teacher-Medfield Resident
Megan Infantino, Office Staff - Medfield Resident
Sara Isaacson. Grade 4 Teacher-Medfield Resident
Michelle Maganello-Medfield Resident
Andrea Morello, Teaching Assistant-Medfield Resident
Jessica Mulligan, Occupational Therapist - Medfield Resident
Kathleen Nee, Teaching Assistant 4th grade-Medfield Resident
Paige Slachta, Grade 4 Teacher-Medfield Resident
Karin Hauptman Behavior Technician- Medfield Resident
Kathleen Thompson, Dale School Nurse and Nurse Leader for district-Medfield Resident
Maria DellaMonica, World Language Teacher, Medfield Resident
Chris Wilson, Custodian -Medfield Resident
Kristen LeVangie,World Language Teacher - Medfield Resident
Joe Ahern, Technology Specialist
Nick Bailey, Custodian
Kathy Boudreau, Kitchen Manager
Rico Cajuste-Technology Specialist, Memorial, Dale Street, and Wheelock
Christy Callahan, Reading Specialist
Nichole Campbell Occupational Therapist
Kelly Chamblin, Grade 5 Teacher
Kate Collins, Teaching Assistant, 4th grade
Theresa Day, Behavior Technician
Christina Delaney, Art Teacher
Ryan Dexter, Music Department
Michael Douglas, Grade 4 Teacher
Leanne DiPesa, Grade 4 Teacher
Shannon Dowd, Grade 4 Teacher
Brenna Evans-Music Department
Suzanne Flynn, Grade 4 Teacher
Anne Gilberti, Teaching Assistant, 4th & 5th grade
Susan Hamilton, Special Education Teacher
Christine Hayes, Grade 5 Teacher
Amanda Johnson, Grade 5 Teacher
Mike Johnson, Custodian
Christina Jones, Nutrition
Mary Laughna, Health Teacher
Shannon MacDonnell, Grade 4 Teacher
Jean Martlin, Teaching Assistant, 4th grade
Kelsey McKenzie, Grade 5 Teacher
Constance Orsogna Muir, Behavior Technician/former Medfield Resident
Mairi Nawrocki, Wellness Department
Erin Nee, Grade 5 Teacher
Sharon O’Brien, Nutrition
Barbara Oxholm, Music Department
Nicole Plympton, Grade 4 Teacher
David Ruggiero, Music Department
Erica Ross, Grade 5 Teacher
Amy Scott, Grade 4 Teacher
Jenn Seaver, Special Education Teacher
Xiaoqing Song, Mandarin Teacher
Elisabeth Strekalovsky, School Psychologist
Marina Sweeney, Library Media Specialist
Anne Marie Tremblay, Music Department
Amanda Tumbleson, Music Department
Dorothy Vancura, Speech-language Pathologist
Lindsey Warner, Guidance Counselor
Edith Wilson, Special Education Teacher