The Everett School Committee voted 9-0 on Tuesday, September 8 to approve the Educational Program the district will submit to the Massachusetts School Building Authority for a new Everett High School, the first formal description of what the city wants the building to hold. The 132-page document, presented by Assistant Superintendent Margaret Adams and Director of Capital Planning Colleen Mejia, is deliberately silent on where the school would go. “The Educational Plan is not related to potential sites or building plans for a new high school,” the minutes note.
What the plan asks for
Everett High “currently serves over 2,054 students in grades 9-12,” the document says, in a building where classes have spilled into rooms never designed for teaching. The program sizes the new school on an average class of 23, with 15 for English learners and 12 for small-group special education, and keeps the two-day, four-block schedule. It calls for grades organized by floor with departments stacked vertically, a main office with a family welcome center and security office, a library with a recording and podcast studio, a partitionable gym “ideally with a track,” a cafeteria built for four lunches of about 700 students with six to eight serving lines, and a double-entry vestibule, an electronic student pass system and “lockable bathrooms with vaping detection.”
The biggest change is in career and technical education. Everett now runs seven Chapter 74 programs, with carpentry, health assisting and medical assisting counted double. The plan lists 13 more: automotive technology, biotechnology, cosmetology, dental assisting, design and visual communications, early education and care, electrical, engineering and technology, environmental science technology, HVAC and refrigeration, multimedia and broadcasting, plumbing and public safety. The hospitality management program is being phased out at the end of this school year, and the law and government pathway is giving way to public safety.
The document also records that EHS signed direct-admission agreements with Worcester State and Salem State universities last spring and is building an Early College partnership with Worcester State, with two pilot courses for seniors this year and a formal program planned for 2027-28. Robin Babcock and Joanna Garren praised the plan as thorough and well planned.
The cyberattack
Chairperson Samantha Hurley opened by reading an amended agenda: an executive session had been added under the Open Meeting Law’s emergency provision “arising from a cybersecurity incident experienced by the City” over Labor Day weekend. Superintendent William Hart brought up the district’s chief information security officer, David Wright, who said the incident “did not impact any Everett Public Schools systems or networks, nor did it disrupt its schedule or operations.” Hart credited three years of investment in the schools’ separate IT infrastructure under Chief Technology Officer Joe Patuto. The committee then went behind closed doors at 7:31 p.m. with school committee attorney Robert Galvin and attorneys Janet Barringer and Alexandra Held of Freeman Mathis and Gary to discuss the incident and “deployment of security measures taken which cannot be made public,” along with two lawsuits: DiCicco v. Everett Public Schools and Mimms and Bond v. Everett School Committee and Everett Public Schools.
Grants and policy
All on 9-0 votes, the committee accepted $882,500 from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for high-dosage tutoring, a six-month $110,000 addendum from the Barr Foundation, $67,268 and $17,670 from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center for CTE and STEM, $49,099 for coordinated family and community engagement, $42,000 under McKinney-Vento for homeless students and $35,000 for CTE frameworks. Jeanne Cristiano said the district has now secured more than $3 million in grants for the year. The committee adopted the district’s PROTECT Act policy, implementing the new state law under which civil arrests, including federal immigration enforcement, are not allowed on school grounds during school hours, pickup and dropoff, and school events without a judicial warrant or order; the policy names a point of contact at each school, requires parents to be notified if agents ask for a student, and makes the procedures the district’s written emergency response plan. The committee postponed both student handbooks to September 21. It approved travel for the EHS winter percussion ensemble to Toms River, N.J., in March and Dayton, Ohio, in April.
Also September 8
- Full-day pre-kindergarten, the district’s first, started Wednesday, September 9 at the Webster Extension, with state Secretary of Education Stephen Zrike attending.
- Schools observed a statewide moment of silence at 8:46 a.m. on Friday, September 11, the 25th anniversary of the attacks. Hart recalled Everett residents James and Mary Trentini, both of whom worked in education, who were aboard Flight 11.
- Joseph LaMonica was absent. The football team opened its season September 11.
Previous School Committee meeting (September 1): Everett Schools Open the Year With $651,950 More in State Aid, $937,000 in Grants and a Green Light for Eighth Graders to Play High School Sports
