Duxbury School Committee Advances Alden School Feasibility Study
Top Priority in $3.2 Million Capital Budget Request
DUXBURY - October 8 - The Duxbury School Committee is positioning itself for a critical vote next month on a $3.175 million capital budget request for fiscal year 2027, with a feasibility study for Alden Elementary School emerging as the centerpiece of the proposal and sparking significant discussion about funding mechanisms and community engagement.
The Full Story
The October 8 meeting of the Duxbury School Committee covered substantial ground across multiple policy areas, but the evening’s most consequential discussion centered on the district’s fiscal year 2027 capital budget priorities and how the community should approach the next phase of planning for the aging Alden Elementary School building.
The committee is advancing a prioritized capital request totaling $3.175 million, representing just 45 percent of the school department’s actual identified needs, which total $6.9 million. The prioritized request includes several major items: a feasibility study for Alden Elementary School, HVAC system repairs including exhaust fan replacements at Chandler Elementary, an elementary math curriculum that was previously requested but not funded, staff laptop replacements, the third year of a four-year Chromebook lease, and continued roof repairs across district buildings.
The Alden feasibility study request proved to be the most complex item on the capital agenda. Superintendent Dr. Danielle Klingaman explained that Duxbury was accepted into the Massachusetts School Building Authority eligibility phase in 2024, a highly competitive process in which only 22 of 119 applicants were selected. Of those 22 districts, six have already committed funding for their feasibility studies.
What emerged during the discussion was a fundamental disagreement about how the feasibility study should be funded. Dr. Klingaman reported that preliminary conversations with town administration suggested the feasibility study be funded through a debt exclusion, which would require both town meeting approval and a ballot question, temporarily raising residents’ taxes. However, research presented to the committee showed that Duxbury has historically funded feasibility studies through town funds—either by raising, appropriating, borrowing, or transferring from available funds—and that this approach has been standard practice in other Massachusetts communities.
School Committee member Matt Gambino expressed strong concern about the debt exclusion approach, stating he believed the Selectboard may not be aware of this recommendation. “I listen to their meetings. This hasn’t been brought up in one of their meetings,” Gambino noted. “It seems to me that this has been brought up in private meetings involving the finance director and the town manager.”
Dr. Klingaman emphasized that requiring a debt exclusion for the feasibility study would be unprecedented and potentially signal that the town does not support addressing Alden School’s needs. “I couldn’t find one example of a town that did not fund a feasibility study with town funds,” she reported. “I couldn’t find one example of a town that required the school department to go through a debt exclusion.”
The committee determined that school committee leadership, along with Alden School Building Committee Chair Jon Lemieux, should appear before the select board as soon as possible to clarify the funding mechanism question. Committee member Laurel Deacon noted the importance of this clarification, saying, “if we vote to include this in our capital requests without...I mean, we can do that, but if that information comes as like a surprise to people or isn’t unpacked before that, I think that is probably not in the best interests of the overarching goal.”
The broader capital request includes several items addressing infrastructure needs that Director of Facilities Katie St. Clair characterized as pressing. The roof repair request addresses deteriorating insulation that has been discovered during inspections, necessitating moving certain repairs ahead of schedule. The exhaust fan replacement at Chandler Elementary addresses a situation where only 18 of 60 exhaust fans are currently functional, forcing other HVAC equipment to work significantly harder and potentially shortening the lifespan of systems, some of which date to the building’s 1968 construction.
Chief Technology Officer Mike Woodford explained that staff laptop computers are approaching six years old and will soon be unable to receive critical security updates or operating system updates. “Generally, the accepted life cycle for end-user workstations is three to five years,” Woodford noted, adding that the district has tried to extend the lifespan as long as responsibly possible.
The elementary math curriculum request represents a continuation of efforts to bring Illustrative Math to the high school level, building on existing implementation in middle school and Algebra I courses. Assistant Superintendent Dr. Beth Wilcox emphasized that this aligns with the district’s strategic plan goal of building curriculum coherence across grade levels. Committee member Kathryn Marshall raised questions about the necessity of the investment given the high school’s strong MCAS math performance, asking, “if it’s not broke, do we fix it?” Dr. Wilcox responded by emphasizing the importance of vertical alignment and continuous improvement, even when current performance is strong.
Beyond capital planning, the committee received updates on several other significant initiatives. Principal Jennifer Cotton-Herman presented a substantially revised International and Domestic Travel Handbook for Duxbury High School, addressing feedback that the previous version had become repetitive and organizationally confusing over years of ad hoc additions. The revised handbook clarifies eligibility requirements for students, enhances training expectations for chaperones, and provides detailed supervision protocols. Importantly, it adds a requirement that trip leaders appear before the school committee to present their proposed trips, rather than having such approvals occur on consent agendas.
The committee also received a detailed check-in on the school cell phone policy, now in its second year of implementation. Principal Cotton-Herman reported that 88 percent of faculty feel students are more engaged in class due to the policy, essentially unchanged from last year’s 87 percent. However, the percentage of faculty who feel enforcement is getting easier increased significantly, suggesting the policy is becoming more normalized and routine.
Student representatives Addie and Gerard presented survey results showing a notable shift in student attitudes. While 76.1 percent of students disagreed with the policy last year, that figure dropped to 57.5 percent this year. Additionally, the percentage of students who are neutral about the policy increased from 15 percent to 24.7 percent. Gerard noted that students should appreciate that Duxbury’s policy is more lenient than many districts that have implemented bell-to-bell bans with locked pouches.
Principal Cotton-Herman did survey faculty about potential support for a bell-to-bell policy, finding majority support but also compelling arguments on both sides. Those in favor cited the daily enforcement burden and concerns about students being on phones during lunch and passing periods. Those opposed argued that the current policy accomplishes the goal of minimizing classroom distractions while allowing students to begin developing self-regulation skills and accommodating legitimate real-world needs like communicating with parents or employers.
In what School Committee Chair Kellie Bresnehan characterized as impressively efficient work, committee member Matt Gambino presented a comprehensive policy maintenance and tracking system that addresses multiple school committee goals ahead of schedule. Gambino developed a master spreadsheet categorizing all 280-plus district policies by priority level (high, medium, or low) based on when they were last updated, strategic alignment with committee and superintendent goals, and whether the Massachusetts Association of School Committees has issued recent updates.
The system assigns high priority to policies not reviewed in over five years or with unrecorded review dates, medium priority to policies reviewed in the last three to five years, and low priority to those reviewed within the past two years. A separate column flags policies for which MASC has issued updates, with those marked as critical if they include compliance deadlines. The committee unanimously approved this framework, accomplishing a goal originally targeted for June 2026 eight months ahead of schedule.
Gambino also proposed consolidating all district policies from separate PDFs into a single, searchable master document that would be easier to navigate and would be compatible with screen readers for accessibility purposes. “This is an education institution. One of the expectations is that we have to be sensitive to students with disabilities who may need screen readers and stuff like that. You can’t do that if you’re reading our policies,” Gambino explained. The committee directed the superintendent to implement this change at her office’s convenience.
The committee also formally endorsed the timeline and community engagement plan for developing the district’s 2026-2029 strategic plan, which will include multiple stakeholder focus groups through the school year, with recommendations expected to be finalized by April 2026.
In her principal reports, Cotton-Herman celebrated outstanding MCAS results from the 2023-2024 school year. Duxbury High School’s tenth graders ranked seventh in the state on the ELA MCAS (fourth among public schools only) and second on the math MCAS (first among public schools only). Ninth graders ranked 22nd in science MCAS performance. The district also announced it received the Boston Globe Award for the state’s “winningest school” with a 73 percent win percentage in athletics.
Middle school and elementary schools reported successful starts to the year, with elementary schools having completed their first knowledge units in the new Core Knowledge Language Arts curriculum and middle school teams conducting off-campus bonding experiences including trips to Tree Tops, the planetarium, and Hale Reservation. The high school’s homecoming dance drew over 600 students, with Principal Cotton-Herman noting the event required numerous cupcakes donated by PTO volunteers, so many that some had to be taken home afterward.
Finally, the committee approved the superintendent’s goals for the 2025-2026 school year after several rounds of feedback and alignment with the district strategic plan and superintendent evaluation rubric. The goals focus on instructional leadership, management and operations, family and community engagement, and professional culture.
The committee scheduled its next meeting for October 22, when it will review school improvement plans, FY26 budget impact analysis, enrollment and class size data, and beginning-of-year student data updates. The committee is expected to vote on the capital budget priorities at its November 5 meeting, ahead of a November 12 presentation to the town’s Fiscal Advisory Committee.
Why It Matters
The capital budget discussion and particularly the Alden feasibility study funding mechanism represents a critical juncture for Duxbury schools and taxpayers. How the feasibility study is funded—through traditional town funds or through a debt exclusion requiring a ballot question—could significantly impact whether the project moves forward and shapes how the community ultimately addresses the infrastructure needs at Alden Elementary School. The approach taken will also set precedent for how major school capital projects are advanced in the future. Meanwhile, the comprehensive policy tracking system and cell phone policy updates demonstrate the committee’s focus on operational excellence and creating learning environments that support student engagement and success. For families with students at Duxbury schools, these decisions will affect educational facilities, instructional resources, and daily school experiences for years to come.
Meeting Minutes
Key Motions & Votes
Motion: Approve consent agenda including meeting minutes from September 17, account payable warrants 13 and 14, and surplus inventory. Outcome: Approved. Vote: Unanimous. (Timestamp: 00:35:58)
Motion: Approve the policy prioritization review schedule as presented. Outcome: Approved. Vote: Unanimous. (Timestamp: 02:23:02)
Motion: Direct the superintendent to replace the individual PDF policy system with a single policy document at a time convenient for her office. Outcome: Approved. Vote: Unanimous. (Timestamp: 02:27:18)
Motion: Formally endorse the 2026-2029 strategic plan engagement plan as presented. Outcome: Approved. Vote: Unanimous. (Timestamp: 02:31:09)
Motion: Approve the superintendent goals for 2025-2026. Outcome: Approved. Vote: Unanimous. (Timestamp: 02:38:05)
Public Comment
No public comments were made during the designated public comment period at the beginning of the meeting.
What’s Next
The school committee will meet with the select board as soon as possible to clarify the funding mechanism for the Alden School feasibility study. The Policy Subcommittee will meet to develop a charge for the newly formed Superintendent Evaluation Subcommittee. The committee will vote on the FY27 capital budget priorities at its November 5 meeting, followed by a presentation to the Fiscal Advisory Committee on November 12. A budget workshop is scheduled for October 17 at 11:00 a.m., which will include a strategic plan focus group for school committee members. The next regular school committee meeting is scheduled for October 22, when the committee will review school improvement plans, FY26 budget impact data, district enrollment and class size information, and beginning-of-year student data updates.