Teachers and parents urge committee to press administration on Claremont/Woodland dual-language redesign; item recommitted

A group of teachers, parents and community members told the School Committee the district'led redesign work at Claremont and Woodland needs stronger administrative follow-through and support for dual-language programming. "We asked ourselves, what if we designed around our students and who they actually are?" said Liz Lytle, a Claremont Academy teacher and co'chair of the redesign steering committee, who described more than a year of community engagement and more than 500 pages of input.

Monica Chavarria, a Claremont Spanish teacher and world-language department head, told the committee the dual-language pathway should be allowed to continue and scale so students do not lose their home language and so the district can link elementary dual-language instruction to secondary offerings. Committee member Mailman said the administration'provided response missed the point and moved to resubmit the item for fuller answers about dual-language expansion; the committee voted to recommit GB6-23 for additional information and follow-up. (Note: a separate public commenter later in the record used a different spoken name; the committee record contains inconsistent speaker labeling for that testimony, so the district follow-up should clarify the speakers and responses.)