ActonTV-School District partnership may be on the horizon as district seeks to expand career pathway exploration for students
The School Committee has given the green light to Superintendent of Schools, Peter Light, to explore potential plans with ActonTV to relocate their facility to Acton-Boxborough Regional High School. The Committee unanimously endorsed the potential move. “We are still very early in the discussion,” said Light. “There’s a real opportunity here to improve programming for our students and provide a real service to the community.”
ActonTV’s Executive Director, Marc Duci, told the Acton Exchange that “there would be a cost savings for us as our current lease has become unaffordable. We would also develop a closer partnership with the school and would be able to work with students, giving them real world experience while they would potentially help out on ActonTV productions. I feel it would be a win-win for ActonTV and the School District.”
ActonTV’s lease is up in June of 2027.
Duci, who attended the November 6 meeting, told the School Committee that the move would require modifications to the media production suite at the High School, as the overall square footage at the High School is smaller than what ActonTV currently has at their studio.
According to Duci, ActonTV was originally located at the High School but left in 2010 and built a temporary studio on Knox Trail in Acton before relocating in 2012 to their current home on Craig Road.
The potential move is happening as the state beefs up requirements for Massachusetts school districts to increase awareness of middle school career pathway exploration.
The School Committee unanimously approved a new policy on November 6 that aligns with the new state regulations by documenting how the District will make middle school students aware of the alternative career technical educational (CTE) and agricultural pathways available to them and support students through the application and admission process. The policy takes effect in the 2026-27 school year.
Acton-Boxborough Deputy Superintendent Andrew Shen told the School Committee at their October 23 business meeting that “the policy doesn’t require any change in our practice in terms of partnering with Minuteman Regional Vocational Technical High School which presents annually at the junior high and provides middle school students with opportunities to participate in tours of Minuteman during the school day.” Shen also shared that R.J. Grey Junior High School has a longstanding practice of offering engineering workshops as exploratory courses in grades seven and eight.
School Committee Member Lakshmi Kaja expressed concern that enrollment in vocational programs ultimately draws revenue away from the school district and asked about bringing similar programs in-house. Superintendent of Schools Peter Light responded, “The high school principal, Joanie Dean, and I have talked about this extensively. We can’t, by state statute, start any programs that compete with Minuteman’s programs, but we’ve been working with ActonTV behind the scenes to look at bringing them back into the high school to reinvent a media communications program that would offer mutual benefit to the community and schools and expand hands-on opportunities for students. We are trying to be strategic about how we can do this given the resources that we have.”
Budget subcommittee to recommend a 2026-27 budget increase that will require 2m in cuts
School Committee Member Adam Klein, who is currently serving as the Budget Subcommittee chair, revealed that the Subcommittee plans to bring forward a recommendation to increase the 2026-27 operating budget by between 3.75 and 4.25 percent.
Klein emphasized that an increase of that magnitude would require the District to make about $2 million dollars in reductions from a level services budget. “This is the highest reduction we’ve had in the past few years,” Klein said. “The Budget Subcommittee understands this means there will be significant cuts and would like the District to articulate what that impact might look like.”
The School Committee is scheduled to vote on their budget guidelines at their November 20 business meeting.
Facilities department updates School Committee on current and planned capital projects
Capital Projects Infrastructure Manager Brendan Hearn and Facilities Coordinator Marc Hamel presented their annual District update on current and planned capital projects. Hearn reported that the Facilities Department has so far completed about half of the planned projects for 2025-26 including replacement of rooftop HVAC (heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) units at the Parker-Damon building, patching of degraded asphalt surfaces at three buildings, and installing a mini-depot EV (electric vehicle) charging station at the high school. Other projects at the Junior High School and Blanchard Elementary School are underway.
Another big, long-overdue project scheduled to begin this year is the replacement of eleven, gas-fired, 1998 rooftop HVAC units at the High School with all-electric units. The project, which was deferred from FY25, was awarded a $500K grant in September from the state’s Department of Energy Resources’ Green Communities Program.
Hearn reported that the initial phase of the project, which is anticipated to cost $2.2m, will be funded through a capital revolving account set up in 2018 to stabilize funding for large-scale, high cost, future capital projects outside of the District’s annual operating budget allocation.
Hearn told the School Committee that the total cost of the long-overdue, multiphase project is estimated at $4.4 million, an amount that requires that the District hire an Owner’s Project Manager (OPM). State law requires that entities hire an OPM for public building projects that are estimated to meet or exceed a cost threshold of $1.5 million.
Hearn voiced concern regarding funding for subsequent phases of this project. “The project costs greatly exceed the amount of money available, so while for FY27 we expect to be in good shape, in FY28 and beyond, it may be time to consider bonding or other options for securing funding for projects.” School Committee Member Adam Klein proposed that the Facilities Department and Capital Subcommittee engage with the Towns and Finance Committees and start to develop a proposal on how to address both urgent and long-term capital needs.
Other high priority projects planned for FY27 funded through the District’s operating budget include resurfacing asphalt surfaces behind Blanchard Memorial Elementary School in Boxborough, which carries an estimated cost of $100,000, and exploring repair or replacement of the High School bleachers in the Regan Gym. “While we don’t think there’s a safety issue, we want to further evaluate our options,” Hearn said. The cost to replace the bleachers is estimated at $300,000.
Also on the docket in FY27 is an engineering study for a bus depot for the District with capacity to house Acton-Boxborough’s entire bus fleet. Hearn reported that “currently half of our fleet is housed at the Conant Elementary School and half on leased property elsewhere in town.” Hearn told the Committee that a dedicated bus depot would provide the District with opportunities for additional electrification as the District awaits the delivery of four electric school buses. The District was awarded $1.7 million in grants last year from the state and federal Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program for electric school buses.
The Facilities Department is requesting an FY27 budget allocation of $1 million to address projects planned for next year.
Good and bad news on state accountability measures
Assistant Superintendent for Teaching and Learning Gabby Abrams presented the School Committee with a detailed overview of the accountability ratings that were released by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education this fall.
The state grounds its rating in a complex algorithm that takes into account overall student performance and year-to-year growth on MCAS exams and other criteria that include high school graduation rates, rates of completion of advanced coursework at the high school level, student progress toward attaining English language proficiency, and chronic absenteeism.
Abrams reported that the School District received an overall rating of 88 percent that indicates that the district is meeting or exceeding targets set by the state. Abrams told the Committee that “this is a very high rating reflecting really good progress across the District.”
Results on the MCAS mathematics exam were strong across grades, with high participation rates and growth scores that are approaching a return to pre-pandemic levels.
The number of advanced placement (AP) exams at the High School continues to climb with 1,672 exams taken in 2025, 96 percent of which had passing scores of three, four or five. Superintendent of Schools, Peter Light, attributed the increase to the course deleveling initiative at the high school which expands opportunities for more students to access higher level coursework. “We opened up a pathway for ninth graders a few years ago to start taking AP courses and ended up with a large number of students taking the AP Environmental Science exam,” Light said.
Results on the MCAS English Language Arts exam elicited concern as the number of students across grade levels who are not meeting or are only partially meeting expectations grew, with third graders showing a consistent and precipitous decline between 2019 and 2025. Abrams noted that only “58 percent of Acton-Boxborough’s third graders in 2025 met or exceeded expectations.” In 2019 that percentage was 79 percent. “There is quite a range of outcomes across our six elementary schools, but the average is 58 percent, and we really want to stop that trajectory and look at opportunities to improve outcomes for students,” Abrams said.
Results for high needs students are also an area of concern. “Subgroup gaps persist, especially for our students with disabilities and for our low-income students,” Abrams continued. “We are seeing a heavier dip than what we would feel comfortable with, and really want to see those gaps close.”
Abrams told the School Committee that she is tracking an important data point called “student growth percentiles” (SGP) which measures the rate at which individual students and subgroups progress each year compared to other students statewide with similar achievement levels. Abrams explained that an SGP score of fifty represents typical growth, but “we’d like to see numbers higher than fifty, especially for higher-needs students because if students are behind grade level, we want to see them accelerating at a rate faster than some of their peers; otherwise, they won’t catch up.”
To make that happen, Abrams told the Committee that the District is offering more opportunities for reading intervention and is applying for a grant from the state’s Department of Education to fund high dosage tutoring. “Our work to strengthen classroom instruction and provide more intensive supports where we can will also help. I think it’s multifaceted. We are looking at how we are supporting these kids. Let’s find those kids with the lowest scores and use the information we have more powerfully. We’re doing the right work. It’s just going to take time.”
School Committee members praised Abrams for her thorough, accessible, transparent presentation of complex data. “I am trying to humanize the data especially for educators,” Abrams said. “Children are not numbers, but numbers play a part in helping us chart a path for students and help us know where their strengths and assets are and where their areas of opportunity lie. They illuminate a path for us, and we need to take that seriously to help inform our practice.”
Diane Baum is the School Committee beat reporter for the Acton Exchange. She served on the Acton-Boxborough Regional School Committee from 2015 to 2021.
