Framingham School Committee Briefs Community on Data Breach, Curriculum Review and Goals for Upcoming Academic Year

FRAMINGHAM - Framinhgam School Superintendent Dr. Robert Tremblay provided various updates during the June 18 School Committee meeting, especially on the notable data breach that affected both staff and students.

Framingham Public Schools (FPS) worked to mitigate the issue and keep consistent communication to families. The overall recommendation was dual-factor authentication, with a significant increase in teacher usage of it. Policy regarding authentication measures will be referred to a subcommittee. 

Student Advisory Chair Debora Da Vitoria of Framingham High School celebrated various updates including playoff participation for boys and girls tennis, along with girls softball and boys lacrosse. The recent Junior Awards Night successfully recognized students for academic, leadership and community achievements; notably, the high school’s Red Cross Club hosted a blood drive collecting 25 units of blood, which could save up to 25 lives. 

Tremblay’s summative evaluation earned him a 3.22 “proficient” rating for the recent school year and was unanimously approved by the School Committee. In the future, Tremblay said he hopes to center conversations around student performance and that the rollout of a robust curriculum should continue.

The superintendent also shared his goals for the upcoming academic year with measurable benchmarks, including combating chronic absenteeism, the use of artificial intellegence (AI) in education and expanding community resources. Tremblay hopes to visit schools to monitor attendance efforts and understand reasons behind absences, introducing checklists to monitor operational needs and to introduce student interventions if neccesary.

“If it's transportation or clothing or concerns about immigration or whatever it may be, we want to be there to leverage our resources that we have in the community to help our children get to school every day,” Tremblay continued.

The School Committee is looking forward to a full roster of bus drivers, optimistic that the transition to hiring in-house bus drivers will improve attendance rates.

The community is also wondering how AI in schools can be best utilized by both students and teachers, with Tremblay hoping to gather feedback from educators. 

The third and final goal was expanding resources such as the Welcome Center and resources like vaccine clinics and clothing accessibility through partnerships with Jewish Family Services and the TJX Companies, both local to Framingham. An aspect of this goal was to change the meeting locations to the Farley Building to improve accessibility measures, maintaining American Sign Language and multilingual options. All three goals were unanimously approved.

“To have alignment and to have support from…labor-management lines is highly unusual in some communities," Tremblay said.

"But it’s standard of doing business in Framingham, and I’m really proud of that…It’s a really exciting time to bring this whole community school concept together."

Finance and Operations Director for FPS Lincoln Lynch said the Farley solar project is in “full swing,” adding that district-wide, fire alarm designs are progressing. Renovations will be done on individual schools including Hemenway Elementary School, Walsh Middle School and Juniper Hill BLOCKS Preschool. He reported that for the 2026 fiscal year, there will be an increase of approximately $11 million to the school budget. 

Motions were made to accept gifts for Dunning High School, Fuller Middle School, Barbieri Elementary School, Hemenway Elementary School and Walsh Middle School, along with athletics and early education. The Health and Wellness Subcommittee also reported that before their July 10 meeting, they will listen to the MetroWest Adolescent Survey before presenting to the SchoolCommittee. 

The next School Committee meeting will be held July 16. 

Note: minor grammatical edits were made to this article on Monday, June 30.