WILMINGTON, MA — As part of a wide-ranging discussion on school facility issues, the Wilmington School Committee and School Superintendent Dr. Glenn Brand recently discussed the need to find a new home for the district’s Student Support Services Department, which is currently housed inside the Wildwood Early Childhood Center.
“This is a big department that has very inappropriate space,” said Brand. “We owe it to these staff members to find much better space for them to work in.”
The Department of Student Support Services, which accounts for approximately $20 million of the school budget, oversees the following:
- Special Education
- Social & Emotional Learning
- Nursing/Health Services
- School Counseling
- 504 Accommodations
- Harassment/Bullying/Civil Rights/Student Discipline
- Homelessness
- Preschool Programs
The department’s nearly 15 staff members are crammed within two classrooms at the Wildwood School. The space is “simply too small” for the demands of the department. The space, for example, lacks private meeting space, while staff is forced to house student records in a pod.
“I don’t think there’s an easy solution for this,” admitted Brand. “It’s an issue for us because, for the most part, we are close to full in all our other schools. We don’t have a vacant wing somewhere that we could re-purpose for the Student Support Services Department.”
Brand recognizes the solution is going to require the school department to consider some “outside the box” options, and it needs to happen very soon.
“It is my recommendation that… there must emerge a plan to quickly identify options for July 2020, at the latest, to move the department to a new facility — whether that is through the renovation of any existing physical space in our buildings, or wider considerations, such as corporate rental space and/or the acquisition of mobile/modular office space that could be added to an existing facility,” said Brand in a memo he summarized for the Committee.
“Renting commercial space or renting modular space is something we need to think about, and calculate the costs,” reiterated Brand.
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