West Bridgewater School Committee Approves Safety Policies, Sets Superintendent Evaluation Timeline

WEST BRIDGEWATER -- April 7, 2025, West Bridgewater School Committee approves student-safety policy updates and hears that elementary school site plans may shift. Superintendent Mark Bodwell told the committee at its April 7 meeting that a previously eliminated site, the Howard School property on Route 106, is back under consideration for a new elementary building, after engineers flagged roughly even odds that the state Department of Environmental Protection would reject a required wastewater treatment plant permit at the Roselle site, potentially sinking the project after a town vote. The committee unanimously adopted updated language in Policy JL, Student Welfare, discouraging one-on-one staff-and-student interaction, following a risk-control audit by the district's insurance carrier, and approved physical restraint procedures required under a state Tiered Focus Monitoring corrective action plan that identified six civil-rights compliance findings and no special education deficiencies. The board also reappointed Bodwell to the Reed's Collaborative and North River Collaborative boards of directors for 2025-2026 and entered executive session for collective bargaining talks with the West Bridgewater Education Association.