On January 5, the School Committee — including new Mayor Marc Laredo — held a “retreat” at the Education Center with Superintendent Anna Nolin, Assistant Superintendent Ayesha Farag, and NPS General Counsel Jill Murray Grady. While nominally open to the public per Open Meeting Law, retreats are not broadcast nor recorded. They are typically used for group discussions and workshop-type activities rather than public-facing formal presentations occurring at regularly scheduled School Committee meetings.
This retreat functioned largely as an orientation for the six newly elected Committee members — and a re-affirming of norms and customs for the two returning members and the newly sworn-in Mayor, who had previously served on the School Committee from 2002 – 2010, including time as Chair. A six-page draft “School Committee Agreements” document was circulated to the members for discussion, containing guidelines for items like meeting scheduling, expected preparation, conduct, interactions with NPS staff, and communications with the community. Ms. Grady gave a presentation on legal issues the members need to understand regarding confidentiality, avoiding conflicts, and Open Meeting Law (OML). Superintendent Nolin emphasized the importance of the NPS Strategic Plan and the imminent need to gather any feedback on it from the new Committee.
Notable discussions included the actions of Members outside of regular meetings and official School Committee communications. Ms. Grady described how social media postings by members regarding upcoming School Committee issues could potentially trigger OML questions if those posts were viewed or commented on by a quorum of other members of the Committee, as that could constitute “deliberation” outside of a public meeting. Mayor Laredo gave an example of a member being at a social event with other parents who are discussing an educator in their families’ schools, and he reminded the new Members that in their current roles they should not participate in those casual conversations, as their words now carry the weight of an overseer of NPS.
One member of the public, Enrique Rosero, observed the retreat in-person because, as he told Fig City News, “I think our elected officials need to see that their constituents are paying attention to what they’re doing, and know that they will be held to account.”
The first regular School Committee meeting of 2026 will occur Wednesday January 7, focusing primarily on the 2025-2026 Enrollment Report. The Report notes that the current school year marks the fifth consecutive year since 2021 of small annual declines (~1.0%) in the total NPS student population. This followed a large 5.6% decline in 2020 during the Covid pandemic, when NPS significantly delayed returning students to in-person school, relative to neighboring communities and most other nations.
