Town Government
School Committee & Superintendent
The Superintendent
David Fleishman
About 2,662 students start their day in this district, and one person answers for all of it. David Fleishman runs Wayland Public Schools as its Superintendent, proposing the school budget, setting academic priorities, and overseeing six schools day to day. The Superintendent is hired by and reports to the elected School Committee, which evaluates him against goals it publishes and votes on. Note what this means for the money: the school department is the one large piece of town spending the Town Manager does not run. Section 5(e) of the town’s governing act carves it out by name, so the school budget comes from the Superintendent to the School Committee, and then to the same Town Meeting that votes everything else. The district is currently running a long-term facilities planning process for its preschool through grade 8 buildings, and a Portrait of a Learner project that invites residents to help define what the schools should be teaching for.
| Role | Superintendent of Schools |
|---|---|
| Office | School Central Office, 41 Cochituate Road, Wayland, MA 01778 |
| Phone | 508-358-3763 |
| Website | waylandps.org |
The School Committee
The Wayland School Committee has five members, all elected town-wide to staggered three-year terms. Wayland is a single-town district, so all five answer to Wayland voters and nobody else. The committee sets district policy, approves the school budget, and hires and evaluates the Superintendent. It works through subcommittees on finance, policy and the superintendent’s evaluation, and its meetings are public, which means a Wayland student who shows up can speak.
Erin Gibbons
Kate Sambuco
Betsy Cullen
Prashant Shukla
Jessica Traue
You can email the whole committee at wps_sc@waylandps.org, and each member has a published district address of the form firstname_lastname@waylandps.org.
The District at a Glance
- Enrollment: 2,662 students, PreK through 12.
- Schools: six, including Wayland High School.
- Graduation rate: 97.3%.
- State data: DESE profile (code 03150000).
Meetings & Participation
- When: the committee publishes its own meeting calendar for each school year, and posts every agenda in advance on the district site.
- Public comment: the committee’s meetings are open and residents may address it on matters within its purview.
- Watch: meetings are carried by WayCAM, Wayland’s public, educational and government access station.
- Subcommittees: finance, policy and superintendent evaluation each meet separately, and those are usually the smaller rooms where a question gets a real answer.
Curious how a bill becomes law, or how students can take on a civics project?