Updates regarding plans for the new high schools, discussions of RICAS scores and chronic absenteeism, and the revision of policies were all on the table for the Warwick School Committee Tuesday night.

A letter of intent was approved for Saam Architecture’s design of Pilgrim High School and Saccoccio and Associates’ design of Toll Gate High School, with Director of Construction and Capital Projects Steve Gothberg saying that the letter was approved by the Building Committee on Nov. 6.

“This is just telling us the contract they’d like to use, but it will need to be modified to the delivery model that has been chosen, which at this point is the design-build, not the design-bid-build delivery model, for construction of the school.”

The letter, according to Gothberg, is to pay each firm $250,000 for initial work on the projects.

 According to School Committee Chair Dave Testa, the design-build model of construction is planned, as construction contracts need to be awarded by June in order for the city to be eligible for bonus reimbursement.

The committee also approved the adoption of three out of four changed policies for Staff Health and Safety, Student Health and Safety, and Committee Organization Meeting.

The fourth policy change, which would have been to the Health, Nutrition, Physical Activity and Wellness policy, was tabled following objections from Vice Chair Shaun Galligan regarding the amount of physical education that students receive.

“At the high school level, when we examine physical education and we extrapolate those numbers over an entire year, we’re just barely hitting that 100 [minutes per week],” Galligan said. “Unless Holliman is an anomaly, at the elementary level, that is not the case.”

Those concerns were echoed by Warwick Teachers Union president Darlene Netcoh, who said the high school curriculum needs to return to three quarters of physical education/health classes devoted to physical education and one quarter devoted to health education.

“Now is the time, before scheduling for next year starts, to put it back,” Netcoh said. “Our kids need the exercise, need the benefits of phys ed, and the only way it exists the way it is is because a previous administrator decided he could get rid of a bunch of phys ed teachers by cutting it down. There was no pedagogical reason.”

Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Lisa Schultz gave a presentation on the city’s RICAS scores, which improved over the previous year’s.

“This doesn’t happen without moving in the right direction,” Testa said. “The goal is to at least replicate what we’ve done last year into this year. Once you get something rolling, it builds on itself.”

According to Superintendent Lynn Dambruch, preliminary statistics from this year show that “just about all” of Warwick’s schools have seen a reduction in chronic absenteeism as well- something she said that the Warwick Public Schools administration would begin a “proactive campaign” to combat.

Testa disagrees with how the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) defines chronic absenteeism, although he agrees a decline in absenteeism rate is a good sign.

“When people see a headline in the local newspaper about chronic absenteeism, they think, oh my god, this is like South Central L.A.,” Testa said. “But you need to understand how those numbers are figured in. Eighteen days over the course of a year is a lot. But to miss two days in a month, even with a common cold, is not unusual. Two days in the course of a month is not crazy, but it counts as chronically absent.