Reflections on last week's meeting

• If you're going to wrangle with the administration over money, you've got to show up for every single meeting. I could be wrong about this, but I believe that there were no parents that spoke at the Business subcommittee meeting, so the School Committee got an earful from middle school principals interested in getting some of that new money, and those principals carried the day.
  
• It's also clear that the School Committee and the administration are feeling pretty good about the lack of over-27-pupil elementary classrooms in Worcester now. I'm not sure why everyone decided that was an okay number to stop at. It wouldn't make me feel very good to be sending my four-and-a-half year old off to a kindergarten classroom next week with 25 classmates, especially if she had no aide. We really need the people making these decisions to spend some time in these rooms once in awhile. Imagine trying to teach that many kids, with all sorts of abilities, to read!
• We're still choosing between heat and books. The health insurance money is on hold, pending our heating bills for this winter. That money was supposed to go for books. It's been ages since we've had new books, in many cases.
• It was heartening to hear school district lines brought into the discussion. As much as this is sometimes a bit of a third rail, it's pretty dumb for us to have classrooms that are overcrowded and can't be split for lack of rooms in one school, when the school down the street has either open rooms or less crowded classrooms. There are neighborhoods where it wouldn't make that much of a difference, as the schools are so close together. Even making it a system where kids with older siblings stay in the same school, and the new kindergartener who's the eldest in a family makes the switch would help. We're sacrificing the actual education of our kids on the altar of family convenience and neighborhood comfort. Let's be more sensible about this one.
• While it isn't clear that the gaping hole between the school and city administrations has been bridged by those parties in any way, it's clear that Brian O'Connell, at least, has heard that there is a hole. He's keeping abreast of what the City Council asks for and is putting straight on the School Committee agenda. That isn't the way it should work--there are people who do this full-time, Brian!--but it's a stopgap, and it certainly is better than nothing. I'd hope that the both administrations would be shamed that this is falling to an elected official, and pick this up to do themselves.