Yay, SCIENCE!

 Artemis II is off to the moon!

And then a discussion about school committee authority broke out

 Something happened at last Tuesday's Board of Ed which doesn't happen at 99.9% of Massachusetts Board of Education meetings¹: someone not only mentioned school committees, but there was even a smidge of a discussion about them.

This came in response to a (properly posted) update from the Commissioner on Fall River. You may have seen that the Fall River School Committee recently moved to fire their superintendent without cause; she resigned. At the request of the Mayor, the Department is completing a targeted review of district governance.

Fall River Public Schools had their last comprehensive district review in 2025, as required by MGL Ch. 15, sec. 55A, under state regulations 603 CMR 2.03. Those regulations, passed by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, require that the review include: Leadership and Governance, alongside Curriculum and Instruction; Assessment; Human Resources and Professional Development; Student Support; and Financial and Asset Management. Those are always the areas reviewed for every district.²

Within that last report for Fall River, released in November 2024, within the Governance analysis, DESE reported the following: 

According to focus groups, working relationships between district leaders and school committee members are still in early stages and are sometimes tense. As mentioned above, the superintendent is new to her role and began leading the district in July 2024 and, as such, a formal evaluation has not yet been completed. According to interviews, the superintendent is still working through her formal entry plan into the district and trying to “build a little bit more of a network and relationships with the school committee.” However, district leaders also reported that the current superintendent faced opposition from several members of the school committee upon her promotion to superintendent from her previous role as assistant superintendent and chief academic officer. Currently, there are still reported tensions between the school committee and the district superintendent, and both agreed that there was occasionally “strain” in the relationship regarding the best way to collaboratively fulfill their responsibilities and benefit the district. Despite this, in interviews and focus groups, both parties reiterated their commitment to Fall River and their desire to collaborate effectively to improve the district and outcomes for all students. Building rapport between both parties is an area for growth in Fall River.

As they were doing a report early on in a new superintendent administration, this is a measured, but early warning, view of what the Department saw then. Then the Fall River School Committee underwent an election last fall in which three of the six seats changed (the seventh member, the mayor, stayed the same), with the above being the outfall.

What I found most odd about the above bit of discussion in the meeting, beyond it happening at all, was the common concern of Chair Katherine Craven and Vice-chair Matt Hills: they were very concerned about the Department's relationship with the "democratically-elected school committee."

While I agree that the lines of authority are always³worth keeping an eye on, it's very odd to hear this from the Board leadership, which in its tenure, has not expressed all that much concern about the very removal of school committee authority that state receivership is. The school committees in receivership districts are also democratically-elected, and yet it has been from the successor of Commissioners after Jeff Riley that the impetus has come to return them to local authority. That could have come from this chair and vice chair at any time in their tenure. Instead, it took Russell Johnston as acting receiver to finally move. That, mercifully, has continued forward. 

The Commissioner is appointed by and evaluated by the Board. If "democratically-elected" school committees having authority was this much of a concern, Craven and Hills had ample opportunity and reason to speak earlier. They did not. 

Interesting time to speak up. 

¹I have been to almost every one for fifteen years. Take it from me.
²You can find the list of district review reports on the Department's website here. They are not always right (in my view) but they are always worth reviewing.
³not just in the 0.1% of the time they deign to remember that school committees exist, let's say.  

Flashback

 from this WBUR coverage of the Boston Public Schools before their City Council: 

Boston Public Schools could have fined its school bus vendor $1.5 million for missed rides, but chose not to do so. The admission outraged parents and Boston City Councilors at a Tuesday hearing.

WBUR first reported that the district had not exercised its contractual right to fine vendor Transdev $500 for each instance of a “blown trip.” That's when a bus is more than an hour late for pickup or "uncovered" — as in, no driver or vehicle is available for the ride.