What happened Tuesday

• The Worcester School Committee unanimously supported the recommendation of the search committee to contract with Greenwood Asher to conduct the superintendent search. That now goes to the city Purchasing Department, that has to be certain we've adhered to all necessary for a legal bid process; as we've been working with them right along, it is expected to move forward without complication.
• The report on positions being filled was held, as it had no information regarding the hiring of adjustment counselors.
• ...and as a result, the position description was held.
• The five year contract masquerading as a donation of equipment that would charge families a fee to view livestreamed games was set to Finance and Operations for a report back from the Inspector General regarding if it is subject o bid laws. The superintendent said she'd been given a legal opinion that it was fine; the Inspector General has found that by recommending a particular vendor, the district has created a market for that item; "this market has an intrinsic value; there is value attached to this opportunity." As such, ch. 30B kicks in; further, in not sending such a proposal out to bid may also invoke the state ethics law, as equal opportunity to access the market was not granted to others.
• The two grants, which, among other things, including the hiring of more than 20 positions on a single year grant with no plan for what happens after the funding runs out were also sent to Finance and Operations. As the School Committee adopted a financial policy in 2014 (part of the Seven Point Plan) of ensuring program sustainability particularly when adopting grants, adopting a single year grant that hires multiple people without either the note that the positions will be ended when the grant ends or specifically how those positions will be funded when the grant ends violates district policy. 
  You may recall from our budget deliberation our close attention to the use of ESSER funds either as one time funding or as funding that will be picked up through the first year of the Student Opportunity Act funding. Note that this only works one year at a time. 

The rest of Tuesday's agenda

 The report of Thursday's Ad-Hoc search meeting (which you can watch a video of here) is being reported out to the full Committee tomorrow (Tuesday) at 5 pm at a special meeting of the Worcester School Committee, so we can keep moving on the search.

This isn't a regular business meeting of the Worcester School Committee, which is why it's odd that we've somehow ended up with an agenda that has a lot of other things on it; the mayor, for example, is jamming this meeting in before the regular meeting of the Worcester City Council.

I have many thoughts on much of this, which I will share, of course, during the deliberation tomorrow.

On the agenda: 

• A response to the request to provide an update on new hires from the re-allocated funds during budget hearings. That response reads, in its entirety, as follows:
  As part of the FY22 Budget, the School Committee reallocated 13 teacher positions for early literacy specialists / interventionists to class size reduction teachers.

These teachers have been assigned to the following schools:
1. Belmont Street
2. Canterbury Street School
3. Chandler Magnet
4. City View*
5. Clark Street
6. Columbus Park
7. Grafton Street
8. Goddard*
9. Lincoln Street
10.Quinsigamond
11.Rice Square
12.Vernon Hill*
13.Woodland Academy
*Classroom teacher.
The teachers are addressing significant gaps, working with the assigned teacher
and in some cases covering missing staff.

• A new request to pass the "Job Description for Recruitment and Cultivation Director" which the Committee has said it will only consider once the above item is responded to in full.
  
  
• A 16-page contract masquerading as a "donation," which is a subscription service for school sports broadcast (starts on page 13 of the backup, if you're interested).
  
  
• A $1.7M ARP one year special education grant which would add 20 positions.
  
  
• A $155K ARP one year early ed grant that would add two positions. 

Again,  I am abiding by our ethical obligation to keep deliberation for the meeting itself. However, take a look.