Hey, let's talk about Burncoat

 I am intentionally posting a stub here, as I am working on this on the train outbound, and my posts go out at 3 PM. Come back for more, between today and tomorrow.

On tomorrow night's Worcester City Council agenda, we have the following: 

First a process note: This is coming from the Department of Public Facilities, not from the Worcester Public Schools. That's because school buildings, in a municipal school district, are built not by the school department (which does have its own section on the City Council agenda) but by the city itself. The school department does not run its own building projects, and the School Committee has very, very little to do with building projects.*

Now I want to remind you of where we are with Worcester's school building projects: since 2011, Worcester has rebuilt North High, South High, and Doherty, three of the four comprehensive high schools in the city. Add in Worcester Tech, which opened in 2006, that's all of the largest high schools in Worcester, in the past twenty years. 

Let's give credit where due: considering that Worcester also opened a new elementary school in there (Nelson Place, which was literally falling down, opened 2017), that is a stunning pace of building new schools. Genuinely, and I say this as someone who watches this, this is a tremendous pace.

And we need one! As has been repeatedly noted in Worcester: with fifty buildings and a state projection that plans for buildings lasting fifty years, Worcester would need to open one new school a year in order to replace buildings at the speed estimated as necessary. And, due to cities having more schools and each school being taken individually, as noted last year in the report from Mass Inc and the WRRB, kids of color, poor kids, and kids whose first language isn't English are disproportiately likely to be in buildings that are older and lack facilities many districts take for granted. 

It is thus disheartening to read, in the memo that starts on page 217 and smells like it probably comes more from the city finance office than the city facilities office--as I sincerely doubt that the Chief of Public Facilities is making recommendations on the use of free cash--the following closing: 

Cities and towns across the Commonwealth have been seeking overrides to simply fund standard annual operations. Through careful financial management and planning, Worcester is not in that situation. But if we do not address the significant impact of the cost of a project with the potential size and scale of Burncoat, we will be. We can anticipate future years of budget cuts and/or double-digit tax increases simply in order to provide a similar, or even reduced, level of service compared to that which we maintain today.  

 Yeah, that really reads like it's coming from Facilities...c'mon, people.

____________________________________________________

*which is why both of these sentences in the T&G are wrong: 

If the agency votes to approve the report, it would go back to the School Committee

By January 2028, the School Committee and the School Building Authority would create the project scope and funding agreement so construction can begin in May 2029 after a procurement process.

In the case of the first, it goes back to the building committee; the agreement and the procurement process are run by the city.  

Worcester parents, CPPAC is meeting

First meeting: October 6, Fanning Building, 24 Chatham Street

CPPAC is the Citywide Parent Planning Advisory Council, run by parents for parents; by charter (and by theory), they have representation from every school in the city. 

 They are not, unlike some other options in Worcester, selected by administration, nor is the agenda set by anyone other than those gathering. Their first meeting will be "to review the mission of CPPAC, introduce the new executive board members, and come together as a community to identify our priorities and goals for this school year. We need caregiver involvement to ensure that CPPAC is the powerful agent for advocacy that it can be, so we hope to see you there."

While it has had its highs and lows of effectiveness, I recommend attending. Per the invite:

Interpretation services will be provided in Spanish and Portuguese, childcare is available, and pizza will be served! If you need interpretation services in languages other than Spanish and Portuguese, please let us know by Friday, October 2nd, 2026. 

Special meeting of the Board of Ed on the strategic plan

 There is a special meeting of the Board of Ed tonight at 6 PM. The agenda is here. It is fully remote.

This is the meeting that they scheduled on the fly during last Tuesday's meeting, when some members argued that they did not have sufficient time to discuss the strategic plan needs of the Department in light of the state accountability results. There was a request that materials be updated in light of that, though nothing has appeared online (that doesn't, of course, mean that members don't have new material; they might). 

what on earth are we doing?

 

you know, I'm going to run out over variations of the title of this post. 

"on the uncoordinated actions of thousands of parents"

 from "It Is Right--EDUCATIONALLY,"
the Report of the Advisory Committee on  Racial Imbalance in Education, 1965

If you're in online education or parenting spaces, you probably saw that the talk of the weekend was "In fighting for every Black child, did I betray my own?" by Nikole Hannah-Jones, who you might remember writing "Choosing a school for my daughter in a segregated city" in 2016. That daughter is now 16, and, as you'd expect of a child raised in a household in which such things are discussed, she has opinions. 

This, in turn, foster a lot of online conversation (and argument and worse) over the weekend about the decision. 

I will share only two thoughts: 

1. Someone who is 16 isn't done yet. What her daughter thinks of her own education, and of the choices her parents made regarding that, is not a settled thing as yet. Already, her daughter has seen the value of her having had time in majority-Black spaces; the relative value of that alongside all else in her schooling in the scope of where she ends up is something yet to be seen. 
   This is not to dismiss her daughter's current perspective--far from it. But what conclusion gets drawn over time may well change.
   
   
2. It reminded me, vividly, of the above passage from the closest thing Massachusetts ever saw to a report on desegregation, in 1965. 
   We can do the best we can as parents; real change comes as a society. 

UPDATE: This American Life has more this week. (That links to the transcript, because give me print, please, but you can also listen from there.)

Board of Ed: literacy law implementation

 They're now adding a meeting to Monday night at 6 PM

there's a report here but there's also a PowerPoint which I wonder if we will get
anticipate bringing regulations in October as law "is quite prescriptive"
we're doing some retrospective stuff

curricular requirements:

Board of Ed: assessment and accountability results

 Martinez: start from an asset-based perspective
there's a memo here but it doesn't have a lot