Bittersweet, indeed

 From today's Globe: 

“It feels a little bittersweet,” said Anthony Clough, a policy analyst at the left-leaning Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. “How are we supposed to celebrate the culmination of this really progressive law when it hasn’t really panned out for anybody in the way we thought it would.”

 There is, of course, too much "but why aren't the test scores higher" here, but, as so often, Andrew O'Leary nails it:

“It was a long overdue I-O-U,” said New Bedford Superintendent Andrew O’Leary. “Those of us who worked in urban districts for a long time had seen the result of the fiscal inequities. It was constant budget crises and constant compromises.”

Bonus Board of Ed for September

 The agenda (which doesn't tell us much) is here. 
The livestream is here.

Martinez: setting new benchmarks for proficiency, lower to zero doesn't meet (I think)
he is just saying this aloud; it isn't shown or written out as to what he's saying...this is really hard to follow

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.

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.)