Kotsopoulos weighs in

Nick Kotsopoulos generally uses his Sunday column to give a view at the coming week's City Council meeting. Instead, he apparently found last week's school budget discussion important enough to discuss today:

It isn’t as if anyone at City Hall is bad-mouthing the School Department. As a matter of fact, city councilors are still publicly saying all the right things, about how education is a top priority and how they want to work with school officials to make sure Worcester’s schools are adequately funded.
But there have been some subtleties that make you think otherwise. For example, when councilors talk about the School Department, it’s not unusual to hear some members refer to the public schools as “they” or “them” and the city-side as “we” or “us.”
Yikes!
Now, that’s not a good sign, when they’re all supposedly on the same “team.” Though it’s not quite as bad as the Hatfields and McCoys, it’s certainly not a sign of one big happy family, either.

(You'll remember that those councilors were corrected at Tuesday's meeting.)
Mr. Kotsopoulos then goes on to give us a bit of history and why some of us are encouraged this year in a way we haven't been in the past:

Previous school committees, for whatever the reason, were fairly passive in their relationship with the City Council and seldom challenged it on funding issues. This was the first time in recent memory that School Committee members actually stood up and asked for more money, and that did not sit well with some at City Hall.

Let's make sure we aren't leaving the School Committee standing alone! There are, as far as anyone knows, three weeks left before the City Manager presents his budget to the City Council (April 29th is the date I'm hearing, but there's been no formal annoucement). If you haven't written to the City Manager, the City Council, to the Editor, NOW is the time to do it!
There is only a bit more time to get that extra 1.8% into the budget; after that we have to battle over allocation. Let's do this right! Write, call, or email, but let them know that the School Committee stands for US, the citizens, as well as for the 25,000 students in the Worcester Public Schools!