Depressing day in the T&G

Not a happy way to start one's Sunday morning...
It might perhaps have been helpful if the articles on school nurses and on the MIAA had run sometime prior to the funding of the Worcester school budget. Then perhaps interested parties could have had a chance before the budget was finalized to contact the School Committee regarding funding these two accounts.
As it is, the school nurses will see no change for next year. The following schools were without a full-time nurse this year (this list was in the printed paper, but it is not online):

• Chandler Elementary with 312 students
• Creamer Alternative School with 193
• Grafton St. Elementary with 349
• Heard St. Elementary with 272
• Lake View Elementary with 268
• Lincoln St. Elementary with 235
• May St. Elementary with 279
• McGrath Elementary with 180
• Thorndyke Rd Elementary with 369
  
• Worcester Alternative School with 58
• Union Hill Elementary with 280
• University Park Campus with 270

That's an awful lot (3065) of kids to have without a nurse in the building. Taking into account the number of kids with poor primary health care, the asphalt playgrounds, the huge number of health issues (from asthma to diabetes to allergies to ADHD), this is just a dangerous situation. A disaster waiting to happen.

As for the MIAA, Mayor Lukes did ask at the budget hearing what exactly we got for our MIAA dues. She was told that we got our membership, and that the dues are determined by population. In other words, as the mayor said, if we were a smaller town, we'd get the same services for less money. I have a feeling that a great deal more would have been said on this subject were the breakdown given on the front page today public earlier this week.

Turning farther along the paper, Bob Nemeth continues convinced that charter schools are the answer to what ails us (based largely, it seems, on John Rowe), and the T&G editorial board continues its hysterical support of the MCAS exam. Those two together, however, show some local concern around the Governor Patrick's awaited Readiness Project report, coming out in the next week or so.

(and here everyone wondered what would happen to Who-cester once the budget passed!)