About that reorganization...

I'm sorry I didn't get notes from last night's meeting up yesterday; I left City Hall at midnight.

To clear up what I posted below about what is and isn't planned for Worcester Public Schools for next year (and thanks to Jeff Mulqueen for very clearly spelling this out last night):

There's no plan to reorganize the entire system next year. That was if we were facing a $26 million deficit and needed to come up with some brilliant ideas fast.

What is on the table for next year is:

• possible reorganization and other action at Level 4 schools. The latest way the state is categorizing schools by MCAS scores is "levels" with Level 5 being the lowest. There will probably be several Worcester schools that are deemed Level 4 by the state (we aren't expecting any Level 5's, by the way). There will be conversations about how best to improve the work there, and among the things discussed may well be reworking grade levels and such.
• an innovation quadrant in the South High quadrant. The Governor asked for and got "innovation schools" in the ed bill; the administration is attempting to implement this in an entire quadrant of WPS. An innovation school has different rules around things like length of day and other issues that are contractual; I am certain that there will be more discussion about this.
• shift courses at (it sounds like) the high school level, possibly in ways that involve different schedules, so that, for example, the AP classes are not in conflict with one another on the schedule. This is a school-by-school shift.
  

I do believe, from what was said last night, that there will be ongoing conversations around how schools are organized (including both grade levels and focused quadrants; possibly also a Horace Mann school) moving forward. Much of the presentation at the subcommittee stemmed from a number of items that have been filed by School Committee members over the years regarding different ways to organize our schools. The Chief Academic Officer was dealing with all of them at once.
I hope that this clears a few things up!