Worcester School Committee meets tonight!

sorry for the late agenda review...lots of running around this week!

The Worcester School Committee meets tonight at 7 pm at City Hall. You can find the agenda here.

First up, we have the annual Opening of School report from Superintendent Boone. Plenty of important things here, including preliminary enrollment information--yes, the district is continuing to grow!--the rundown on summer hiring, program and curriculum changes, the facilities and technology work, and more! We won't have an MCAS report tonight; the state is allowing the release of that tomorrow.

We have another round of retirements/appointments to take a look at.

We have four responses coming back from administration, all in response to questions that were asked during our budget hearings:

1. a breakdown on team sport transportation
2. a report on which schools have or will have smart meters (answer: None)
3. an update on E-rate (not good news)
4. a report on adult education funding

We've got a report back on the chapter 74 vocational funding by program.
We have a response on the query around the new nutritional regs (answer: the part in question doesn't apply to WPS).
We have a report on the Common Core standards (much of which I think we've seen before).
We have an item coming in on working with others to make Main South safer for our students walking to and from school (this in response to concerns raised by Councilor Sarai Rivera, who represents that neighborhood; I know that there was a meeting on this on Monday, so we should hear something tonight).
We're being asked to approve a prior fiscal year payment of $750 for translation, $350 for the UPCS NEASC report, and $2123 for a prorated alternative stipend.
We're being asked to approve a $75,000 grant from DESE for "technology innovation" in teacher evaluation; $60,000 of this is going to for consulting to ClearPond Technology who appear to be the group behind TeachPoint (honestly, can't find these guys online anywhere; is that weird or is that me?). TeachPoint "...is one of the fastest growing providers of Teacher Evaluation solution. We innovatively combine the power of cloud computing and mobile technology to create precisely tailored and intuitive solutions for K12 Schools Districts" according to their website. Yes, I will be asking about that.
Administration has filed an item about developing financial reporting requirements for parent-teacher and other associated WPS groups; that's going to F&O.
There are also are items to:

• recognize Shelia Harrity on the NASSP principal of the year award.
• review the promotion practices of WPS.
• request the Body Mass Index measurement schedule
• request a report on preschool (application, sites, numbers, timeframes, playground equipment)

We're being asked to approve the hiring of some nurses (yes, we do the nurses) and approve a timeline for hiring a new nurse coordinator.
We have an interesting response from City Solicitor David Moore on my query regarding filing items such that we comply with the Open Meeting Law.

And there you have it: 7 pm tonight!