Remarks from Acting Commissioner Wulfson at MASS/MASC annual conference

I was (regrettably) on my phone during this, so I'm reconstructing this from my tweets; it is a reconstruction.

Acting Commissioner Wulfson opened by saying that he was going to say what he's been too shy to say for 23 years, and warned that by the time he gets done, no one, including members of his family, may be speaking to him.

• Real changes and progress in schools takes years, whether it's curriculum changes, school turnaround, or other things. The average tenure of a superintendent is now 3 years. What are we doing to support superintendents to stay longer?
• Kids need more time in school, particularly those with greater needs.
• All kids need access to computer science (praising MASS for taking this up).
• Educator licensure is "way too complicated" and needs pruning. There should definitely be some requirements of what you need to know and to do, but the system needs reworking.
• Buildings are expensive to build; we should fix them, not keep building new ones.
• "When did taxes become a four letter word? The original Tea Party was neither anti-government nor anti-taxation."
• Regarding school transportation reimbursement: It “doesn’t seem right to me that Dighton-Rehobeth gets 80% and Taunton gets zero.” 
• On charter schools: “When the kid arrives mid year from Guatemala, he’s going to the district schools” BUT ALSO "there are good charters out there and districts should learn from them." 
• And there is excellent work being done by districts across the state every day.

And I'll close with the same thing I tweeted when he ended: "This is why MASS President (and Taunton Superintendent) Julie Hackett said that if it were up to her, she'd just cross out the "Acting" before "Commissioner." 

I don't always agree with him, and I think he's wrong sometimes, but he never takes criticism personally (at least publicly), he's always up front about what he knows and thinks, and he genuinely cares, not just about kids, but about people doing work in school districts, and sees himself as on the same team. That matters a lot.