September Board of Education: Commissioner Riley's goals

the backup is here; worth checking out

Riley: "we've done 25 years of education reform; there's been some good things, there's been some things that haven't been as good as we've hoped"
goals are reflective of that
day to day work
as well as assessing department as a whole
communication and outreach strategy to bring people under one tent to try to work together on a way forward
"I've asked that we take this year to celebrate and support our teachers"
"getting back to our bread and butter and focus on quality instruction"
"I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about the foundation budget and the needs of our students...we contine to believe that we need to do better by our students"
will be providing "whatever help we can" to Beacon Hill as it moves forward
"can support their work in coming to a good resolution"
coming from Lawrence, felt we didn't have the resources our students needed, particularly affecting the Gateway communities
40% our students are students of color; only 8% of our teachers are
"have to do a better job of attracting and retaining our teaching force overall, teachers of color in particular"

Stewart: particularly enthused by final note (on equity)
wonder about institutional racism; never seen any education institution take that on in any appreciable way
Riley: did work internally with Courageous Conversations
focusing exterally next
"typically a monitoring and compliance organization" this will be different
recruiting aggressively on college campuses; offering incentives

Fernández: on communication and outreach
need for multi-lingual and multicultural strategy
achievement gaps and focus in ways
Riley: I will put achievement and opportunity gaps

Craven: things we can do before FBRC (I think that's what she said)
Riley: waiting on this supplemental budget; it's a moving target at this point
"will have more opportunity as this budget passes"

West: feels it would be "stronger if tied to an explicit problem statement"
history/social science: development of assessment

Moriarty: saw early literacy "lurking in the lines," I think explicit would be better

Morton: have us come in to support

McKenna: model the behavior that you want others to follow
"having somebody who looks like you" not a bad thing to have when recruiting

Matthews: echo Morton on getting students getting involved
"in many cases, the answers are going to lie with the students"
foreign languages?
Riley defers to Peske: in process of reviewing standards
doing outreach to stakeholders (including students)
will not bring revised standards to the Board this year
last revised in 1999

Sagan: tweak the memo, send it back around
"as you know, we're from the government, we're here to help"