The Board of Ed meets Tuesday, April 20, 2021

 You can find their agenda online here. Note that IT BEGINS AT 1 PM!!

There is, of course, an update on pandemic learning (that memo doesn't say anything new). One question is if the Commissioner will publicly say what he has already told the superintendents privately: that he'll expect high school students back five days a week May 17. As that is less than two weeks before most seniors are done for the year, as well as being in the middle of MCAS, it's additional demonstration that this continues to be about checking a box rather than ensuring students have the best education that can be provided. 
Of course, as one of the members of the Board has recently been spending his time and press reach denigrating the work of local districts whilst demonstrating how little he knows about it, perhaps that isn't surprising. 

The big news on the agenda, as Commonwealth broke earlier this week when the agenda posted, with additional coverage so far by The Herald News and The Boston Globe, is a proposed change in the admission regulations for regional vocational schools. We did know this was coming, as they had an extensive presentation in their special evening meeting in February, clearly laying the groundwork for a change. It's important to note that regional vokes can, even now, admit their students by lottery; they just have chosen not to. As the Department noted in their February meeting, and as advocates have noted for some time, this results in schools whose demographics don't reflect the districts they serve, in many cases, as well as not necessarily meeting the real needs of students. 
Commonwealth's summary of the proposed change is solid:

Under new regulations being proposed by Riley, vocational schools will not be allowed to use admissions criteria that disproportionately exclude students in those protected classes unless they can demonstrate that those criteria are “essential to participation” in voc-tech programs and there are no other admission standards that could be used that would not have that effect. 

The strikethrough version of the proposed reg change is here. Note that the vote proposed Tuesday is to open public comment; the vote would be taken in June. 

The World Languages frameworks have been out for public comment and are coming back for a vote at this meeting. 

There's then a list of modification that the Department is requesting due to the pandemic, some of which we knew about:

• there's the competency determination for the class of 2022; this is the junior class not having to take the ELA and math MCAS (which they would normally have taken last spring) in order to graduate. 
• there's also a proposed modification to the certificate of attainment, which is the recognition that a senior has met all local graduation requirements and has tried to pass the MCAS at least three times; this would modify that to one for this year's seniors.
• there's also a request that the Board send out for public comment a change to the regulations such that the Department would not issue new accountability determinations for 2020-21. The proposed change to 602 CMR section 2 is to add a subsection 11: 
  

  (11) Commissioner’s authority to refrain from issuing annual performance determinations for districts and schools The Commissioner may, for good cause arising from the state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic, direct the Department in the fall of 2021 to refrain from issuing any or all of the reported measures and annual performance determinations for school year 2020-2021, as described in 603 CMR 2.03 (2) – (3). The Commissioner may direct that schools and districts maintain their most recent accountability determinations for an additional year.   

  That, one assumes, then becomes an easy thing to delete later. 

• There is also a proposed change to the charter school regulations (also proposed to go out for public comment): no MCAS means no lowest 10% of districts from which to draw in determining where charter schools can go. This would freeze the current list.
• There is also a request to send out for public comment a change in 603 CMR 7 on educator licensure, extending the current changes another year. Those are the ability for a teacher to teach out of field of licensure up to 50% of their time (usually it is 20%) and allowing a long-term sub for the entire school year without a state waiver. 

There is, finally, a budget update.

Off agenda, but for information, there is a report on grants and a report on charter school matters.