Monday, November 8, 2021

The rest of Tuesday's agenda

 The report of Thursday's Ad-Hoc search meeting (which you can watch a video of here) is being reported out to the full Committee tomorrow (Tuesday) at 5 pm at a special meeting of the Worcester School Committee, so we can keep moving on the search.



This isn't a regular business meeting of the Worcester School Committee, which is why it's odd that we've somehow ended up with an agenda that has a lot of other things on it; the mayor, for example, is jamming this meeting in before the regular meeting of the Worcester City Council.

I have many thoughts on much of this, which I will share, of course, during the deliberation tomorrow.

On the agenda: 

  • A response to the request to provide an update on new hires from the re-allocated funds during budget hearings. That response reads, in its entirety, as follows:
    As part of the FY22 Budget, the School Committee reallocated 13 teacher positions for early literacy specialists / interventionists to class size reduction teachers.
These teachers have been assigned to the following schools:
1. Belmont Street
2. Canterbury Street School
3. Chandler Magnet
4. City View*
5. Clark Street
6. Columbus Park
7. Grafton Street
8. Goddard*
9. Lincoln Street
10.Quinsigamond
11.Rice Square
12.Vernon Hill*
13.Woodland Academy
*Classroom teacher.
The teachers are addressing significant gaps, working with the assigned teacher
and in some cases covering missing staff.

  • A new request to pass the "Job Description for Recruitment and Cultivation Director" which the Committee has said it will only consider once the above item is responded to in full.

  • A 16-page contract masquerading as a "donation," which is a subscription service for school sports broadcast (starts on page 13 of the backup, if you're interested).

  • A $1.7M ARP one year special education grant which would add 20 positions.

  • A $155K ARP one year early ed grant that would add two positions. 

Again,  I am abiding by our ethical obligation to keep deliberation for the meeting itself. However, take a look. 

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