Last night at Worcester School Committee

As always, this summary is me and mine, so take with that.

We heard a report on summer learning at both the elementary and secondary school levels over the summer. In total, we had about 11% of the student population served, in programs ranging from the extended year for some students who have IEPs, to a summer camp option, to multilingual programs, to a Generation Teach program, and to an early college option.
The final slide, I think, pulls together where we are going forward: 

For any like me with their eyes on ESSER, I did mention last night that I'd like an update on where we are with the 20% set aside for learning loss from ESSER III.

We approved a SLEW of grants (and if you have questions, can I recommend looking at the report? They're useful!):

• $270,000 for a grant to Nightlife for Carpentry and Diesel Technician training 

• $500,000 for Early College Full School and Expansion Year 2 for Claremont; we also sent the early college expansion at Claremont to subcommittee, because the Committee really hasn't talked about it. The backup on this one is EXTENSIVE, so if you're interested in that, do take a look. There's a big programmatic change there for Claremont, over time. 

•  $85,000 for social emotional support for out of school time mental health support. I should note, by the way, that there is major work coming on mental health for students and for staff. Thus here and later on, if it seems as if we're punting a few things, it's because we know that work is going on.  

• $237,021 for a Skills Capital grant for North High for the Allied Health program; check out that list of equipment on page 89! 

• $311,000 for a Skills Capital grant for Worcester Tech for automotive technology; again, check out the list of equipment on page 92! 

• $75,000 for a Skills Capital grant for Worcester Tech for IT 

• $5000 grant for Belmont Elementary for library books   

• $5000 grant from UNUM for a food pantry at Sullivan 

• And everybody's favorite: the $150,000 SWIG (how clever are they on the acronym?) grant for water bottle fillers. Because I have gotten some questions on this: please note that the grant program has strict outlines as to which schools can get grants, so if your school is not on this list on page 107, it isn't that you're being ignored. There has been discussion about additional efforts on this for other schools through ESSER funding, so stay tuned.

We did report out from Finance and Operations...I will try to do a separate writeup of that.you can find that here.

We got an update on COVID, which is going to continue to be part of school committee meetings this year. The state, as I think has been well covered, is offering no new guidance for this school year; the management of the district COVID response is now shifting to the Deb McGovern, the head of nursing. There are no state supplies at all. Worcester is keeping the medical waiting rooms, staffed by CNA's. However, there is no test and stay; the district will have tests which they can send home with symptomatic students, and students who are symptomatic will be sent home with instructions to isolate, but there will be no contact tracing this year. 
Thus students, staff, and families will have no idea if they have been exposed at school. I will offer my opinion that people should then proceed accordingly.

We had an update on how Chromebooks will be provisioned and handled in schools this year. Last year's order of over 23,000 Chromebooks has put us in good shape for this year. Every student grades 1-12 will be assigned a specific Chromebook; if it needs repair, they'll sign out a loaner, but then get the same Chromebook back after repair. We do have spares at every school in the system now, and there's essentially a weekly cycle of schools among the IT professionals assigned. 

If you haven't reviewed the latest broadband report from the Worcester Regional Research Bureau, it's what came in from the municipal broadband committee. 

On Jermaine Johnson's motion, we voted to send Sue Mailman as our delegate and Laura Clancey as the alternate to the annual Delegate Assembly of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees in November.
Relatedly, we also changed our November 3 meeting to November 10 (four of us plus the superintendent will be at the Joint MASC/MASS Conference in Hyannis that week).

We then had a length discussion, which may have been a little hard to follow if you're not up on how Worcester School Committee functions: when there's a motion at a Committee meeting, for the most part, they can go two places: to one of our subcommittees, or to administration. Now, if they're on a subcommittee agenda, the chair of those subcommittees works with administration on what items end up on a meeting agenda. If it goes to administration, it pretty much is there until administration decides to bring it back.
And so they can, and they have, build up. 
I filed an item for this agenda to look at all outstanding administrative items and decide if we still needed them. Some of them are just old (and never got responses). Some, though, as I said at the meeting, were a response on the Committee side to managerial inaction; if you can't get an answer or a response from administration offline--and we should be forwarding requests for information offline!--a Committee member may well file an item. We also might, in the face of administrative inaction on something that is managerial, file an item seeking action.
That isn't best practice. It isn't what's supposed to happen. When it does, something is broken; in Worcester, something has been. 
So as a means of clearing the decks and moving forward with a new administration that has, clearly, every intention of being responsive (and frankly, already is), we reviewed the outstanding administrative items and we filed (which means they're gone) a LOT of them. 

We voted in favor of the administration's recommendation that we increase the day-to-day sub rate from $85 to $110. Note that this also includes the following information: 

The Administration intends to use the funding for up to 50 day-by-day substitutes to supplement the 70 full-time building substitute positions included in the FY23 budget, for a total of 120 available substitutes. During the last school year, the average daily absences of teachers (in positions that require a substitute) was 120.4 (with a high of 200 absent on January 6, 2022, and a low of 25 absent on August 30, 2021).
Although the FY23 Budget did not include funding for day-by-day substitutes, the cost for this year will be funded through available ESSER carry-forward funding (unexpended summer and after-school funds during FY22). It is expected that the total cost to be $990,000. The effectiveness of the additional substitutes will be discussed with building principals during the course of the year and evaluated as part of the FY24 resource allocation process.

...which, as someone who was very concerned that there was no provision for day-by-day subs in the FY23 budget, is very reassuring. We're also sending the policy on subs to Governance, as we're concerned by how often paraprofessionals are being pulled off their assigned duties to sub.

We also approved the removal of the bar on all backpacks in school except those made of clear plastic or mesh. Thus, yes, students in school may carry backpacks this year.

And finally, I am happy to say, we approved for execution the contracts of Brian Allen as Deputy Superintendent, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer; and Marie Morse as Assistant Superintendent of Teaching & Learning. Those contracts were signed last night after we adjourned.