A few things to read today

2nd Street, New Bedford

•  It's worth taking a note on this CDC report on the diagnosis of developmental disabilities between 2019-22, nicely covered here by K-12 Dive. There has been what the CDC calls a " significant increase" in the diagnosis of developmental disabilities from 7.4% in 2019 to 8.6% in 2021. There has not, however, been an increase in autism spectrum disorder or intellectual disability. Boys and Black, non-Hispanic children are more likely to be diagnosed than others.
  
  
• They've asked again, and yes, parents of public school children continue to be satisfied with their children's education. As Chalkbeat notes: 
  Gallup’s finding is not an outlier. A Pew survey last year found that over 90% of parents were at least somewhat satisfied with the quality of their child’s education. A New York Times poll found that 77% were satisfied. Focusing just on parents with children in district schools, Education Next reported that 85% were at least somewhat satisfied; more recently EdChoice found that 84% were.
  So who is unhappy? Those without children in schools.
  
  
• The Department of Education has opened an investigation into the use of legacy and donor status in admission at Harvard. The Crimson's coverage is here, WBUR here. This follows release Monday of a report that rich students are overrepresented at selective colleges, which the New York Times covered here. Several colleges have ended the use of legacy status in admissions, with Wesleyan being the latest last week.

Senate supplemental strikes the ESSER spending requirement

 Good news: the Senate supplemental budget filed yesterday includes $75M in extraordinary relief for special education expenses, but it strikes the language the House included that required ESSER to be "obligated" to qualify.

Language from the Senate bill below:

Don't forget: public comment open on health and PE state standards

The Conversation today has a look at the proposed revised state health and PE standards. Don't forget that they are open to public comment until August 28. Those who don't want to see this happen for sure will comment; be sure that those of us who do comment even more! 

Mid July Worcester Public Schools update

 

Don't forget the summer reading!
Image from Mo Willems

Taken in part from Dr. Monárrez's weekly updates to the Worcester School Committee

• On Thursday, the Worcester School Committee completed Dr. Monárrez's first evaluation. The composite evaluation--which takes all seven of our evaluations and creates a single document--is the official evaluation. That, along with the seven individual evaluations, I have shared here (they will be going up on the district website once they are converted to something that can be read by screen readers). Note that the School Committee did go into executive session following the evaluation to consider her contract. 
  
  
• Please don't miss that we have an updated 2023-34 school year calendar. As a result of the agreed-upon teachers' contract, we now have an additional professional development day for staff. We are using this opportunity to shift them to the November (7th) and March (5th) election days (March is the presidential primary, believe it or not). Those are NON SCHOOL DAYS FOR STUDENTS, so please mark your calendars!
  Staff starts the year on Thursday, August 24th.
  Grades 1-12 start on Monday, August 28.
  Preschool and kindergarten start on Thursday, August 31.
  
  
• Families of ALL WPS students, please note that there will be a summer P-EBT payment of $120 this Tuesday, July 25. If your family receives EBT, it will appear on your card; for all others it will be on your child's P-EBT card. If you no longer have that, you can contact the Department of Transitional Assistance for a new one. 
  As always, if you don't feel your family needs it, spend it on food and donate an equivalent amount of money (always money!) to a local food bank. Also, don't forget the free meals for kids across Massachusetts. 
  
  
• On Thursday, we also celebrated Dr. Helen Friel, our School Committee clerk, who is retiring after FORTY years as Clerk, and 57 in the district! 

Congratulations to Dr. Helen Friel on her retirement after 57 years of service to the Worcester Public Schools! Today is Dr. Friel’s last School Committee Meeting as Assistant to the Superintendent and Clerk of the School Committee. Before working in these roles for nearly forty… pic.twitter.com/yhNOxU2AZo

— Joe Petty (@MayorJoePetty) July 20, 2023

•  As a result, on Thursday, we also had an item to consider how the School Committee office is organized with a draft position description. Most notably, Dr. Friel's position was "assistant to the superintendent," and thus that position did not work directly for the Committee. Part of the proposal is to change that. 
  This item was held, to give Committee members a chance to fully review it, and the Committee will have a special meeting early next month to decide on that position description so that it might be posted. Mayor Petty also made a motion to refer the process to Governance, to have them act as the preliminary screening committee, and bring forward finalists to the Committee.
  
  
• We have a new Chief Equity Officer! Dr. Kimberlee Henry is coming to us from the Watertown Public Schools, where she served in a similar position. Prior to that, she was a principal in Lowell. The office will also have a second Director of Cultivation and Recruitment (rather than what were to be coaching positions) in Caleb Encarnacion-Rivera, who has been serving in a similar position in the King Philip Regional School District (and is a Worcester Public Schools alum!). 
  
  
• On the 13th, the Committee was informed of Director of Special Education Kay Seale's resignation (it appears she is going to Boston). There is strength in the district to continue on an interim basis, but this is obviously an important position that the district will be moving forward to fill quickly. Parents and community members will be involved in first round interviews (stay tuned for that). And note that this is an advise and consent position, so the School Committee votes the position. 
  
  
• Carmen Melendez-Quintero, who has been the Director of Multilingual Learning, will be moving to Director of Guidance. The district is now seeking a replacement director. Note that parents and community members will be involved in the first round of these interviews, as well. 
  
  
• On principals: Matthew Morse, who was the principal at Forest Grove Middle, has taken the district School Safety position (recall that this is a facilities-involved, not student-involved, position). Shannon Conley, who was the principal at Sullivan Middle, has taken the position of Director of Alternative Schools. As a result, there will be a full search for a new principal at Forest Grove and at Sullivan. 
  
  

And, yes, summertime is usually when there are staffing changes for schools! 

Doing the math on WCACS

 We got an enrollment update from the Telegram and Gazette today on Worcester Cultural Academy Charter School, which misses why enrollment matters, so I did some math on Twitter. I'm replicating that here in case Twitter implodes. 

Schools in Massachusetts are funded according to the foundation budget formula, and in Worcester, that is really about all we're funded at. This has the convenience of making the math pretty straightforward. 

• 133 kids K-4. There's a slight difference in the foundation rates for K and 1-5, but let's use the round number of $9500 per student for FY24.
  133 * 9500= $1,263,500
  
  
• 5.5% of their kids are English learners. That's 6.65 kids (Yeah, I don't know, either). We'll round up to 7.The foundation rate increment for K-5 EL is $2,724.17.
  7 * 2,724.17= $19,069.19
  
  
• Charters only carry in district sped, which is an assumed 3.9% of enrollment this year, so that's 5.187 kids for them.
  That rate is $30,771.12 for FY24, so that's an additional $153,855.6

• For the sake of argument, let's pretend that every single last one of their kids is considered low income. There's no way that's the case, but let's run with it. That's the highest low income group (80+%), which is $7,575.55 for FY24.
  133* 7,575.55 = $1,007,548.15
  
  
• They've have a smidge more from the towns for the 15 students who come from places other than Worcester that fund over foundation. I am leaving that out, but let's realize that it is NOT a lot of money we're talking about. 
  
  
• Charter schools get an additional facilities allocation of $1088 per pupil.
  133 * 1088 = $144,704
  
  

The total? $2,588,676.94

Their budget is $4M for this year, of which $250,000 is coming from a grant. They don't have it.

And, look, here's why this matters: not because we told you so, although we did.
Because far and away the largest cost center for schools is staff. 

Not enough money? Many fewer staff.

As it was, we in WPS didn't think they had adequate staffing for this school. We *know* their salary estimates don't pan out. 

That creates a situation that really not great for their students, which at the end of the day is what matters about this.

My evaluation of Dr. Monárrez

All of the evaluations are here.

 Overall comments: 

PROFICIENT

The Worcester School Committee seeks an experienced,
educational leader who is a strategic thinker,
who will champion the district’s need for education equity,
and who has demonstrated a track record of superior educational management.

So opened the brochure the Worcester School Committee shared last year in our search for a new superintendent. In re-reading the brochure in preparation for this evaluation, I continue to be astounded at how well Dr. Monárrez is precisely what and who is described therein. That the community, speaking through the Committee, knew what the district needed is borne out by the work of this past year. 

Evaluation of Dr. Monárrez: a few notes

 The Worcester School Committee evaluates Dr. Monárrez for the first time this afternoon. Two weeks ago, I devoted my Sunday evening Instagram update to how this works:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Tracy O'Connell Novick (@tracyoconnellnovick)

The Mayor has been compiling our individual evaluations into a composition evaluation; it is that composite--and ONLY that composite!--which is the legal evaluation of the superintendent. 

It is crucial that the Committee speak with one voice. The MASC pop quiz version of this is "how many bosses does the Superintendent have? ONE: the Committee meeting in a posted session." This very much applies to the evaluation, which we then will use to create her goals for next year.

Past practice is that the Worcester School Committee does share the individual evaluations (they are public record); should that happen, I'll post a link. I'll also post my individual evaluation, along with the composite (once we have it electronically) in a new post here.  

UPDATE: you can find the composite, as well as all of the individual evaluations, here.

on tonight's Council

There's been active discussion in many places regarding many things about tonight's Council agenda. I just sent the following email: 

Good morning,

I find that there are several matters before you this evening that overlap with concerns I have as a member of the Worcester School Committee. I thus write to you in that capacity, cc'ing my own district councilor as well as the members of the Education Committee.

First, I want to applaud the city for moving forward with Complete Streets work on Mill Street. The "Speedway," as it has long been known, is a menace to pedestrians. We are, as a city, overdue for due consideration of our pedestrians, many of whom are children. As those on Education will recall, we took that matter up at our fall meeting, and I look forward to the city administration collaborating with WPS administration on making the streets of the city safer during all weather for our community on foot, on bikes, in buses of all kinds, as well as in cars. I urge you not to delay this work out of what is clearly a political display. We are all aware that campaigning during public meetings is barred.

Second, I note with interest that there are a number of items regarding lifeguards and access to water safely in the city during summer months. Would that this level of interest had resulted from the Parks committee meeting on January 9th, during which I and others  spoke during public testimony, noting the city's lack of structure, support, training, or adequate funding for lifeguards. The stabbing of a lifeguard resulted in no after action assessment by the city, and the ensuing years have only further weakened the department, as word has spread among guards that Worcester is not a safe place to work. Let me be very clear: as the mother of a former Worcester lifeguard, and as a current Committee member, I will publicly and vigorously oppose any collaboration to recruit our students as lifeguards until there is a top to bottom overhaul of the city aquatics department, including leadership, training, funding, staffing, support, and protocols and process. Until then, I will not endanger our students in this manner. 

Let me also be clear, though: We cannot, in the climate crisis we are in, stand by and not have safe access to water, either. Please make the changes necessary.

Third, the inclusion of "robot dogs" on the agenda is dismaying. We do not create a safer city for our children by adopting measures against which science fiction has been warning us for at least a century.

Finally, I have followed with interest the question regarding mock health clinics, in part because I have waited for other measures to come back from the city administration from the Education Committee without that happening. I hope the Council will take seriously the responsibility the city administration has to respond to Council items, whatever their personal opinions on the contents therein.

Thank you, as always, for your time and attention,

Tracy Novick 

when assistance is commentary

 I and others shared the following from the supplemental budget passed by the House earlier this week: 

House Democrats on Wednesday began moving a $693 million spending bill that includes a $75 million reserve account districts could tap to manage the increase in special education tuition costs after pandemic-era federal grants expired.

That's from the State House News report on the supplemental budget here.

Because this bill (it's H 3982) moved as quickly as it did (irony, as the FY24 budget is still outstanding), what wasn't clear even to those of us who pay attention to such things was the conditions under which that funding can be tapped: 

...no funds from this item shall be distributed to any school district that has unobligated Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds pursuant to: (i) section 18003(b) of the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, Public Law 116-136; (ii) 5 of 14 section 313 of the federal Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, Division M of Public Law 116-260; (iii) section 2001 of the federal American Rescue Plan Act of 2001, Public Law 117-2; or (iv) any other federal act providing for COVID-19 response funds

aka: have unobligated ESSER funds? You can't have this help.

Now Andrew O'Leary correctly notes that this depends on what one takes "unobligated" to mean, as every district in the Commonwealth has long since reported to the state what their intentions are for all of their ESSER funds, so one would think this would mean we're all okay.
Unfortunately, this seems to have once again involved the ongoing "sitting on money" perception that has been--let's be clear here--the fiction that has been bandied about since day one by those who aren't actually listening to districts. 

Exactly how many months is DESE CFO Bill Bell going to need to report again to the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education that districts are on track to spend all funds on plans they submitted years ago before it permeates the hearing of those who are making these claims in Massachusetts? 

As for Worcester? While this isn't assistance we'd be eligible for, in any case, we have HVAC plans that are through engineering and the supply chain that are now being done. We have six million dollars in literacy curriculum. We have 65 buses still coming. 
In Massachusetts, it is illegal for a school district to pay a bill until they've received the good or service. Once those things come, Worcester will have a bill to pay. Until then, those dollars are going to appear "unspent" to the facile reviewer. 

Speaking, as always, for myself: this is insulting the thoughtful multi-year planning for one time funds (special education tuition, of course, is not) that districts have done.
We at the local level deserve better than this. 

While it is possible that this is a "pre-conference" bill (the leadership of both chambers agreed to it ahead of time, so there won't be changes in the Senate, and thus no conference committee), it's still worth contacting your Senator(s). I have. 

Liberty and justice for whom?

 I haven't been blogging on "Moms for Liberty" the group out of Florida that started during the pandemic about masking, but shifted into book bans, anti-diversity work, and more; there's also a close relationship/overlap with Christian nationalism. They had a national gathering last week in Philadelphia, though, and the mainstream press did a not-great job in outlining what they're about, so I thought I'd share some links here to be sure we're more clear.

The claim is that this is "parent voice," but which parents advocating for what is very specific. 

Recommended reading (I'll add more if more comes to my attention): 

• Inside Moms for Liberty’s summit: Big money and even bigger conspiracy theories from Media Matters for America
  In session after session, speakers offered a warped view of reality aimed at manipulating parents into believing they’re righteous liberators battling some ambiguous enemy located in public schools. They warned audience members that the teachers unions and other school officials that are “indoctrinating our kids” are on a mission to do everything from grooming their children to securing “world domination.”
  I’ve been following Moms for Liberty for over two years, and it’s now the fastest-growing self-described “parental rights” organization in the United States, hiding behind the innocuous descriptor to covertly push a far-right agenda. Its meteoric rise has coincided with an alarming increase in harassment and threats directed at teachers, administrators, and school officials across the country — so much so that the Southern Poverty Law Center designated Moms for Liberty as an extremist group this year. 
  
  
• Moms for Liberty is part of a long history of rightwing mothers’ activism in the US from The Guardian
  More broadly, the group’s mission resonates with an established history of rightwing mothers’ movements that focused on schools in order to block movements for social equality and to preserve structures of white supremacy.

• My Deeply Unsettling Return to the Moms for Liberty Conference from Mother Jones:
  Reading ABC’s piece a few days after the conference ended, I marveled not at its neutral tone, but at how much simply had been ignored.
  
  
• Moms for Liberty flexes its muscle--and faces pushback from The Hechinger Report/Salon:
  This year, the disinformation about what actually happens in public school took on the sheen of familiarity. Strategy sessions covered ground that had become mainstream to many in attendance: “Comprehensive Sex Education: Sex Ed or Sexualization,” “Protecting Parental Rights,” “Protecting Kids from Gender Ideology,” “Cracking the SEL Code: The Manipulative Double Speak of Social Emotional Learning.” 
  
  
• At Moms for Liberty Summit, 'Mama Bears' declare spiritual war on the 'radical left' from Religion Dispatches
  The vibe was strange, eerie, and excited—a cross between a White supremacist sorority meeting; a capitalist love-fest with deep bonding over hatred for “the Left,” the LGBTQ+ community, and anti-racism efforts (all dressed up as expressions of love for their children); and a pentecostal revival with some distinct NAR overtones.
  
  
• Six reasons why Moms for Liberty is an extremist organization from The Hill
  Despite (or because of) the overheated rhetoric, many Americans appear to have very little substantive knowledge about Moms for Liberty.

"...what he can help, and what he cannot"

 Two things a man should never be angry at: what he can help, and what he cannot help.                                                                                                                                                         Thomas Fuller

It's the end of another Board of Ed week, and I find myself again starting at multiple tabs open on my laptop--

•  "Riley rips Boston schools – again" from Commonwealth Magazine
• "Blindsided’: State slams BPS over O’Bryant plans" from the Boston Herald
• "One year into school improvement plan, state official grades Boston’s progress 'incomplete'" from WBUR

--and struggling to put into words just how weird this all is.

To read on Students for Fair Admissions, Inc v. President and Fellows of Harvard College

 aka, the affirmative action case decided Thursday