Jack Foley recognized

Among those recognized with MASC Life Membership last week at the MASC Joint Conference was former Worcester School Committee member Jack Foley. I just wanted to share what was said about Jack there:

Jack Foley’s 22 years of service on the Worcester School Committee were an exemplar of, as the MASC Code of Ethics states, school committee service as “means of unselfish service with no intent to ‘play politics’ in any sense of the word or to benefit personally from their Committee activities.” 

Jack’s service to the larger Worcester Public Schools community began with his co-chairing, with eventual Secretary of Education Paul Reville, the successful city override vote of June 1991. That vote, two years before the McDuffy decision, was a marker of the needs on not only Worcester’s children, but the state’s children, for which Jack would continue his work on Worcester’s school committee. 

His service was always to those most marginalized, his focus always on the otherwise unheard. His leadership in committee work on school finance made him a trusted voice in the decade’s long work to reform the school funding system, 25 years after McDuffy. 

His professional career was as an administrator at Clark University in Worcester. In that capacity he was instrumental in helping to organize the first of MASC’s Poverty and Equity Summits, which Clark hosted. 

He is recognized for his work with other MASC leaders in focusing on equity and services for students and their families and for modeling the best in local elective public service.

Jack will receive this award at a December Worcester School Committee meeting.