I had every intention of writing you at least two blog posts this week--one for what happened December 21, and one for what to know and consider in the next Worcester School Committee term--but COVID knocked me flat this week.
As the year and term ends, then, I'll leave you with how I closed with the Committee on the 21st.
He's more than the face on the attendance billboards:
As I often say, absenteeism is really a manifestation of a need being unmet. We need to think carefully about questions like, is there a mental health challenge the student is experiencing? Do they have stable housing and enough food? Those are the kinds of things that we're having deep conversations about. In our first fiscal year, we really were thoughtful about investing in mental health strategies and universal [mental health] screeners. I think we're going to see improvements over the coming years. But it is a big issue and we're paying close attention to it.
This is not, of course, how the Commissioner has been approaching this issue at all.
This may get interesting in the new year.
...squeaked in on the legal posting with fifteen minutes to spare this morning. You can find it here.
It's a two item agenda:
Burncoat High School was accepted into the Mass School Building Authority pipeline today, entering the Eligibility Period.
Burncoat's the oldest of our comprehensive high schools, being built in 1964. It serves 1174 students, and is home of both the arts magnet program and the dual language program.
YAY!!
...I feel as if the above title should continue "Part X of a continuing series"
Yesterday, the Boston Globe posted an article with the following headline:
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| Globe headline reads: "Pandemic funding for Mass. schools is going away, but state funding should soften the blow" |
The crux of the piece is:
In Massachusetts at least, schools will probably be much better off than those in neighboring states for the next school year, according to a recent analysis from Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab. The research center found that while the end of federal aid could mean, on average, a 3 percent reduction in funding in Massachusetts, most districts will probably see that loss mitigated by increased state aid.
aka: It's going to be less money everywhere, but it's going to be a smaller loss in Massachusetts.
The Mass School Building Authority has their final Board meeting on Wednesday, and their agenda (which I've shared here) includes an proposed (subject to Board vote) invitation to Eligibility which will be of local interest (last in alphabetical order):
Worcester Public Schools earns the Meritorious Budget Award!
Congratulations to Brian Allen, Sara Consalvo, Mohammed Siddiqui, Ivanna Then, Nancy Blomstrom, Akshay Guru Rajkumar, Liam Young, Stephanie Carrasco, Kate Ota, and Emma Kearney (that's the budget office).
As I have said many times: it is a great pleasure to get to work with such a well-prepared document, and none of us in Worcester should ever take that for granted.
Last night was a LOT, and with two members having commitments as parents and it being the mayoral holiday rounds, we ran part of the Committee with just a quorum, which is unusual!
That's why, oh committee watchers, I was chairing; in the absence of both the chair and the vice-chair, the senior member chairs (and then hands off sequentially, which is why Molly McCullough chaired when I was speaking).
Also, it appears the T&G is going to do a terrible job covering this meeting, so I guess it's up to us again.
On this day when we mourn yet two more shootings in Texas and in Nevada, and Senate Republicans again blocked an effort to reinstate an assault weapons ban, I would urge you to take time to read "Someone tell me what to do" which is the work of ProPublica, the Texas Tribune, and PBS Frontline on the police response to the Uvalde shootings. As the article opens:
When confronted with a mass shooter, the children and teachers of Uvalde knew what to do.
Many officers did not.
The part that was most heartbreaking to me: because the students were quiet, as they have been trained to be, the officers didn't think that anyone was in the classrooms.
Frontline has also a documentary that they've put together. You can read about the reporting here.
gb 3-257 O’Connell Novick (November 28, 2023)
To submit testimony in opposition to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s proposed increase in weight in the state accountability system for chronic absenteeism at the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s December meeting.
from the December 7, 2023 Worcester School Committee agenda
I suspect that you might need to be deep underground, beyond the reach of cell service, in order to have missed that there is some concern on children's school attendance. Just in the past two weeks, you could read about it in The New York Times, The Hill, USA Today, plus about every corner of the country.
If you've been following Board of Ed meetings here in Massachusetts, you may have noticed that this has been a frequent topic of Commissioner Riley at meetings; he spoke about it in October, and then again last month. He has declared, absent any research or even discussion, that the uptick in students being absent is a result of their falling out of the habit of going to school. When asked if he's discussed this with families (which Member Mary Ann Stewart has done at both meetings), his response has been that he's talked to--not with, let alone listened to--them.
He has decided, not only that this is a focus of this year, but that it is such a focus that the state accountability system needs to be reworked, so that districts can be (my quotes) "held accountable" for student absence.
Now, let me first be clear: yes, we have more kids not attending school than we did before the pandemic. The presentation at the October meeting made that very clear.
But what Massachusetts as a state does not know is why. We haven't asked. We haven't delved into the various and many reasons why kids might be missing more school than they were. What the Commissioner--and make no mistake that it IS the Commissioner--has done has simply asserted, in his ongoing conviction that school buildings being open is both an unequivocal and irreplaceable good, and that closing school buildings was nothing but harmful, that having buildings closed meant that kids "fell out of the habit."
In marked contrast, and just for example, last month The 74 suggested six reasons for children being increasingly absent:
The Commissioner's solution to this has been twofold: he has given, he's said, about $4M in grants statewide. $4M in a state in which the total for K-12 spending is somewhere in excess of $20B a year.
He's also going to put the Secretary of Education on billboards to emphasize to parents that it's important that their children attend school.
Now, I'm more than happy to see Secretary Tutwiler's general enjoyment of his job in more places. But the implicit condensation in billboards telling parents that school is important is a demonstration of just how little the Commissioner is connecting with anyone on this.
He's certain he knows what the issue is, despite no information.
Doing the actual real work of getting kids back to school more is hard, time consuming, and, yes, quite probably expensive work. It's about relationships, and health, and better support for families and students (and staff, come to that). It's about finding out why each student isn't coming to school, and what it would take to get them there.
That isn't what the Commissioner is doing here. There's no time, no relationships, very little money, and zero interest in the actual why's here.
The Commissioner now going to jump straight to punish--and that's all this is going to be is a punishment--districts who don't pull those rates up, with very little state support to do so.
Thus my item on Thursday's Worcester School Committee agenda. The only way we have of stopping this is for many--MORE THAN WORCESTER, please!--push back from the district level on this one.
The next meeting of the Board is on December 19.
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The post title is attributed to Mark Twain, but there is no evidence that he said it.
hearing will be going up here (updating as we go here!)
As reporter Katie Lannan notes:
✨three fiscal years at once✨ https://t.co/TYO13qYM98
— Katie Lannan (@katielannan) December 4, 2023
Senate Ways and Means Chair Senator Rodrigues notes that the Senate is in session, subject to the call of the chair and "I need to put fiscal year '23 to bed before I start talking about FY25"
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| I'm not including this below but I am not going to miss a chance to once again brag about the fact that both Mr. Hennessey and Mr. Allen got national awards because of our fabulous transportation department. Photo by Dan O'Brien from our November 2 meeting |
Before we move into December, in which you'll see some important things being voted complete--strategic plan! rules!--I did want to highlight a few things that the Worcester School Committee did during November that will matter:
First up, Governing looks at the culture warrior aspect of school board elections and looks into if that is waning:
There will be other issues that polarize future school board candidates as these shifts ebb and flow according to what’s been successful and what’s failed in capturing voters’ attention. That cycle of controversy is yet another reason why it’s too soon to call these elections results a permanent blow to extreme partisanship in school board elections. Complacency and a sense of too-early satisfaction around some wins in school board elections nationwide can’t help protect students and teachers’ rights.
