Hey, can we talk about how weird the Board of Ed in December was?

a white tee shirt says "A lot going on at the moment"
(as seen on Taylor Swift)
This is actually one I bought as a gift more than once.
I hope that doesn't violate an anything?

I feel like this kind of got caught up in the December crush, but can we note for a minute how WEIRD the December Board of Ed "is there an agenda/yes, there is/it only has two things/oh wait no meeting after all" thing was?

The Commissioner has made a point just about every month to go on a bit of a harangue on the Boston Public Schools, always off agenda, always with, shall we say, elevated emotion. He tells the Board, for several months in advance, that Boston will be at the December meeting, and...that meeting at the last minute doesn't happen?

Also, the agenda didn't have any back up for the meeting, at least publicly. If what the deal is with Boston is "have they met the requirements of this extensive agreement we have," you'd I think want to have a report that shows how they're doing.

And maybe this is a side note, but I assume BPS was bringing in the big guns for that meeting, and then...it gets cancelled? At the last minute?

Similarly, the only other item on that December agenda was the chronic absenteeism item. In an ENORMOUS rush, the Commissioner has anointed this his primary concern this year, to the extent of saying that he wants to change the accountability system MIDYEAR. Can we talk about how much of a bad idea it is to change the accountability system halfway (or more) through the year? DESE's really going to say, in January or later, "oh, we've actually been judging you by this other system all year long, even though you haven't had a chance to know or do anything about that?"

This is so super urgent, again, that he's said it's his big priority. The Board expresses, by Board standards, bits of skepticism about the plan; he says, that, even though it isn't a regulation, they'll bring it back to them to weigh in before sending it out for public comment.

And then: POOF! The whole thing vanishes. The meeting is cancelled. Nothing is shared anywhere on what's going on with accountability. So...are we still doing that? Or did it go away?

And incidentally, I recently learned that the much-vaunted grants going out to districts?
$10,000 for each district.
Do you know how little can be done in literally ANY district to work on...nearly anything with $10K? I genuinely cannot think of anything beyond maybe printing some materials? 

There's no Board of Ed again until the end of the month. But I just wanted to mark how SUPER WEIRD December was.