Four bullet points about yesterday's Board of Ed

Lynn students politely asking to be heard about KIPP Lynn.
If only Pioneer Valley students could have been there.

Think of this as the TL/DR of the Board meeting (official writeup from the MASC end coming today):

•  Secretary Tutwiler spoke eloquently in his opening comments about Massachusetts having an unwavering commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. There will be something coming jointly from his office, DESE, and others in the coming days.
  
  
• The charter votes went: AMSA (5-5= failed); EMK Horace Mann (9-1= approved, Tutwiler the no); KIPP Lynn (4-6 = failed); Pioneer Valley Chinese Immersion (6-4 = approved); Pioneer Valley Arts (6-4 = approved); South Shore Charter (4-6= approved)
  Tutwiler voted no on everything, including the Horace Mann.
  Craven voted no on KIPP Lynn. I am fairly certain that she has never voted no on a charter in her entire time on the Board.
  Something is up.
  The other flipped vote from Lynn to Pioneer was the student rep. Lynn students attended the Board meeting and (politely) requested time to speak, which was rejected, with Craven referring them to the student. I think he took that seriously.
  No kids from the Pioneer Valley there, as (as their delegation noted) it's damn inconvenient to get to Everett and no public comment is taken remotely. The location of Board meetings and the public comment policy are both under Board purview; they ought to do something about this. 
  
  
• The competency determination reg revisions were voted out for public comment. They pull all the "MCAS=CD" language, and specify the courses that have already been spelled out as required to align with state law (2 high school English; algebra I + geometry; bio/chem/physics/tech+engineering). It also adds one year of U.S. history (already required by state law). It's going to provide for the limited circumstances when a student can't prove they took a class. It's going to define "satisfactorily completing coursework" as earning full credit and "showing mastery" as successfully completing in line with grading policy" final assessment; a capstone or portfolio.
  THING THAT CONCERNS ME FROM A LOCAL PERSEPCTIVE: it is going to require competency determination policies, which the Department plans to collect. Also, the Department will plan to add auditing the GRADING of those course through measurement of other outcome measures as part of their regular review of districts.
  Did some of us say that DESE would be reaching straight into classrooms if the ballot question passed? Oh yes we did. They take that state guarantee to every single child seriously. I don't blame them at all for that; this is a logical outcome. But this doesn't sound like what was promised by the ballot proponents, does it?
  
  
• CTE school admission is continued to a special March 10 meeting (seemingly mostly so they can listen to another round of public comment on it). The proposed regulations, which would then be going out for public comment require that the only two selected criteria be attendance (only for no more than two years prior to attendance, only 10 or more unexcused absences) and discipline, limited to major infractions only. Students cannot be ranked or tiered based on selective criteria.
  There's definitely some Board pushback on the 10, as all of us who have been around kids know how fast 10 adds up.
  
  
• Teacher licensure: the big news here is they're sending out for public comment continuing the alternative licensure pilot.