It's time to talk about Doherty

The good news last month that Doherty was invited into Feasiblity with MSBA on their renovation/rebuild means it's time to start paying attention to this project. Feasibility is the part  where renovation is considered, and locations of a rebuild are considered.

South High was relatively easy: the school department had enough space at the Sullivan/South campus to build a new building onsite while continuing to use the current building. The city did this at Nelson Place as well.

There will be no such solution possible at Doherty. The footprint of the school, the parking lots, and the practice field are all that the school department has. The rest is parkland.

Those who watch green space in the city have every reason to be concerned: Worcester Tech, of course, was built on Green Hill Park land, after a protracted legal battle. A quick glance down the list of current Worcester schools shows that this was a standing Worcester practice: Belmont Street and Wawecus both have nice granite posts outside not because the school is there, but because they are on what was parkland. And they're hardly alone.

A year ago, Mayor Petty tweeted out this:

RE: New @DohertyMemorial I have no intention of encroaching on Newton Hill. We’ll be discussing alt. sites & the community will be involved

— Joseph M. Petty (@MayorPetty) February 21, 2017

There are other answers possible. It isn't, for example, as though Worcester lacks space in buildings that can/have been schools that can be acquired and renovated. There are also schools of significant size--Everett High comes to mind--that have been built on small footprints for many kids.

Worcester tends, though, to quietly do things behind the scenes unless public process is demanded. Time to start speaking up.

Worcester School Committee this week

A quick post as there are two posted Worcester School Committee meetings this week:

• There's a posted executive session for this evening in the Mayor's office to discuss collective bargaining for teachers. One assumes that this is to update the committee on the tentative agreement that was announced yesterday; the teachers vote on it on Thursday. It appears the outline is 7% over the next three years, plus 1% for last year, with the health insurance changes that other units cityside have taken.
• There's also a regular meeting of the school committee on Thursday night. The executive session is for teachers (possibly to ratify the contract, I'd assume), custodians, nurses, and computer techs, plus a grievance. They're honoring Dave Perda, who was recently appointed the superintendent of the Roman Catholic diocesan schools. They're hearing the reports from Governance and TLSS earlier this month.The first item looks like an effort towards a consent agenda, though that falls apart over the course of the rest of the agenda.There are a series of donations and prior year payments, including one "in the amount of $2,082.59 for the Secretary to the School Committee," and I don't know who that is (the School Committee has a secretary?!). Mr. Monfredo suggests updating the staff cell phone policy in light of changes in school safety procedure; he also wants the City Manager to discuss bus passes for students involved in activities with the WRTA. Mr. O'Connell is requesting energy audits for non-WPS-owned buildings (so...St. Casimir and the YMCA?), would like a list of Know Your School nights and site council meetings. Miss Biancheria is looking for another round of advertising, plus possibly lights at Belmont Street School (that's the one that has the pedestrian bridge). Miss McCullough is requesting consideration of the use of work at home during snow cancellations; you can read more about such efforts here.  

Worcester School Committee meets Thursday

The Worcester School Committee meets this Thursday, September 3. You can find the agenda here. 
We'll have the opening of school report at our next meeting, I'm told, once we get the numbers clear.
Our student reps are back! Looking forward to their contributions!

It's the hiring report! Thus while face of the agenda doesn't look very long, here's what the School Committee, with backup, version looks like:

And yes, I'll read every page! Thanks to the HR department for getting the information together!

We have a reponse on clearing up the grounds at City View (it happened).
We have a couple of responses coming from our budget session: the first clears up Miss Biancheria's query regarding the IT department; the third describes the school fruit and vegetable grant. The middle one is pretty interesting, as it deliniates school security spending. As you can see in the backup, more than double the designated school security budget is spent on security from the facilities budget. That's over and above what is spent on security out of the safety budget. 
We have the (now graduated) Doherty students coming to talk to us about their mentoring proposal.
We have recognitions for Mock Trial, for the library foundation awards, for the Boys and Girls Club awards, for Melissa Watson and the 1000 Watts barber shop, and for Mr. Twiss and the Burncoat Madrigals.
We're being asked to accept a donation from the Emerald Club for iPads for Belmont Street School.
We're being reminded of International Walk to School Day (October 7) and Manufacturing Day (October 2).
And we're being asked to appoint four school nurses.
There is NO executive session this week.

7 pm, City Hall!

New principals and assistant principals appointed

We've just received the new principals and assistant principals appointed by Superintendent Boone in our Friday letter.

Jessica Boss, Principal, Chandler Elementary Community School 

 Yeu Kue, Principal, City View Discovery School 

 Mary Labuski, Principal, Flagg Street School 

 Martha Dewar, Principal, Lincoln Street School 

 Caprice Kopka, Principal, Rice Square School 

 Josephine Robertson, Principal, Sullivan Middle 

 Carenza Jackson, Principal, Vernon Hill School 

 

 Michael Dunphy, Assistant Principal, Belmont Street Community School 

 Lynne-Ann Handleman, Assistant Principal, Chandler Magnet School (ACT) 

 Renee Powers, Assistant Principal, Lake View School 

 Nancy O’Coin, Assistant Principal, Quinsigamond School 

 Caryn McCrohon, Assistant Principal, Tatnuck Magnet School 

Mary Ellen Scanlon, Assistant Principal, Thorndyke Road School 

You can find out more about them at the above link. Nearly all are internal hires.

Update on the weekend burst pipes

The School Committee received the following from Mr. Allen yesterday:

...please be advised that the Facilities Department responded to eight schools over the weekend to address frozen / burst water pipes within the schools.  The frozen / burst pipes were at Claremont/Woodland Academies, North High, Belmont Street, Forest Grove, Canterbury Street, City View, Nelson Place, and Worcester Technical High School (City Technical Services section of building).  In all cases, the water lines were repaired and did not cause any interruption to school operations this week.  Repairs to ceiling tiles, insulation, walls, and other areas will occur over this week as needed.  In some cases the water damage was quite extensive and the Facilities Department is addressing the manner in which repairs will be scheduled.

The Facilities Department is in contact with both our ESCo and monitoring companies to determine to what extent new controls and monitoring systems contributed to some of the freeze ups.  This analysis is on-going at the present time.

Facilities and custodial staff at these schools provided an excellent response and worked much of the weekend to ready the impacted areas for normal school operations Monday morning and should be commended for their tremendous efforts!

And should you have any questions, please pass them along!

Physical plant updates: ESCo

ESCo projects: additional solar array projects at six schools
working out details at how projects would work
solar arrays at Belmont St, Chandler Magnet, Elm Park, North, Roosevelt, and South High
(Sullivan Middle and Worcester Tech have them already)
roofs need to be resealed; extends roof warranties on these schools for 20 more years (except for South is not getting resealed)
city has some debt services on these projects
estimates that 20% of electricity will be provided by solar arrays for these schools
13 cents per kilowat
50% for supply, 50% for electricity
continuing to pay city for supply rate for the electricity which city will use to pay off bonds
rest is seen as savings to WPS on utilities cost
note here from me that this takes a capital expense and converts it to a utility expense (which counts as net school spending), that the city is essentially charging the schools for a capital project
South High is not being resealed, removal and replacement of solar panels is included in agreement
city pays for the solar panels, city retains ownership of solar panels

Ain't No Sunshine

...yet.

You may have caught the article in yesterday's paper about some solar projects at six Worcester Public Schools. Alternatively, you may have caught the item on last week's City Council agenda on which the article is based. 

That last was the first I'd heard of it, which meant that I had a pretty good idea that we probably weren't going to be putting solar panels on six schools this summer (yes, we are kept better informed than that, and, rest assured, something that major is going up on the blog!). 

This afternoon, we received the following email from Superintendent Boone: 

The City Manager last week notified the City Council of solar projects at several WPS schools and this report appeared in yesterday’s Worcester Telegram.  While my administration supports alternative energy options for our schools, the City Manager’s report and the newspaper article failed to emphasize that these are all proposed projects.   

There are many benefits to this project and I look forward to actually discussing these projects with the City Manager in the near future.   

The report mentions that Sullivan Middle has been completed.  Actually, no work has been done at Sullivan Middle and significant roof work would be needed before solar panels could be installed.  The city does not intend to seal the existing roof as it is planning with the other schools due to costs at this site and that places this project in jeopardy.   

South High Community School has been identified in our Statement of Interest submittal to MSBA as our priority project.  We need determine the scope of MSBA work that may occur at the school before we invest in roof repairs and the installation of solar arrays on the roof of the school.  

The report states that roof sealing at these schools will occur this summer.  Once there is full agreement on a variety of outstanding issues, this work will commence, but this summer looks too aggressive.   

The ability to extend the existing roofs by another 20 years would allow us to use capital budget funds in other areas in the upcoming years and the potential of having reduced energy costs in our budget are certainly reasons that we will explore these projects, but my administration is undertaking a complete review and conducting due diligence before any work begins.  I intend to execute a memorandum of understanding to ensure all facets of these projects are known upfront.   

I intend to keep you informed of this potentially exciting work.  Since all of these projects are still proposed, we were not at a stage where we believed that an update was timely. 

Emphasis NOT added.

A bit more from me: we had to adjust this year's (FY13) accounts due to WPS not recooping as much money as was predicted from the already completed ESCo projects. We already had reason, but now have more to look very carefully at any major outlay of funds (and facilities resources) to see if the investment actually has a reasonable return. Thus far, we're not seeing those borne out.
We've also had excellent success of late with our MSBA submissions. If we have roof work to do (and, no argument from me, we do), overlooking an 80% reimbursement to jump the gun on solar panels doesn't make a lot of sense. The roof is the priority.
Finally, as Superintendent Boone says above: we just this spring submitted South as our number one priority for major renovation and replacement. I know we're serious about that. It doesn't look very serious, though, to have a proposal to put solar panels on the roof of a building that we're hoping to see a major rehab or rebuild on within the next few years. 

Irony

Yes, that is the [redacted] CD-ROM from the state containing Goddard and Belmont documents.
Just got back from a weekend away--more to follow!

Response from the state regarding Belmont and Goddard

I received the following cover letter from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education this afternoon:

Dear Ms. O'Connell Novick:

On February 7, 2011, I received your public records request that seeks "documents from the investigation of the 2010 MCAS testing anomalies at the Goddard School of Science and Technology and Belmont Community School in Worcester." Enclosed, please find a CD-ROM containing all public records responsive to your request.

As you will see, we have redacted or withheld information that is exempt from the public records law under G.L. c.4 7 cl.26 (invasion of personal privacy); G.L. c.4 7 cl.26(d) (development of policy positions); G.L. c.4 7 cl.26(f) (investigatory material); and based upon the attorney-client privilege. To be clear, the information redacted pursuant to the deliberative process exemption, exemption (d), concerns an unrelated school in a different school district in a matter wholly unrelated to Goddard or Belmont. References to this other matter--which has not yet been resolved--have been redacted to the extent that they appear in documents that also contain information about Goddard or Belmont.

Please contact me if you require further assistance or any additional information. Additionally, please be advised that if you wish to challenge this response, you may appeal to the Supervisor of Public Records following the procedure containted in 950 C.M.R. 32.08.

Sincerely,

Joshua Varon

Legal Council

I will post once I've gotten the CD-ROM in the mail.

Latest on MCAS testing investigation

...is over on Daily Worcesteria.
Let's just say there's a lot of black magic marker involved.

Security systems (Belmont)

Belmont just got new cameras; it has now been activated (as of last week).
As a result of the break-in, all devices in the entire system were tested with our security company. All worked and were verified.
Also, protocols were reviewed and verified (who gets notified and when)
Several other schools (secondary) are having their security systems reviewed and updated and changed as needed.

FOIA request update

I received this via email yesterday.
(sorry for the bad link earlier)

votes

full investigation: fails 3-4
plans of superintendent: filed
revealing information about investigation: fails 3-4
Belmont information: fails 3-4

Biancheria on Goddard

"certainly compliments Goddard's staff"
"my issue with this is not only the 'no caring, no sharing' of Worcester School Committee members"
all did not receive the same information
"following a joint investigation" she quotes from the press release from the state
"yesterday's rhetoric is not going to work in 2011"

Belmont not in executive

Taking Goddard/Belmont out of order

due to the public being here

Worcester School Committee agenda for February 3

You may have heard there's a Worcester School Committee meeting this Thursday!

On Belmont and MCAS

No, the Worcester School Committee was not informed of the investigation at Belmont Community School around last spring's MCAS.
There'll be an item asking for a full accounting of this on next week's agenda.

Supplemental agenda

We don't usually get one of these, either
A list of what the donations to Belmont Street Community have been spend on so far. We've gotten about $36,000 and have spent about $34,000 on:
Maps and globes (21)
Mimio bundles (12) [those turn whiteboards into computer boards]
TV/DVDs with carts (7)
Library books (111)
Two-way radios (10)
Library DVD's (62)
Letter & number sets (7)

Honoring the Belmont Community Donors

including particularly Representative Vincent Pedone, who organized the major fundraiser for Belmont.