Principal and Assistant Principal appointments

This afternoon, we received the following from Superintendent Boone:

I am happy to announce the Principal and Assistant Principals selected for the following:

• Siobhan McKenna Dennis, Principal, Columbus Park School
• Lauren Chuk, Acting Assistant Principal, Canterbury Street School
• Susan Donahue, Acting Assistant Principal, Rice Square School
• Patricia Murphy-Brown, Acting Assistant Principal, Vernon Hill School
• Maureen Power, Assistant Principal, Jacob Hiatt Magnet School
• Joanne Quist, Acting Assistant Principal, Sullivan Middle School
• Tina Schirner, Assistant Principal, Grafton Street School

Finance and Operations: Signage

schools that need additional signage so you can find your way in
addressed as budget funding permits
still needing signage: Wawecus, Canterbury, Grafton Street, Union Hill, Elm Park, Goddard

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!

Broken pipes

No, we aren't immune...
If you're following things over on the Worcester Twitter feeds, you've seen that we have broken pipes at several schools as of this afternoon:

The latest victim of frozen pipes/flooding: Worcester Technical High School. @DJEricPike @cascadingwaters
— Joe (@ScanWorcester) January 4, 2014

Then:

Among about an additional dozen water calls since my last tweet, we can add Forest Grove MS to the list. @cascadingwaters @DJEricPike
— Joe (@ScanWorcester) January 4, 2014

And:

@cascadingwaters @ScanWorcester @DJEricPike sounds like canterbury street is the latest :(
— jen macdonald (@MacDonaldJen) January 4, 2014

There are others. Facilities is on top of this, and I expect that we'll get an update once they have a handle on what we're dealing with.
UPDATE: Looks as though the T&G found it, too.

Day by Day subs; supplemental programs; coaches; athletic OM

I'd just like to comment here that the AC is on and it is FREEZING
Colorio: jump in number of subs since 2007
Luster: quality individuals to continue instruction
"best effort that administration was able to do"
Novick asks: concerns with substitutes should go to the building principals or to HR
Biancheria asks about salary
Luster: ability to pay (this is less than local)
passes
Supplemental programs
O'Connell: PE for Creamer evening
only for students in the program?
Boone: open to students across the district
asks for a report
Monfredo: returnee program: how many students are in that?
Gribouski: 18 students this year, pilot year
as they finish, more students can access the program
extending through the summer
have students finish their credits over the summer and graduate by fall
Biancheria: could streamline costs of translators
community schools (Clark St, Canterbury, Elm Park, and Quinsigamond): what we consider a community school program? What are we offering?
back-and-forth and had a number of conversations
Boone comments that there was a report in TLSS on community schools; asks that it be reviewed
was there any change?
Boone: description has not changed; grants that have sunset (ed?)
Biancheria: "they have not changed their rates since 1994" (WPD)
additions to the Creamer Center of sped and ELL as well as the school adjustment counselor, can't find it in the site based budget
Luster: they are system-wide employees, they don't show up at the school budget
Allen: not a position, it's additional time (at $30/hour)
Gribouski: they're an hourly rate; both in evening program or credit recovery program
Novick: translation: how's it going?
we've added two languages! Twi and Patois (that's to Spanish, Portguese,Vietnamese, Albanian, and Arabic)
Colorio: if we aren't using services, will it be less?
Coaches:
O'Connell: do we assume everyone will field a team?
Allen: blanket amount, not sport or school
Shea: notes that some of girls soccer teams did not have enough numbers; softball in the spring (JV)
look at increasing participation for female athletes throughout the district
O'Connell: great success at citywide teams: should we switch some of these to individual high schools?
Shea: where we have seen it, we have tried to do so
O'Connell: can have both citywide and school-by-school teams? Yes.
asks for a report in spring for expanding sports teams
Colorio: middle school expansion: boys and girls basketball in winter
Shea: asked to go from Sept to May: intermurals throughout the year in three sessions
what are the sports? soccer, tennis, baseball, softball, floor hockey...all space dependant
working with principals
Biancheria: cheerleader advisers under athletes as they should be
bowling which is run as an after school program
approved
Athletic OM:
Novick: requesting a report on gymnastics equipment throughout the district, including location and condition
the Title IX survey showed girls most interested in gymnastics; major expense is equipment
complaint on MIAA costs, which Boone shares (I told her she had my support to lead a revolution)
supplies being cut due to purchase of new helmets last year
costs of rental of ice time and pool: underfunded
Colorio: urging gate revenue increase: get more people to games
Monfredo: could we look at the cost of a citywide gymnastics team?
rental of Foley Stadium sign
Allen: has been bid out four or five times with no success
O'Connell: how about an RFP?
Biancheria: report on athletic transportation; dollars spent by school
Shea: could be broken down by season, hard to do by school...Durham
Allen: can do in house
gate receipts offset costs in account: general spent on game officials

This is it for today!

New principals for Canterbury Street and for Nelson Place

This afternoon, Superintendent Boone announced the new principals for Canterbury Street School and for Nelson Place School.
Congratulations to Mary Falcone (currently assistant principal at Columbus Park School), who will be heading up Canterbury Street School.
Congratulations to Monica Poitras (currently of the Fitchburg Public Schools), who will be heading up Nelson Place.
Both will start this summer.

Principal openings for next fall

We've received the posted (for Fall 2013) openings for principals of Elm Park Community School, Nelson Place School, and Canterbury Street School.

Heating after the long weekend

The Worcester School Committee received the following in an email from Mr. Allen regarding heat in the schools this week (underlining added):

Although the number of instances over this period of time is high, please know that the type of issues are very common that the Facilities Department faces with the schools throughout the heating season.
Columbus Park had a water line break in the boiler room and heating issues from the boiler.  Several of the technicians were deployed to address this issue at the school.  All of the issues have been resolved.
We had an unusual number of calls related to Canterbury Street.  This issue here was something that occurs in some of our schools not yet on full monitoring.  The custodian reported to Maintenance Services first thing this morning that the building was cold.  Since we had a number of personnel at Columbus Park, Maintenance Services was on site at the school between 9-9:30 a.m.  The boiler was reset and is again fully operational.  However, it is likely that it took several hours to regain normal heating temperatures to the entire building.
McGrath, Forest Grove, May Street, and Doherty had a variety of issues affecting heat delivery.  All of those overall building issues have been resolved.  There are instances of isolated classrooms issues at these site that will be addressed.
Burncoat High (B-Wing) has no heat and a replacement part is being shipped from Texas for the repair.  The repair should be completed by end of the week.  The school is fully aware of the status and will make adjustments to building usage as appropriate and needed.
Claremont, Roosevelt, Norrback, Quinsigamond, and Worcester Arts have new boilers through Honeywell ESCo program and each of these schools are having operational/technical issues associated with new boiler set-up and controls adjustments.  Honeywell and the boiler manufacturers are working these issues at the schools and we hopeful they can resolve them in the very near future.
As we progress into the cold winter season, it is not uncommon to have multiple heating issues at our schools on any given day.  Please be assured that the Facilities Department will respond to any and all heating issues that are reported by the schools.  They very are cognizant of the instructional benefit of having a warm and comfortable classroom and every effort is made to minimize disruptions to the learning process resulting from any facilities issue. 

And I will only add ('though this is somewhat repeating what Mr. Allen says above) that yes, you should always say something if you have a concern,and no, it is not okay for a building to be cold.

...and back to our regular meeting

...with the National Anthem performed by Canterbury Street School students.
Approving prior fiscal year payments for some stipends that hadn't been appropriately placed in the system.
Some questions here from Mr. O'Connell on if we can avoid this (as per usual)
Allen comments that the advantage of having a homegrown system is that we can update the system, but that it's also a data-entry issue.
approved