Hey, we have an F&O meeting tomorrow!

The Worcester School Committee Standing Committee on Finance and Operations has a meeting tomorrow at 5:30 (IN PERSON, though it will stream online), and the agenda includes not only our (last?) monthly transportation update, but a corker of a facilities update! 

Quoting just a few of the updates on projects I know to be of interest: 

• on water and heat and cooling: Belmont has a new boiler; Burncoat High and Middle have new domestic hot water heaters; Chandler Magnet has a new boiler; City View has a new boiler, Goddard Elementary has a new boiler; Vernon Hill has a new boiler; Forest Grove is getting two new chillers over the summer; and North High is getting a new chiller this summer.
  
  
• on bottle fillers: The SWIG (School Water Improvement Grant) project has started with initial demo of existing fixtures. A 3-month grant extension has been approved through the end of September. Installation of new water bottle filling stations fixtures to take place over the summer, followed by required sampling.
  
  
• on ADA accessibility: Deborah Ryan Associates studies nearly complete for the following schools: Thorndyke, Gerald Creamer Center, Harlow Challenge & Reach, Columbus Park, and Lincoln Street. Draft reports have been provided for comment, with final reports anticipated Summer 2023. Construction has started on the accessibility updates at Worcester Arts Magnet (triggered by the roof replacement).
  
  
• on Burncoat High and NEASC:  Four firms have been engaged to prepare baseline reports and potential courses of action based on the findings of the NEASC report. These studies include building envelope, accessibility, mechanical systems, and traffic analysis improvements. These studies are now complete.
  
  
• on traffic management: Mount Vernon Group Architects have done traffic and pedestrian design studies at both Burncoat Middle and High and at Roosevelt. There is insufficient funding (as we've discussed) in both cases, though Facilities is looking into options to manage some of the issues of concern. 
  
  
• on Burncoat bleachers: project now awarded to a contractor; it is anticipated this will be done for the fall opening of school. The gym floor is also being refinished as part of the same project. 
  
  
  
  
  
  
• on Elm Park's gym: New wooden flooring is installed, and one coat of varnish has been applied. Roof repairs were undertaken to ensure new flooring system would not be damaged. New doors were installed at South entrance to minimize water infiltration at that location. Vendor is expected to be applying final polyurethane and markings over the next month. The gymnasium walls have also been painted, and new bleacher system installed. Anticipated completion by August 2023, ahead of the start of new school year.
  
  
  
  
  
• on the Honeywell districtwide ESSER funded HVAC updates: $22 million investment, across majority of schools in the district. Scope includes automated controls upgrades, exhaust fan replacements, rooftop units, heating systems. Project will be completed in phases, with on-going work though the Fall of 2024.
  
  
• on the new Doherty: is now weather-tight. It's on schedule for opening Fall of 2024.
  
  
• on school moves: there are moving contracts for both the Alternative school and for La Familia; both moves starting on June 21 and will be done by June 30.
  
  

There's LOTS MORE over on the agenda, so go check it out, and maybe plan to at least watch our meeting tomorrow! 

Two WPS projects on the Council agenda this week--plus Burncoat is up again

 A couple of Worcester Public Schools facilities-related notes this week:

There are two items on Tuesday's Council agenda related to WPS facilities work. 

• The first is borrowing $2M on the North High building loan to put sprinklers into the Harlow Street building (which is where Challenge and Reach Academy is now). The back up says this was discovered when the MSBA work was done; the Harlow Street School has a new roof, windows, and boiler as of (checks budget) 2020 (if you haven't been by, go check out those new windows! They really make the building look nice!).
  
  
• The second is the full borrowing for the Worcester Arts Magnet project. You might remember that Worcester Arts Magnet just moved forward with another approval vote from the MSBA board on a roof replacement. Because the cost of the work on the building is more than 30% of the building's assessed value, it triggers state regulation 521 CMR 3.3.2, which requires that the entire building then be made accessible. The estimated cost of this in total is now $6.9M. 

Also, on Thursday's agenda, the Worcester School Committee is being asked to (again) put forward Burncoat High as our number one priority (see page 183), as we (apparently?) received word in February that it wasn't accepted this year. We are not giving up on this! 

One Oklahoma representative wants to round up ELL kids

Yes, it's as awful as it sounds:

Republican Rep. Mike Ritze told CBS affiliate KWTV that he has another proposal in mind: Rounding up the state’s 82,000 non-English-speaking students and handing them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Identify them and then turn them over to ICE to see if they truly are citizens — and do we really have to educate noncitizens?” Ritze asked.

As the article points out, the Supreme Court weighed in on this issue in Plyer v. Doe in 1981, finding that those who are undocumented are people "in any ordinary sense of the term," and thus were protected (and afforded equal access to education) under the Fourteenth Amendment.
And this did not escape the ACLU:

All children living in the United States have a guaranteed right to a public education, & Oklahoma cannot strip them of that right. https://t.co/Nwhy73gqzV

— ACLU National (@ACLU) May 12, 2017

Doe v Peyser (cap lift lawsuit) DISMISSED

You may or may not remember in all of the attention being paid to the ballot campaign, but there has also been a lawsuit pending around lifting the charter cap as well, Doe v. Peyser. Brought by some of Boston's more "prominent" (to quote the Globe) lawyers, it argued that the children suing were not able to get into charter schools they wished to due to the charter cap," an arbitrary impediment to their ability to obtain a quality education."
This afternoon, the case was dismissed in Superior Court. (That's the Scribd link; if Dropbox would work better, I've put it here.) It was dismissed on both the question of the education clause (that's our much-beloved Chapter 5 section 2 of the state constitution, backed up by McDuffy, Hancock, and so forth) and on the question of the equal protection clause (the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution). On the first question, Judge Heidi Brieger writes:

The education clause "obligates the Commonwealth to educate all its children." [McDuffV. 415 Mass. at 617]. This obligation does not mean that Plaintiffs have the constitutional right to choose a particular flavor of education, whether it be a trade school, a sports academy, an arts school, or a charter school. Even if the court were to deny the instant motion, thereby allowing substantial discovery to follow, Plaintiffs' action will always be addressed to the question of whether the Commonwealth is obliged to provide more of one flavor of education than another. This decision - how to allocate public education choices amongst the multitude of possible types - is best left to those elected to make those choices to be carried out by those educated and experienced to do so.

On the second question:

Both Commonwealth and Horace Mann charter schools are funded by the school districts from which they draw students or in which they are located. Consequently, public funding for charter schools necessarily affects the public funding of non-charter schools in the district. Defendants argue, and the court agrees, that the Legislature's charter school cap reflects an effort to allocate education funding between and among all the Commonwealth's students and therefore has a rational basis and cannot violate the equal protection clause.

In both cases, emphasis is mine.

This does raise the question: even if the ballot question were to pass, would be struck down by the courts?

Massachusetts applications of the Washington charter school decision

My inbox was busy this weekend with Massachusetts educators and parents thinking through to what degree with Washington state decision, declaring charter schools unconstitutional, might have local application.
Let me reiterate: that was the Washington STATE Supreme Court, making their decision based on the state constitution and state precedent. So we can't just hope this gets kicked higher and becomes the law of the land; education is a power reserved for state and local government.
And, as always, let me also reiterate that I'm not a lawyer; I just follow public ed case law.

I've seen several references to the 1917 amendment that prohibits public funds going to schools not controlled by local public authority:

All moneys raised by taxation in the towns and cities for the support of public schools, and all moneys which may be appropriated by the commonwealth for the support of common schools shall be applied to, and expended in, no other schools than those which are conducted according to law, under the order and superintendence of the authorities of the town or city in which the money is expended...

(emphasis added)
If you read the whole of the amendment (or read any history of the Convention; see page 217), it's clear that it's directed at pariochial schools. That amendment was superceded by subsequent amendments (most having to do with higher ed), and, more importantly for our purposes, subsequent case law, including the case that involved Boston University running the Chelsea schools, in which the finding was that the authority could be delegated from that local authority, to wit:

The extensive supervisory controls that the school committee has over the university's performance of the city's educational obligations represents that kind of control, or more precisely right to control, that is an essential part of an agency relationship. Restatement (Second) of Agency Section 1 (1958). The university's agency is a public one because the university as an agent is fulfilling a public obligation, i.e., education of the youth of the city, McDuffy v. Secretary of the Executive Office of Educ., 415 Mass. 545 , 620-621 (1993), while subject to the control of a public entity as a principal, all pursuant both to its legislatively authorized contract and to the enabling act.

(Emphasis added) Thus because BU was tied to the local school committee in authority and reporting requirements, they were sufficiently under local control for the courts.

Beyond that, to my mind, it brings us back to McDuffy. 
The main thrust of McDuffy is the finding that the Massachusetts Constitution, when it makes education the "duty of legislatures and magistrates," is making it a shared responsibility between the state and local authorities. In the case of McDuffy, that means that funding of schools cannot simply be left to the local authority (the "magistrates"); the state (the "legislatures") must fulfill its responsibility to Massachusetts schoolchildren as well.

Is the reverse also true, one wonders? Is it the case that the "legislatures" cannot simply delegate their authority to a local board that does not in any way answer to a local authority? Unlike BU, charter schools and their boards are in no way responsible to local school committees. There is no local "magistrate" to which they answer. They answer only to the state authority, in particular, the executive branch through DESE. Is that, one wonders, constitutional?

On current standardized assessments

The blogger's point is larger (it's a good post on having honors classes better reflect the school population), but I did think this paragraph worth citing:

In terms of using test scores like standardized tests, the fact is that the current tests stink. I mean they really stink. Sure, they might give an indication, but they are chronically biased in favor of certain demographics and are out of touch with today's kid. Having a student apply through a process that assesses by multiple measures is a fairer option because they can show us that the number of their test score does not represent them.

Kids are more than an MCAS score.

Happy Anniversary!

On this date in 1845, the Massachusetts legislature guaranteed the right for schoolchildren to have access to a public school.
Note that this also desegregated the Nantucket school system.

Side note: Worcester had desegregated its school system the year before, in 1844.