Some education highlights from Tuesday's election

 We're entering THE CONFERENCE ZONE at work, so I haven't had time to take a breath, but I don't want to miss some amazing things that happened Tuesday. This HuffPost post on victories you haven't heard of is also a good start. Several of these are of the "you might remember this headline" type; I'll add more as I find them!

• You might remember West Ada School District in Idaho, where a teacher was ordered to remove an "Everyone is welcome here" poster which had multiracial hands from the walls of her classroom. Of the two seats that were up for election on Tuesday, challenger Meghan Brown beat incumbent Angie Redford with more than 61% of the vote; Brown is a teacher. The board chair Lori Frasure did win re-election over challenger Dara Ezzell-Pebworth, a social worker, but with only 54% of those voting. The challengers ran on an explicitly inclusive platform that also opposed private school tax credits. 
  
  
• As Peter Greene covers well in Forbes, Central Bucks County School Board, which got all sorts of national attention several years ago and had flipped majorities in 2023, further moved to a 9-0 Democratically-held majority on Tuesday.
  This was part of a larger blue wave across suburban Philadelphia.
  
  
• Denver, which had been a hotbed of charter expansion and other things called 'ed reform' saw a pushback on that in the past six years, with this election a test of if that majority pushing back would hold on. They did, with those candidates taking the four of the seats open.
  
  
• In Cy-Fair Independent School District outside of Houston, Tuesday saw a backlash to the conservative policies that district's board had implemented, as three members lost their seats to non-partisan newcomers, including the board chair and vice-chair. Cy-Fair is the third largest school district in Texas, educating over 100,000 students. 

• School bonds did pretty well Tuesday as well, with Des Moines voters favoring theirs; a majority of them carrying in Michigan; 18 of 43 passing in Iowa.
  
  
• And don't miss that in Colorado, voters passed two measures that tax the wealthy to fund free universal school lunch!

March Board of Ed: school counselor of the year Andrea Encarnacao

 Andrea Encarnacao, Boston Latin School 
but first there are a lot of statistics being read aloud to the Board about how students need counselors, which is right, but we can't just only hear these
Encarnacao: "education and service is in my blood"
spent time with CityYear, decided to work with the middle to high school grades
"I love being able to talk with young people about their futures"
"have worried those most about our most marginalized students"
"I've learned that we need justice in counseling"
"we owe our students more than talk"
"what lessons did the pandemic teach us?...what has changed?"
left behind teacher check in, longer lunches, time to walk outside
"bound by time on task, and with only so many hours in the day, we cannot serve our students' mental health needs as we should"
starts with having a "robust health curriculum in our middle schools"

Q on where we are with numbers
250:1 is recommendation
some data on that

Q; what has changed, what is maintained
Encarnacao: had more flexibility and more time
could have time with teachers and counselors
more time for lunch, time for lunch outside
"the slowing the pace down"
Plankey agrees that, talking to students across the state, building more flexibility into the school day
Encarnacao notes good for building relationships

and photo and end

What happened at the first March meeting of the Worcester School Committee

And my apologies: it has been a big news week in Worcester, and I have been ill so I haven't been updating (I plan to spend some of the time I anticipate being snowbound this weekend catching up). Here, in any case, is what happened at the March 3, 2023 Worcester School Committee meeting, for which I was remote. As always, this is my perspective as a member of the Committee, so keep that filter in mind!

The agenda is here; the video of the meeting is here.

Note that we did open with executive session covering our negotiations with seven collective bargaining units, and we had public comment regarding those negotiations.

The report of the Superintendent was on Innovating in education. It starts about 11minutes into the video. Among other things, this gave us a demonstration of Chatbot GPT writing a lesson plan. Let me highlight a few things:
Here's where we were going:

                  

And education is caring for the present, while enabling for the future.
        

And we're moving towards this Vision of a Learner (which is how we're continuing what had been the Portrait of a Graduate) and then what that would mean. 

We had two reports out from Standing Committees: the February meetings of both Finance and Operations, and of Teaching, Learning, and Student Supports. I never got to summarize that F&O meeting, so let me just quickly note a few things:

• in terms of transportation, all of our large buses are now owned as well as operated by the Worcester Public Schools. We have added back, for the first time in two years, athletic after school runs (only two so far; more to come for spring). There is another delay on the midsize buses (yes, supply lines, still).
  
  
• There's $22.8M in ESSER funding going to HVAC and hot water. The bulk of this is going to HVAC work in nearly every WPS building. HOWEVER, in doing the full look at what is necessary, the report also noted that we need $200M in HVAC work alone. We have to pay attention to the enormous backlog we have in facilities.
  
  
• If there's anything at all that you're wondering about from a capital budget--that is, big work on buildings--side, the quarterly facilities report is the place to look. Our eyes, of course, are closely on (for example) Burncoat, where the wait for acceptance in the MSBA pipeline for a full renovation or rebuild has now resulted in a NEASC accreditation issue; we're in the process of getting a full review of exactly what it is that they are looking for and what that will cost (as, again, we've discussed over several meetings now). As always, though, there is a lot more in the report, as we have a lot of buildings. 
  
  
• we transferred a million dollars as a result of this report, and if you review the quarterly budget report (and do read our quarter budget report! They are an incredibly clear way to follow what goes on with our budget!), you'll see why: utilities are up! Way up! And we also (like many districts!) continue to have positions open, and so we've transferred money from salaries to overtime (specifically for custodial coverage). And on that last, as I said above: we have a lot of buildings, and a lot of space, and we're doing it with many fewer people. That has an impact. 

On TLSS, they discussed the ongoing use of tutoring services in the district; at this point, the administration is determining if the usage and utility justifies the cost. They also discussed school lunch and recess times--families and students may be interested in this comprehensive chart of all of them--with a motion to move all elementary schools to a 20 minute lunch without impacting the 30 minute recess, and reporting back on feasibility. The administration reported that lunch time at the secondary schools is sufficient. There will be further work and reports forthcoming on the district providing drivers ed and of the discussion on conduct and effort in grading policies. 

WE ARE CHANGING THE DATES OF OUR APRIL MEETINGS due to so many holidays and a vacation week! Stay tuned!

We are also required by state law to hold a public hearing--of the full committee!--on our budget after it comes out but before we deliberate. This year, WPS budget day--mark your calendars (you think I'm kidding? I do!)--will be FRIDAY, MAY 12! We will be deliberating and passing the budget on Thursday, June 1 and Thursday, June 15, so the hearing will be sometime between May 15 and 31. Stay tuned for that, too!

And in response to a parental concern, I've asked the administration to look at our bullying policy. More on that in a forthcoming report of the superintendent. 

The full Committee next meets Thursday, March 16. Please note that there is a meeting of Teaching, Learning, and Student Supports on Tuesday, March 14; Finance and Operations meets on Monday, March 20. 

The Worcester School Committee meets November 1

You can find the agenda here.
There are a number of recognitions, including a request for a letter (a letter?) to congratulate Elm Park on exiting Level 4 status.

First up, the report of the superintendent is the accountability report. If you follow state reports, a lot of this will look familiar, as Worcester's doing something valuable here: more than half the presentation is explaining how the accountability system has changed. (More of this!) To do this, they've essentially swiped the DESE slides in walking through how it has shifted (this is not an easy thing to explain; I'll be interested in how it goes!) for the first half. The second half is Worcester data and (sigh...how about we don't do this) comparing Worcester results with other urbans. What I don't see here--I'll be interested to see if it comes up--is some discussion of what in particular are the areas of needed focus within the district and school by school.

The Administration is forwarding "for informational purposes" (hmph) job descriptions for two new positions: Assistant Director of Finance and Operations for Nutrition and Marketing, Communication, Initiative and Outreach Coordinator. There's no public backup.

The administration has given the Perkins grant allocation, as requested.

The ongoing saga of chasing homeschooling families around on paperwork has a response back from administration. By my read, the form doesn't appear to agree with what's said in the report, for starters. 

The administration has responded to the request that administration clarify with staff participation in the electoral process by...sending them back the committee-approved policy GBI.

Miss McCullough is seeking a possible policy on lunches (the length of them, particularly in elementary schools); a review of IT password creation and security; and a review of the recess policy "to ensure it is being adhered to districtwide" (that's school committee agenda-speak for "it isn't; let's fix that").

Mr. O'Connell is asking about possibly renting modular classrooms for Burncoat Prep (This would be additional modulars, as Burncoat Prep already has several).

There are also donations:

• $1381.09 to Worcester Arts Magnet School from the Parent Teacher Group for the purchase of a new water fountain 
• $1090.00 to Tatnuck Magnet School from various donors through fundraising efforts 
• $2500.00 to the Worcester Public Schools from DonorsChoose.org 

...and prior fiscal year items:

• in the amount of $7,724.18 to Wheelabator Millbury, Inc.
• in the amount of $238.39 to Home Depot Credit Services.
• in the amount of $241.65 to Northeast Electrical Distributors.
• in the amount of $172.50 to Signet Electronic Systems, Inc.

There is a 6pm posting for an executive session for collective bargaining with Tradesmen, Plumbers and Steamfitters, and Aides.