This week's meetings

This week:

• There is a meeting of the Teaching, Learning, and Student Supports subcommittee tomorrow afternoon at 5:30 pm at the administration building, fourth floor. The agenda is here. CPR, Tech school courses, curriculum review, and the federal dropout initiative are all on the agenda.
• The Citywide Parent Planning and Advisory Council meets tomorrow night at 7 pm at the Worcester Public Library. I haven't yet seen an agenda for that.
• The regular meeting of the Worcester School Committee is at 7 pm this Thursday at City Hall. The agenda is here. I'll do a summary later this week!

All meetings are open to the public.

MA Board of Ed meets Monday

The Massachusetts Board of Education meets Monday in Malden at 8:30. You'll find their agenda here.
Up for afternoon discussion is teacher evaluation. The morning meeting has presentations on the dropout rate and graduation rate.
The bulk of the meeting, however, is taken up with charter schools in one way or another. As the T&G has today, Worcester's Seven Hills Charter School is being recommended for probation due to MCAS scores. The charter for Seven Hills is up for renewal, and Commissioner Chester is recommending to the Board that conditions be placed on the renewal.
Also, Chester is recommending 17 additional charter schools for around Massachusetts (none in Worcester), including, at the petition of the Salem School Committee, a Horace Mann charter in Salem.

more on Congressional funding

Just got this update from the National School Board Association on the appropriations bill passed by the House for FY11:

The House passed H.R. 1 by a vote of 235 to 189 on February 19, in an effort to cut $61 billion from programs, including education. H.R. 1 would reduce funding for more than 70 education programs by more than 16 percent, or $11.6 billion. The bill would reduce funding for Title I grants for disadvantaged students by $694 million, cut $337 million from Title I School Improvement Grants, and impose a $500 million cut to Teacher Quality State Grants.
...Other programs that would be affected by the funding cuts include statewide data systems ($70.7 million), school counseling ($55 million), education technology state grants ($100 million), and the high school graduation initiative ($50 million). In addition, H.R. 1 includes a proposed cut of $1.1 billion to Head Start and multiple cuts to programs that help support school-based health centers.

To translates some of the inside baseball here: Worcester gets nearly $25 million in federal grants each year. About half of that is Title I funds ($13+ million), which are directly tied to the poverty rate of schools. Title I pays for teachers and IA's, so a cut to Title I is a cut to Worcester's teaching staff (should such a cut get through; this passed the House), and, please note, a cut to the teacher staff at the higher poverty schools (which the administration would then have to rebalance).
As we have yet to receive actual grant funds for either Union Hill or Chandler Elementary (we've gotten transition funds), I don't know (but it's worth asking) whether a cut to the School Improvement Grants would cut the funds avaliable to the states. The cut to SIG was a trade for not cutting special ed money.
We also get school counseling funds, so that is a cut in guidance.
And Head Start is run entirely with federal funds. A cut here is not a cut in the school budget; it is a cut directly to services for those kids.
All of which is to say: keep your eyes on the Senate. And remember: this is THIS YEAR'S MONEY.

And so it begins...

Dated August 10, 2010, this is the first email regarding the Goddard MCAS scores of those Dianna Biancheria and I received from the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. 
The email is from Matthew Pakos, DESE's School Improvement Grant manager, (while SIG became School Turnaround Grants, like those applied for by Union Hill and Chandler, up until last year, Worcester simply received SIG funds, and so Pakos would have some oversight for the district) to Robert Lee, Chief Analyst for DESE (he's the chief MCAS data guy).
Pakos refers Lee to the Goddard data (CPI stands for "Composite Performance Index" which is a sort of average of student performance) and calls the gain "extreme."

Providence lays off ALL their teachers

The City of Providence, Rhode Island has given pink slips to all city teachers this week in anticipation of massive layoffs (necessitating contract changes) for the coming school year. Rhode Island law requires that teachers be notified of potential changes in their positions by March 1. Superintendent Tom Brady (yes, that is his name; he's also a Broad Academy graduate, for those keeping track) says it was necessary to close a projected $40 million budget gap for FY12.

UPDATE: And yes, Providence did attend the Union-Management Collaboration Jamboree in Denver last week.

Federal cuts

(which I believe the former Secretary of Defense would characterize as "known unknowns")
The House passed a temporary spending bill over the weekend that substantially cut education spending at the federal level. Keep in mind, by the way, that we're still talking about THIS year's money; Congress hasn't done FY11 yet. The Senate is sure to block passage of this bill, but getting the two houses to some sort of middle ground is going to be a challenge, as the cuts are substantial.

"Gentlemen, I am besieged, by a hundred or more of the Legislators..."

Superintendent John Kuhn of Perrin-Whitt CISD in Texas in his open letter to the Texas Legislature makes excellent use of historical reference. His letter reads:

Gentlemen,
I am besieged, by a hundred or more of the Legislators under Rick Perry. I have sustained a continual Bombardment of increased high-stakes testing and accountability-related bureaucracy and a cannonade of gross underfunding for 10 years at least and have lost several good men and women. The ruling party has demanded another round of pay cuts and furloughs, while the school house be put to the sword and our children's lunch money be taken in order to keep taxes low for big business. I am answering the demand with a (figurative) cannon shot, and the Texas flag still waves proudly from our flag pole. I shall never surrender the fight for the children of Perrin.


Then, I call on you my legislators in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch. The enemy of public schools is declaring that spending on a shiny new high-stakes testing system is "non-negotiable"; that, in essence, we must save the test but not the teachers. The enemy of public schools is saying that Texas lawmakers won't raise 1 penny in taxes in order to save our schools.


If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and fight for the kids in these classrooms like an educator who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his community. Make education a priority!


With all due respect and urgency,
John Kuhn
Superintendent
Perrin-Whitt CISD

His reference--sure to be caught by native Texans--is the famous "Alamo letter" of William Barret Travis in which Travis pleads for reinforcements to be sent his aid.