Welcome to the October issue of WPS in Brief. This month covers realignment, digital bathroom passes, graduation requirements, staff absences, and more from two School Committee meetings and four subcommittee meetings. There’s a lot here, so if you only have time for one thing, please read the realignment section. These decisions will affect students and families across the city for years, and now is the time to pay attention and give feedback.

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Let’s dive in:

Realignment.

Realignment is the most important School Committee issue to pay attention to right now. The decisions being considered will shape where students attend school, their pathways through middle and high school, and access to programs across Worcester for years to come. I’ve put together a realignment reference guide to help families understand the proposals and what they could mean for their schools. Please take a look and give feedback: email alignment@worcesterschools.net or attend one of the public forums. Tell the district what works, what concerns you, and what questions still need answers before the committee votes.

Securly Hall Passes.

The October 8 School Committee discussion about digital hall passes being piloted at Worcester Tech (and perhaps Burncoat and South, although there was some confusion about that) left me wondering what problem we’re trying to solve, at what cost, and whether the benefits justify handing over more information about our students. The vendor, Securly Pass, gives principals a dashboard showing who is out of class, their destination, and how long they’ve been gone. Reports identify patterns, including which students are out at the same time. Superintendent Brian Allen said he did not see the system as “Big Brother,” describing it as supporting administrators and climate and culture staff. The discussion included using patterns, like a student going to the bathroom every period, to understand what is happening with a child.

The phrase “high flyers” came up, and all I kept thinking about was a student on a heavy day of her period who needs the bathroom more frequently. Is she going to show up as a “high flyer”? What about a student with a health issue who would prefer not to explain it to every adult with access to their bathroom history? The stated purpose of a program is one thing; how it’s implemented is just as important. I understand why staff should know who is out of class, but what happens between identifying a pattern and deciding what it means? Will staff approach a student’s bathroom data with curiosity, concern, or suspicion?

Bathroom records could reveal personal information about a student’s health or gender identity. Does the system identify the specific bathroom? Who can access those records, and how long are they kept? What information is shared with the vendor? Are photos? Have students and families been told?

Securly is owned by Golden Gate Capital, a private equity firm based in San Francisco. Its student privacy policy permits aggregated or de-identified student data to be used and shared with third parties for research and analysis. How does information collected from our children help build a private company’s products and business? What limits has WPS placed on that data mining in its contract?

Member Maureen Binienda (at-large) described using student IDs to monitor students in the hallway at South High a decade ago. What platform did it use, and could WPS meet this need internally without another subscription and another third party holding student information? Binienda also mentioned students stealing paper passes and forging signatures. But students will find workarounds for digital passes, too. (They already have.)

It also raises the question of how it fits with our staffing investments. The current year’s budget includes 46 climate and culture assistants and 11 deans of students across middle and high schools, alongside principals and assistant principals. The climate and culture assistants alone are budgeted at $1.92 million in salaries. Eight were added for 2025–26 specifically to take duties like bathroom and lunch coverage off teachers’ plates and allow more common planning time. Do we not have enough people to manage the halls? What gap remains, and why does filling it require another subscription and another company collecting student information?

Member Jermaine Johnson (district F) also expressed frustration that his earlier request for a vaping-detection pilot lacked funding. I’ve covered that discussion before. His budgetary questions could not be answered at the meeting. But it raises questions about how the district decides which technologies are worth trying. (These small meeting moments also show budget priorities taking shape: a bathroom-pass subscription here, a discussion about flag football there. By formal budget debate time, most commitments are already determined and those conversations are happening now.)

I’d like to hear from the students, and what they think about their trips to the bathroom becoming data tied to them individually. Students have asked the School Committee for better bathroom facilities over and over. There’s something ironic about paying to track how long students spend in bathrooms when students have had to ask to have bathrooms that work.

Gender support for students.

The gender support plan petition returned to the full School Committee on October 8, with more public comment following the September discussion I covered last month. Students had described being outed without permission, repeatedly having to explain their names and pronouns, and feeling unsafe at school.

Deputy Superintendent Marie Morse said WPS uses the DESE gender support form as a resource and works individually with each student. She said the district meets state requirements and apologized for the experience the students described. The discussion also referenced Safe Schools training at all high schools.

Member Sue Mailman (at-large) asked about consistency across high schools and how the district evaluates whether its approach is working. Morse pointed to training across all high schools and feedback from students. Member Molly McCullough (district A) also moved to bring the requested report on which parts of DESE’s approach WPS has implemented back to the full committee, rather than provide it through a Friday Letter (which is essentially an email from the Superintendent and a way in which school committee members can request information back from administration without having it come to another school committee meeting).

An individualized approach and a consistent process should be able to coexist. Each student may need something different, but they should all know who can help, how their privacy will be protected, and how their wishes will be communicated safely to staff. Students have already provided feedback about where those systems failed them.

Graduation requirements.

The October 8 Report of the Superintendent touched on the Massachusetts graduation requirements, which was scheduled with the expectation that the state’s new requirements, following the removal of the MCAS graduation requirement, would be clearer by now. But they’re still being developed. The proposed framework includes MassCore coursework, which WPS already requires; state-designed, administered, and scored end-of-course assessments in specific subjects; a postsecondary plan through My Career and Academic Planning (MyCAP); and a culminating capstone project or portfolio. Under the proposed timeline discussed at the meeting, MassCore would become a statewide requirement beginning with students entering ninth grade in 2027–28—current eighth graders. The remaining requirements, including a MyCAP plan, would begin with students entering ninth grade in 2028–29—current seventh graders. WPS is waiting for more guidance, including details about those assessments.

Member Alex Guardiola (district D) asked what measures WPS will use to determine whether graduates demonstrate college and career readiness, and whether the committee could review clear metrics annually. Accountability is an important role of the committee, but college and career readiness are not the entire purpose of public education. Schools also prepare students to participate in democracy, understand the world, build relationships, and contribute to their communities. WPS’s own Vision of a Learner reflects that broader purpose: students should become problem solvers, curious learners, empowered individuals, effective communicators, and engaged community members. How will the School Committee ensure that the graduation requirements reflect that vision?

Staff Absenteeism.

At the October 22 school committee meeting the committee received another staff sick-day report, requested by Guardiola. The percentage of instructional staff using 15 or more sick/family medical days declined from 14% to 11.4%, while cafeteria and custodial staff had substantially higher rates, at 26.4% and 24.9%. The report also explains that employees using more than 15 days may still be within their accumulated sick leave allowance.

Guardiola’s questions about substitute coverage, differences between schools, and the impact on other teachers sounded familiar: I asked them in my July 2025 brief. Perhaps he’s a reader. I’m glad he raised the questions, but he left them as questions. He didn’t request a report or ask the administration to come back with answers.

When Superintendent Brian Allen acknowledged that some schools struggle to find day-to-day substitutes, there was an opening: What has WPS done to try to recruit more? What are the barriers? Is it pay, working conditions, or something else? I’m a licensed teacher who occasionally works as a day-to-day substitute in WPS (I started last month). At $18.33 an hour, I’m not willing to do it regularly. Is compensation one of the barriers the district has examined? The district could also consider having central-office administrators cover classrooms, as El Paso ISD is doing, to reduce substitute costs and reconnect administrators with classroom life. That’s a perspective you don’t get from a walkthrough.

School Committee members could have requested a report on substitute recruitment, barriers to coverage, and options they could fund or address through policy. I agree with Guardiola that staffing gaps have serious consequences for students and staff. But when does the committee move from monitoring to action?

MCAS.

The October 22 report on MCAS and state accountability showed a mixed picture. High school achievement declined in English, math, and science for the second consecutive year. But elementary and middle school students showed improved growth in English and math, and English learners in grades 1–8 exceeded the state’s target for progress toward English proficiency. Four schools—Columbus Park, McGrath, Midland Street, and Worcester Arts Magnet—were named Schools of Recognition.

What caught my attention was Member Maureen Binienda’s emphasis on students meeting standards rather than focusing on scores. I agree. But that emphasis stood out given her opposition to removing MCAS as a graduation requirement in 2024, when she argued that education had improved after MCAS was introduced and questioned how standards would be assessed without the requirement. Bill Shaner covered that discussion here. I’d like to hear more about how she distinguishes the two now. What evidence of student learning should the school committee prioritize beyond test scores, and will they apply that same perspective consistently when evaluating our schools?

Bits and bobs.

• Career Technical Education program admission. The Operations and Governance subcommittee approved updates to the CTE admissions policy on October 13, which went to the full committee’s October 22 agenda. The changes

  • remove sibling preference under the state’s admissions rules.

  • eliminate the extra lottery entry tied to a recommendation letter.

  • count Worcester Dual Language Magnet eighth graders toward the Worcester Tech seat allocation for the middle school associated with their home address.

  • remove language preventing students from enrolling unless they passed their previous year’s English and math courses, following updated DESE guidance.

• Communicating to families when assessments are happening. Member Jermaine Johnson asked that parents be informed when their children will take assessments. Deputy Superintendent Marie Morse said schools typically provide that information. This is especially important for fifth and sixth graders taking Star assessments, because those scores determine admission to Goddard Scholars and Hanover Insurance Academy of the Arts. As I’ve explained before, these tests have consequences beyond measuring classroom progress. Families should know when they’re happening and how many times their children can take them to qualify for those programs.

• Less federal funding. The October 21 Finance subcommittee’s first-quarter budget report shows WPS receiving about $423,500 less in Title I funding and $193,600 less in Title II funding than budgeted—roughly $617,000 combined. The district says the Title I reduction will directly affect its ability to provide summer and after-school programming, while the Title II reduction affects professional development. These are cuts to services and support, even if they don’t appear as cuts in the district’s general operating budget.

Also.

One more reminder to make time for the upcoming realignment meetings: Monday, October 26 at 6 p.m. at Forest Grove Middle School, and Saturday, November 7 at noon at Goddard Elementary School. An additional Operations and Governance meeting has been added for Monday, November 16, with the time and location still to be announced. The October 26 meeting will be devoted to public feedback, with no presentation. If you’re trying to make sense of the proposals, read my realignment reference guide. You don’t have to understand every detail to share what matters to your family. Come with questions, concerns, and ideas. If you can’t attend, email alignment@worcesterschools.net, and check the realignment website for updated meeting details.

Thanks for reading! These briefs take many hours of watching meetings, reading reports, and tracking down answers. If they help you stay informed, please share them, consider a paid subscription, or buy me a coffee. And as always, I appreciate questions, corrections, and tips about what’s happening in your schools. See you next month!

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Also incredible: these custom bleach-dye Outdoor Cat shirts Katie made. Head over to the merch store to get yours. Each a unique work of art and folks they are going FAST. Only 15 left as of my writing, and larges and XLs are sold out.

Paid subscribers get free shipping! Head to this link to get the code, or, if you’re a free subscriber, to subscribe and then get the code!

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Some links from today’s conversation…

Bloomberg: “The Power Bill Divide”

Ray Mariano on the governor’s race

Mike Minogue autographing flavored ZYNs

Michael Minogue campaigned on understanding the housing crisis. He also owns a $31m home in an ultra-exclusive Montana club

Intro music by Bill Shaner 10.19.26

Outro music: “Trouble Trouble” by Aesop Rock x Blockhead

This podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Overcast, Pocket Casts others via this RSS link.

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I’ve heard from many families, teachers, and community members that it’s difficult to understand what realignment would mean for their specific school. So I’ve tried to break it down school by school in an understandable way. This isn’t meant to be read straight through. Think of it as a reference guide: each school follows the same format so you can find your school, see a map, compare the scenarios, and understand the proposed changes. It’s too long to include it all in one post, so here’s the link (https://bit.ly/wpsinbrief).

This took a lot of time and work to put together. If you find it helpful, please consider becoming a paid subscriber to Worcester Sucks.

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These are going fast: There’s only one XL and two larges left. Head over to the Merch store. Paid subscribers get free shipping, code here. You can subscribe just to get the code and that way we pass $5 back and forth via an elaborate digital Rube Goldberg machine. —Bill

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Dear Shaun,

I am in love with a werewolf. I didn’t set out to start dating a werewolf, I fell in love with a man who then revealed much later in our relationship that he had this “trait.” I feel conflicted about this. I love this man, but I no longer have the same trust I had in our previous 10 years. Should I throw this marriage away? I don’t know what to do.

-Werewolf Wife

Dear Werewolf Wife,

What timing for you to be writing to me! Halloween is upon us and you are married to a real life werewolf! I don’t mean to other him, or you, but this is a truly fascinating experience! You share a bank account with one of the original Universal Monsters. I mean this is once in a lifetime.

You still love him right? Marriage is all about communication. It seems like you and the hubby need to sit down and have a good old fashioned chat about where you both stand with this information. Should he have disclosed this earlier? Definitely. You can’t drop a bomb on someone that far into the relationship. I think, though, this is something you two can work through. So he has a few late nights, a man can go out and let loose without his wife every once in a while. Now that you two have this open knowledge of his proclivities, you can just plan those nights out in advance.

They have since discontinued the Farmer’s Almanac, so you can’t romantically check the moon cycle in a handheld book on top of your bread box, like how I grew up. Did you all ever get the Farmer’s Almanac? I did not grow up on a farm and my family didn’t have a green thumb in the bunch. Yet, we always had one. Each month had a little poem about what the weather, and important dates throughout history, and even what vegetables, grains, and fruit should be harvested and when. There were also articles about innovations in farming, hiking, fishing, hunting, and other outdoorsy goings on. I, for one, have never been particularly excited about any one those activities but I loved reading about them. Anyways, start tracking those days with like… an app or something.

I’m not telling you that you need to stay with him. I’m just saying you need to talk this out. Ten years of marriage ain’t nothing. That’s the paper anniversary! There are plenty of husbands that are monsters every single day to their spouses. He is just a monster out in your community once a month! Not only is marriage about communication, but it also about compromise. Maybe this is a compromise you should be willing to deal with? I say yes with a silver bullet, okay maybe not a silver bullet.

NEWS

Next week The Worcester Comedy Club opens up with Corey Rodrigues. We have a great lineup the rest of the year as well. Check out the lineup and get your tickets today!

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Not much to report on that front. The council meeting this week was a quiet one, the election continues to be a snooze for the most part, the police haven’t done anything especially awful (that we know about), Kate Toomey has disappeared from the news for the time being, though I suspect that’s temporary. Over on the ‘school side,’ the redistricting stuff is very interesting. Our very own Aislinn Doyle has you covered on that. Read the latest: “WPS in Brief: Redistricting, Round Three.” And the Worcester Education Justice Alliance is holding a few forums on the matter coming up, first one being next Monday, Oct. 19.

One more thing to get in front of you before we get to the main event: There’s a new run of very cool custom-made items on the merch store!!!

The multi-talented Katie Nowicki went into a manic fit making “bleach-dye” versions of the “Outdoor Cat” logo and they came out sooooo good.

There are only 40 of these that are ever going to exist.

Buy a shirt!!!!!

And there’s four (only four!!) tote bags in the same fashion.

tie dye tote

bleach dye tote

A bit more expensive than other items have been, but they are all each of them unique works of art. So. Think of it that way, it’s a deal.

What’s more, paid subscribers get free shipping! You can grab the code from behind the paywall at this link, where you can also subscribe if you aren’t already: Post with the free shipping code.

Think of it this way: you sign up to give me $5, I hand that $5 over to the post office, a few days later you get a cool piece of completely unique swag over which your friends will gawk, go ooooh and ahhhhh and you’ll go “I know!”

Also have to do the requisite “regular pitch”: All the money that comes in, via subscriptions and merch orders and tips, ensures that this outlet stays afloat.

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It takes an insane amount of work, the donning of a good deal of uniquely silly hats, in succession and at once, and that includes wrangling an ever growing roster of great writers like Roberto, who you’re about to read…

Okay, that’s all for me this week. Podcast coming soon. Roberto’s piece is long so I’ll let him play us out. Now to take the silly editor hat off and put on the even sillier podcaster one… talk soon!

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Cat Scratch Fever

Worcester’s tumultuous relationship with professional hockey

By Roberto Solis-Byxbee

It’s October, there’s a chill in the air, and most importantly–it’s hockey season. Our city’s very own professional hockey team, the Worcester Railers, plays their season opener on October 17th. And yet, I often yearn for simpler times. For the 30-something-year-old Worcester kids who grew up watching hockey like me, nothing screams nostalgia quite like our glorious city’s first taste of professional hockey: the IceCats.

Over thirty years ago (ouch), businessman Roy Boe—known for making a lot of money from a clothing franchise in the 60s then parlaying his wealth into partial ownership of multiple sports teams—bought the rights to an American Hockey League (AHL) team in Springfield, one of the oldest around, and made the fateful decision to move the team to Worcester. A couple of months later, the Worcester IceCats were born. The origin of the name was never exactly clarified, but with or without meaning, the team was hitting the ice.

Their inaugural season in 1994-95 was a rough one. See, the AHL kind of acts like a feeder league to the NHL, and the two leagues have a very symbiotic relationship. Without an NHL affiliation, the IceCats were forced to sign free agents and operate as an independent organization. Since the nineties, only one other team has operated under this business model. So, it’s safe to say this is akin to playing in hard mode. The IceCats struggled, winning only 24 of 80 games during that first season, so the team quickly made finding an NHL affiliation a priority. That’s where the St. Louis Blues came into play. While this would ultimately lead to their downfall, having the Blues as their NHL affiliate allowed the IceCats to gain some steady momentum. The team rostered competitive squads and qualified for the postseason for nine seasons straight, from 1996 to 2004. This is the era of IceCats hockey that most of us remember.

I remember waiting in line at the Centrum, either in the overly spacious lobby or outside in the cold at one of the various entrances into the arena. Once inside, I was hit with an assortment of subtle yet distinct smells competing for real estate in your nostrils. The faint and fleeting smell of industrial floor cleaner as my sneakers padded through the overly large yet somehow too small hallway surrounding the arena. The floor wasn’t wet, but I could tell by the surface tension of my steps that it had recently been. Other scents hit me as I rounded each corner: a whiff of fried oily goods, revolting, yet appealing in the best kind of way. Stale popcorn somehow scattered everywhere. God, there was so much popcorn. The unfortunate aroma of body odor from a hardcore hockey fan who traveled far to come watch their team play in my city. Or even in the very olden times, when I’d round a certain side of the arena, and be overwhelmed by the floating smell of nicotine in the air as the excessively large smoking section was among the most visited parts of the Centrum. All these smells were present for every game, but even combined, they paled in comparison to what I would be met with upon walking through the clumsily hung black curtains and coming out onto the other side, face to face with the ice rink.

I could feel the cool bite of the air immediately, and the bright white lights, illuminating and bouncing off the somehow brighter rink, caused my pupils to shrink. No matter where I was, it was a sight to behold. And if I timed it right, the teams would be there, in all their glory, going through the motions out on the ice, warming up for their big game. In the time before safety netting, people would be lucky enough to spectate and come away with a souvenir, as plenty of vulcanized rubber would careen off players and goal posts alike out into the crowd. The delay-soaked guitar riffs of Slash echoed through me, Axl Rose’s sharp yet sultry vocals start, I’m in the jungle, and it’s beautiful. The puck is about to drop, and the game is about to begin. Life is good.

Whoa, but let’s hold here for a moment. While the Worcester IceCats arguably had the biggest cultural impact on our city out of any of our hockey teams, they weren’t the first hockey team to call Worcester their home. That honor belongs to the Worcester Warriors. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right, so join me on a dive into the city’s hockey history that reaches deeper than most realize. Cue theme song.

Warriors Come out and Play

In 1952, a man named Larz Anderson bought a roller-skating rink in Worcester, and he had big plans for it. Anderson promptly converted what was known as Webster Square Arena into the Worcester Ice Arena. Though it was used by multiple colleges in the city over the years for their Men’s Hockey programs before being converted back to a roller rink in the 80s, it was this ice rink, slightly smaller than an NHL regulation rink, that helped Anderson swing the deal to bring the Warriors to Worcester in the first place.

The Worcester Warriors played their first and only season in 1954-55. They struggled, only winning three games, but they were ours. It was an interesting situation: the team was filled with regional college hockey standouts but had to compete mostly against more legitimate professional teams. The players weren’t compensated as professionals, which eventually led to the in-season collapse, but in one December game against the New Haven Blades, the 1014-capacity Worcester Arena sold out. The team made some attempts to move to a different semi-pro league, but it never worked out.

The ice rink remained for a couple of decades before undergoing several makeovers. The building’s structure is still mostly intact today. It’s the Post Office and Little Caesars plaza, right down the road from the Webster Square Speedway, and although Arena Plaza may now be home to multiple unrelated businesses, if you look closely, you can still see the curved roof behind the brick overlay on the front. There’s a metaphor buried in there somewhere.

While professional hockey wouldn’t return to the city for nearly half a century, the standing up of a hockey team in the post-World War II era wasn’t a random act. The city and its surrounding area are rife with relevant hockey history. For example, early in the 20th century, Worcester was the center of ice skate manufacturing worldwide. In the late 1800s, two brothers, Seth and Samuel Winslow, started a machine shop that became a giant skate manufacturing enterprise, eventually shipping skates internationally and employing more than 200 people. One of those brothers played an even more significant role in Worcester’s history, as Samuel Winslow was elected mayor in 1886 and reelected for two additional terms. Worcester also claims to be the birthplace of youth hockey. It’s one of those things where people all over the world may have had a similar idea, but with no internet or Guinness World Records, and no equivalent to footprints on the moon or a flag waving dubiously, there’s no way to really know who got there first. Still, our very own Eddie Bates, who earned the nickname “the father of youth hockey,” organized North High’s first hockey team in 1917 and helped spread the organized game among adolescents.

From Felines to Aquatic Life

With all of the above as a blueprint, it’s really no surprise that Roy Boe brought an AHL franchise here in the 90s. The beginning was rough, with both media members and the players questioning the future of the franchise. At the time, a player commented “I’ve never been anywhere like this, where everyone expected everything to go wrong all the time.” This is just such a classically Worcester sentiment, though the city did grow to love its own professional hockey team.

As the decade passed by, the IceCats created tons of lasting memories that I’ll never forget, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that. There’s “Rock N Roll Part 2” by Gary Glitter, better known as the “Hey Song” that played whenever the IceCats scored a goal. I’ve been in the building for hundreds of renditions of that song and know every single word (there’s literally only one word…and it’s “hey”). Or even better, scoring Four for Fries. I would constantly hope the team would get to that magic number, so that upon leaving, I’d be handed a red voucher card, immediately redeemable at any local McDonald’s for a free small fry. I was never turned away. And of course, I’ll never forget the iconic mascot Scratch and his lesser-known younger brother, Pounce (created later in the IceCats years) all supported by the Mountain Dew Ice Crew to get the crowd engaged and raucous.

There are also the on-ice moments: from winning the divisional title twice, to trouncing the Providence Bruins 11-0 on the team’s first ever Teddy bear toss—even more fun is the fact that goalie Tim Thomas was replaced and put back in after the suffering Providence took all night. Yes, that’s 2011 Conn Smythe winner Tim Thomas, who possibly had the best playoff goaltending performance in history to lead the Bruins to their only Stanley Cup championship in the last 54 years. The IceCats even had the AHL’s most valuable player when Eric Boguniecki scored 84 points in the 2001-02 season. I could go on for days. I was heartbroken when Roy Boe sold the team, and everything changed.

Up until this point, the St. Louis Blues and Boe had a partnership where the Blues acted as the parent hockey club, and the IceCats fed talent through them. In 2001, the Blues bought the team from Boe and then turned around and sold it again in November of 2004, relocating them to Illinois. It was a depressing year for sports fans in Worcester County. But the IceCats Booster Club and the people of Worcester organized and negotiated with several NHL teams, seeking a replacement for professional hockey in their hearts. This is a great example of people banding together to find a way because in January of 2006, the San Jose Sharks announced they would be moving their AHL franchise to Worcester. Renamed the Worcester Sharks, the city embraced the return of professional hockey with a sold-out crowd on opening night at the DCU Center.

The Sharks would go on to have close to their own decade of middling success in Worcester. Many well-known NHL players cut their teeth here, and the Sharks hosted the AHL All-Star Game in 2009, which is often spoken of reverently. But there was a consensus in the air that the Sharks were always coming up short of expectations, never quite matching the vibe of the heyday of the city’s AHL debut cool cat team.

The Sharks were like a younger sibling doing everything they can to make their parents stop comparing them to their smarter older brother. They established the Worcester Hockey Hall of Fame, inducting various folks, some discussed in this piece, and many others for their important achievements to furthering the game of Hockey in Worcester, but alas, the magic would dry out as the parent team, the San Jose Sharks, secured a deal to move the Worcester Sharks to California in 2015.

Worcester’s Steel Resolve

The city found itself in a hockey void again. Despite the Sharks’ relocation being cited as purely logistical, it was hard not to question whether we were really the problem. Was the relocation part of a concerning trend? But Worcester persisted. Just a year later, in 2016, it was announced that Worcester would become the home of the newest ECHL expansion team. While this is a step down in talent and caliber from the AHL, the ECHL is still recognized by the players’ union and is known as a professional league that feeds directly into the AHL.

I personally attended a ceremony for the unveiling of the new team’s name. There was electricity in the air as many wondered if the franchise would find a way to secure the rights to the IceCats’ name. As we know now, they didn’t. The name instead would be the Worcester Railers, alluding to the city’s long history of involvement in the metal industry. The team debuted in 2017, and qualified for the postseason that first year. They haven’t had much success since, failing to even make the playoffs since their debut, but that hasn’t stopped the team from having fun. They’ve embraced their identity as an ECHL franchise and have engaged fans by hosting a variety of theme games, such as “Star Wars Night”, “Princesses and Pirates Day”, and even a whole weekend paying homage to the invention of the Monkey Wrench (who knew that was yet another thing Worcester can take credit for?).

The Railers have a great pulse on the local hockey scene. Several years in a row now, they’ve held an IceCats Weekend, where the team wears special IceCats jerseys, and they sell IceCats apparel and have alumni present at several games throughout the weekend. The event is a hit.

While the Sharks and then Railers have gone on to try and fill the hole in our heart the IceCats left, there was just something special about that first AHL team. The Railers have a savvy marketing team and capitalize on it. The team has also signed two local hockey players, Nick Pennucci and Matt Myers, to its roster over the last few years. This is something the IceCats did as well with the Campbell brothers.

Pennucci grew up playing youth hockey in the city. His dad was a well-known face in the local community, having managed Buffone’s Skating Arena, a rink known affectionately as “Lake Ave” to the many locals (myself included) who have spent countless hours skating there. After playing for the Worcester State Lancers, Pennucci attended a training camp in the fall of 2023. The Railers reached out to bring Pennucci in to play a couple of games in early 2024. Myers has a similar story, but he grew up even closer to Worcester professional hockey, with his dad working for the Worcester Sharks’ back-office team and now as the Railers’ chief operating officer. He debuted in two games earlier this year, and the future of his career and relationship with the team is yet to be worked out.

Whether it’s good business or philanthropy, it almost doesn’t matter: the Railers immediately plugged in and began building a community. Their “Skate to Success” program has enabled elementary schools across the city to send fourth graders to the Fidelity Worcester Ice Center, where they receive hockey gear, a brief skills clinic, and the chance to skate with Worcester Railers players and staff. This has happened every Tuesday since 2017 and is a small part of why the ECHL named the Railers the “Community Service Team of the Year” five times since they’ve been around.

The Blades Come Down the Pike

For a short period of time, the Railers weren’t the only professional hockey team in Worcester. In 2010 the Canadian Women’s Hockey League expanded into the United States, establishing a franchise in Boston, called the Boston Blades. That’s where the team initially operated but after competing with the totally separate National Women’s Hockey League, who had their own Boston team, the Pride, the Blades made the decision to relocate to Worcester, where they’d be playing their home games at the Fidelity Worcester Ice Center. On par with all the other Worcester hockey teams’ inaugural season debut, the Worcester Blades were bad—really bad. They didn’t win a single game all year and were outscored 155 to 22. But the team still had some fun and are the source of some fun facts about hockey and the city of Worcester.

One: While the team was consistently clobbered, the games they played brought some legendary opposition to the city. Anyone familiar with hockey should know the name Hillary Knight or Marie Philip-Poulin. These two players are arguably USA and Canada’s greatest players of all time and recently clashed on the international stage at the 2026 Olympics. The fact that they played multiple games in the city of Worcester is so fun, and those are just two names of many legendary women’s hockey players.

Two: A few years prior to Worcester getting their team, the CWHL had expanded into China. Whether it was just a gimmick for publicity, or a real push to grow the game, every year a select number of teams would make the trip out to China to play hockey, and in 2018, the Worcester Blades got to do just that. As far as I’m aware, they’re the only Worcester based franchise that has played their sport outside of North America, let alone travel almost 8,000 miles to China to do so.

The Blades’ time in our great city was unfortunately limited. The struggling team never got a second season, a byproduct of the CWHL closing in 2019. The league was struggling financially, and faced a lot of criticism for its business model. Women’s professional hockey had needlessly gotten complicated; multiple leagues in the same regional area split the fanbase, talent pool, and resources that were needed to help create a sustainable organization. The NWHL, which eventually rebranded as the Premier Hockey Federation, had long discussed merging the two leagues, but the talks never came to fruition. A day after the league and the Worcester Blades announced they were folding, 200 players including most, if not all, of the Worcester Blades, released a joint statement to boycott playing hockey in North America.

It was never perfect, and there were certainly stumbles, but over four years, the #ForTheGame movement picked up steam, especially when the players then joined forces and began organizing as the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association. In 2023, they formed a union, ratified a collective bargaining agreement that guaranteed health insurance, other benefits, and a minimum salary of $35,000 for a new women’s hockey league that would be kicking off on New Year’s Day 2024. While the minimum salary is still extraordinarily low compared to most professional athletes, this was a gigantic step in the right direction, as the previous women’s hockey leagues provided either a small stipend or struggled to pay $5,000 as a minimum for players. Sadly, the new league wouldn’t have a team in Worcester, but our wonderful fucked up smelly city and its players were intimately involved in the effort that led to the current professional women’s hockey league, the PWHL.

The Future of Worcester Hockey

Though lacking on-ice success, the Railers are committed to staying. Like the people in Worcester, the team will refuse to throw in the towel. Earlier in the year, it was announced that the Islanders and Railers were mutually ending their agreement, likely because the Islanders moved their AHL developmental team to Ontario. That left the Railers once again without a parent organization and NHL affiliation, something, as we’ve discussed, that is incredibly hard to pull off successfully. But much like the downtrodden-yet-resilient mentality of a Worcester citizen, the Railers refused to look defeat in the eye. The team sought another affiliation and secured a deal, bringing in a familiar face in the St. Louis Blues as their NHL parent organization. The agreement with the Blues runs through 2031, so the team will again have some guaranteed longevity.

This change does mean the roster will look quite different, as the St. Louis Blues prospects and the Springfield Thunderbirds, their primary AHL developmental team, will have players report to Worcester in place of the Islanders’ overflow of players and contracts. So a few fan favorites who have made their home here will now be moving on, but that’s just the nature of professional sports, unfortunately.

Professional hockey has had a tumultuous journey in our beloved city. But the chaos brought an innumerable amount of action, characters, and memories along with it. At first, it may seem resistant, but that’s Worcester’s way of accepting you. If it were all sunshine and roses, that’d be fake of us. Yeah, professional hockey, you can stay. Worcester’s not only adopted you with open arms, but we’ve fought tooth and nail to bring you back here. But remember, that doesn’t mean you still won’t catch an earful.

Roberto Solis-Byxbee is a Worcester-based hockey historian and fan. He writes about hockey at Blueshirt Banter and drinks hot sauce just to feel something.

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The third redistricting scenario is out, ahead of the Operations and Governance subcommittee meeting this coming Tuesday, Oct 13. If you’ve been following along, the elementary boundaries look pretty similar to the second scenario and seem somewhat settled. The big question in this scenario is what to do about middle and high schools. The consultants drafting these scenarios are trying to balance enrollment while keeping students on predictable pathways. But differences in building capacity and how seats in specialized programs are distributed make that difficult. Some solutions include proportional lotteries, split feeder pathways, and a new proposal: flex zones. Each comes with tradeoffs. And we need to be clear about which school communities would be asked to carry them. Let’s dive in.

Get caught up.

If you’re new to this process—or have understandably lost track of which proposal did what—start with my March overview of why WPS is redistricting, then my explainers on Scenario 1 and Scenario 2. My March meeting recap also covers what families asked for at the first community forum, which I’ll return to at the end.

You can also review the Scenario 3 presentation, the school-by-school enrollment, capacity, and demographic spreadsheet, and the interactive boundary map.

What changed from Scenario 2?

The elementary map looks basically the same, but there are some important changes in the assumptions and options behind it:

• The preschool goal now acknowledges that some elementary buildings cannot accommodate a pre-k classroom.

• Rice Square is modeled with additional classrooms so sixth graders could remain there.

• The secondary model back tracks from Scenario 2’s suggestion to reserve seats in each program by quadrant, and instead uses historical enrollment patterns to predict where students are coming from.

• Split feeder pathways for McGrath or Nelson Place and a new flex-zone proposal are being considered to help balance secondary enrollment.

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Elementary boundaries.

There aren’t huge changes to the elementary boundaries between Scenarios 2 and 3. But compared with the boundaries we have today, some school communities would look very different. The proposal still includes a neighborhood zone for Jacob Hiatt, a new Granite Street elementary school, a future elementary school at Greendale, and changes to the pockets of neighborhoods assigned to schools outside their immediate area.

Some notable examples: all of Plumley Village would be assigned to City View, rather than split between City View and Belmont. Great Brook Valley would no longer send students to Thorndyke, with students instead divided among Burncoat Prep, Clark Street, and Norrback. Lincoln Village would also be consolidated to Thorndyke rather than divided among multiple schools.

The chart below shows the change in the number of students living within each elementary attendance zone. Rice Square and Chandler would see the largest reductions in the number of students living within their attendance zones—293 and 250 fewer, respectively. May Street, Belmont Street, Elm Park, and Grafton Street would also have substantially fewer students in their zones. Roosevelt, City View, Clark Street, and Goddard would see the largest increases. These are changes in neighborhood-zone resident counts, not current school enrollment or the number of children who would change schools. A small net change can also hide a significant boundary shift if a school loses one neighborhood and gains another. The chart excludes the two magnets and the new Jacob Hiatt, Greendale, and Granite Street neighborhood zones, which have no current-zone baseline.

What does this mean for racial and economic diversity?

On this question, the consultants’ own analysis raises concerns. Using a range of 15 percentage points above or below the district’s approximately 25% white student population, five elementary schools fall outside that range today. Under Scenario 3, eight would. The share of students in those schools increases from 16% to 24%. (These figures exclude WAMS and Worcester Dual Language Magnet.) This is the consultants’ comparison measure, not a state designation of racial imbalance, but even using their relatively broad range, the proposal moves in the wrong direction.

The economic picture changes less. The share of students in schools outside the consultants’ low-income range—56% to 86%—falls slightly, from 38% today to 35% in Scenario 3, while the number of schools outside that range remains eleven. The presentation acknowledges that the same demographic extremes largely persist across the drafts.

I understand that boundaries have to account for buildings, walkability, and enrollment. But at the initial March community forum, families raised socioeconomic diversity and historical inequities as a top concern. If the elementary map is becoming fixed, we should be asking now whether these outcomes are acceptable.

New start times and longer elementary school days.

The proposed school start times generally puts high schools first, elementary schools second, and middle schools last, but there’s exceptions to each one as you’ll see below. Along with changes to start and dismissal times, the proposal includes a longer elementary school day. The move to three tiers is intended to make transportation more efficient.

The second scenario had put elementary schools on the 9 a.m. tier, but elementary families raised concerns about how a 9 a.m. start would affect their work schedules, and nonprofit providers raised concerns about their ability to run after-school programs if students didn’t get out until 3:30 p.m. So that’s why the proposal has most elementary schools starting at 8:15 a.m., although some start at 7:15 a.m.

That change comes with a tradeoff, though. The presentation says putting elementary schools in the second tier does not provide as much transportation capacity as putting them at the third. I’d like to see those numbers, just to have an idea of how many students could receive transportation under each option. Because access to transportation is the number one issue that has come out of the community forums so far.

Pre-K, but not at every school.

One of the original goals was to put a full-day preschool classroom in every neighborhood elementary school. Scenario 3 acknowledges that some smaller buildings don’t have room for that alongside their existing grades and specialized programs. Granite Street, Wawecus, Heard Street, May Street, Midland, and Lincoln Street are identified as schools without enough space for pre-k.

New schools and classrooms.

The elementary plan depends on opening new schools and adding classrooms. That’s an exciting prospect, but also a big commitment when WPS is facing budget constraints next year and beyond.

Greendale is proposed to help accommodate growing enrollment in the Burncoat quadrant. The presentation projects average elementary utilization of approximately 95–100% as Curtis Apartments fills, if WAMS remains as it is and no other portfolio changes are made. But Greendale would not open immediately. Head Start would remain there until the conversion, which the presentation places around 2032. It also acknowledges that the building in its current condition is not ideal for Pre-K through sixth grade. We need to understand the renovations and costs, when crowding would occur, and how students would be accommodated before Greendale opens—or if it is delayed. The consultants also considered moving WAMS outside the Burncoat quadrant, but set that aside to maintain quadrant alignment with the middle and high school arts programs. Opening Greendale also involves potentially moving Head Start to the University Park Campus School building while exploring a merger or co-location between UPCS and Claremont.

In the north quadrant, Granite Street would reopen as a neighborhood elementary school in the current Gerald Creamer Center building. That would mean potentially relocating the GCC to the Fanning Building.

At Rice Square, Scenario 3 is modeled with four additional classrooms so sixth graders could go back there (they are currently at Worcester East Middle). The district’s capital plan already lists a $1.6 million modular replacement for 2028–29, but it’s unclear whether the additional classrooms would be part of that project or something separate. Are we replacing existing space, adding capacity, or both—and when would those classrooms be ready? Several other modular replacements are included in the district’s five-year capital plan. If redistricting better distributes students across existing buildings, could it reduce the need for some of those projects? I’d like to understand how the boundary plan and facilities plan fit together. If the school committee approves boundaries that depend on these projects, what are they committing to fund—and what happens if they don’t follow through?

Utilization.

The consultants identify 80–90% as ideal building utilization, leaving room for enrollment changes and balancing class sizes. Scenario 3 brings elementary schools into a range of 71–90%, with districtwide elementary utilization around 81%, excluding magnets but including the future Greendale school. These numbers have been revised to account for preschool classrooms, specialized programs, and how buildings are actually used, including substantially separate classrooms.

Several schools would still be below the consultants’ ideal range and that concerns me. We have heard over and over again that birth rates are declining, as are school enrollment trends, so what would utilization look like five or ten years from now? We’re proposing to open new schools while some existing schools would already be below the ideal range. Could that leave us discussing consolidations or closures a few years later? I’m not saying that’s inevitable, but I want to understand how this plan holds up under the district’s enrollment projections.

Balancing Middle Schools and High Schools.

The bigger unresolved question is how to balance middle and high school enrollment. The buildings don’t have matching capacities within each quadrant, and where students attend specialized programs affects how much room is available for everyone else. Scenario 2 proposed proportional seat allocations by quadrant for districtwide programs. Scenario 3 steps back from applying that across all programs, instead assuming historical enrollment patterns. That has consequences, with models showing Worcester East Middle would be at approximately 98% utilization, while Burncoat High would be at 56%. Doherty High would be at 91%.

Something has to give. If we cannot have districtwide programs with lotteries by quadrant, the other options are sending an elementary school community to a different high school than its middle school classmates, or use flex zones to adjust assignments as enrollment changes. These options can be combined, but they put the responsibility for balancing enrollment in different places. I did appreciate this slide in the presentation that outlines some of the things that were explored by the consultants before they put these ones forward:

Split feeder pathways.

One option for balancing middle and high school enrollment would have students attend middle school in one quadrant and high school in another. Their elementary school community would stay together, but they would leave some of their middle school classmates behind when they moved on to high school.

That is what the presentation proposes as an option for Francis McGrath: students would attend Forest Grove Middle, but then go to Burncoat High instead of continuing to Doherty with other Forest Grove students. This would raise Burncoat High’s utilization from approximately 56% to 69% and lower Doherty’s from 91% to 85%. The presentation offers Nelson Place as an alternative: sending its students to Burncoat High would bring Burncoat’s utilization to approximately 75% and Doherty’s to 82%.

These options would improve the balance between Burncoat and Doherty. But they would do so by making an exception to one of the original goals of redistricting: keeping school communities together through elementary, middle, and high school. For the most part, this scenario preserves that continuity. But McGrath or Nelson Place would be asked to give it up so other school communities could keep it.

Flex zones.

Scenario 3 introduces another option to manage middle school and high school enrollment: flex zones. The proposed zones are Nelson Place, Belmont, Lake View, Vernon Hill, Columbus Park, Jacob Hiatt, and Elm Park.

These elementary neighborhoods could have their middle or high school assignments adjusted to adjacent quadrants to balance enrollment. Lake View could go to Burncoat or Worcester East Middle, for example, or Columbus Park could go to South or Doherty. The proposed rules would apply to incoming seventh graders, incoming ninth graders, and students newly enrolling. Students already enrolled would stay at their school, and once a student starts at a school, they could not be flexed again. The district would ask for volunteers first, then potentially use a lottery if there are not enough volunteers. This gives the district flexibility, but it asks families in particular neighborhoods to live with uncertainty. What criteria would trigger a need to flex, and who would make that decision? Worcester is notoriously opaque about this stuff (cough, cough, voluntary transfer), so the School Committee would need to lay out clearly in policy how this would work before the scenario gets approved.

One of the original goals of redistricting was more predictable pathways. So while flex zones could help balance buildings, school committee needs to acknowledge the tension between those two things. And if they’re reluctant to move programs or distribute seats through proportional lotteries, they’re choosing to put more of that uncertainty on neighborhood school communities.

Dual language.

The scenario does not identify where the dual language high school program would be located, even though families have already been told at the Burncoat building meetings that it will not continue at Burncoat like it is now. Since the district is using quadrant alignment to justify keeping the arts magnet programs together, it should apply that same standard to dual language. Locating the dual-language secondary pathway in the Doherty quadrant—and moving Woodland into that quadrant—is one way to provide that alignment. If the district proposes a different approach, it needs to explain how it would preserve the same program continuity it has prioritized for the arts magnet. Families deserve to know how their children’s dual language education will continue through high school, and that should have been part of this scenario, not something figured out afterward. Dual language students deserve the same attention to program continuity that the district has given to other programs.

What happens next.

We have one more scenario to come before the School Committee decides which changes to move forward with. As we get closer to that decision, it’s worth returning to what families asked for at the initial community forum: more access to transportation, more equitable access to academic opportunities, consistent enrollment policies, and less disruption to students and their school communities. Do we feel like it’s moving in that direction? Where the proposal falls short, there is still time to ask for changes.

The process is also moving into the specifics of implementation—the decisions that will turn a hypothetical map into real changes for children, families, and schools. Would new boundaries apply to all students at once, or only to incoming classes? Who could remain at their current school, and what would happen to younger siblings? How would transportation work for students staying at a school outside their new assignment? If students are grandfathered into their current schools for five years, how much would that cost and how long would it delay relief for overcrowded schools? Which changes could happen in existing buildings, and which would depend on funding, construction, or program moves? Who would be responsible for carrying out these transitions, and what happens if those plans change? Clear implementation and enrollment policies need to be in place before the School Committee takes a final vote.

Let me know in the comments what makes that scenario your preference, and what would you still change.

There are still opportunities to weigh in. The next public meetings are October 13 at 6 p.m. at Vernon Hill Elementary and online, October 19 at 3 p.m. at Chandler Elementary, October 26 at 6 p.m. at Forest Grove Middle and online, and November 7 at noon at Goddard Elementary. You can share feedback at those meetings or email alignment@worcesterschools.net and school committee members. The district’s project website has the proposals and additional information. Whether you support a change, oppose it, or need more information, now is the time to say so. Think about what it means for your own children, but also what will make WPS better for children across the city—including those who haven’t started school yet.

Thanks for reading. Have a great week.

Today, Katie and I will be boothing with some custom made Worcester Sucks merch at an event called WOOSTOCK at Off The Rails. Our very own Bad Advice Columnist Shaun Connolly will be MCing the event, and the fact we’re also there is totally unrelated to that, not at all an example of incestuous Worcester nepotism.

It runs from 1 p.m. to 11 p.m. So come on down! We’ll have shirts, trinkets, whatnots, etceteras… whatever we don’t move will go up on the merch store after.

The shirts by the way are so freakin’ sick

Also the LGBT Asylum Task Force Gala is tonight, should be a good time!

Okay, now to me for the news.

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Optiline taking city to court

Thanks, me.

The Carpenters Union is taking a victory lap after news broke that Optiline, a New Hampshire-based contractor with a long, sordid history of abusing workers, is suing the city after weeks of pleading to be let back on a Franklin Street development job.

“It is outrageous and frustrating that Optiline has operated for years with an illegal business model and has not been held accountable. This week that changes. The City of Worcester is clearly stepping up in a big way to challenge rampant crime in construction. This is a clear message that there should be no taxpayer monies for contractors that cheat the system,” said David Minasian, District Manager, Carpenters Local 336.

The city banned, unbanned, then, due to the advocacy of the Carpenters, re-banned Optiline from working on projects that get city money.

Per Eric Casey over at WBJ, the decision to re-ban came on the day that the Carpenters took to city hall to protest the un-banning of Optiline. A letter from the city attorney filed shortly before the meeting on Sept. 22.

“The City of Worcester hereby reaffirms its June 2025 decision and finds the citation issued to Optiline in December 2024 violates the City’s Responsible Development Ordinance, rendering Optiline ineligible to work on tax relief projects in the city,” the letter reads.

In 2024, Optiline employees filed a class action wage theft lawsuit against the company and a judge found that Optiline made “threatening and intimidating statements, including some related to immigration status, to coerce the employees into dropping the lawsuit,” per a release from the Carpenters Union, who assisted with the lawsuit.

The company was then cited by the state Attorney General’s Office for taking retaliatory action against an employee who filed a complaint, resulting in a $15,000 fine (the highest, apparently, that state law allows, which is a joke). In 2025, the city acted on its Responsible Developer Ordinance and barred the company from working on projects with municipal funding.

Now the city’s Responsible Developer Ordinance faces a challenge in Suffolk Superior Court. Here’s the complaint filed by Optiline. The first line reads:

“This is an action to enjoin the City from weaponizing its Responsible Development Ordinance (”RDO”) to unlawfully blacklist Optiline…”

Weaponization! Brother, the ordinance is a weapon, being used as intended. When you shoot a gun, you are not weaponizing the gun.

Threatening to call ICE to squash a labor action, on the other hand, is textbook weaponization… albeit a specific weaponization that is pretty obviously the reason ICE exists, despite never being stated as such officially. But point stands: Optiline used ICE as the Christmas Adventurers intended when they dreamed the agency up.

Here’s hoping this lawsuit, like most civil suits, drags for years.

Yes on 2, The Interview

In case you missed it, or you’re not a podcast person and thusly missed it on purpose, we had a great guest on Outdoor Cats to discuss perhaps the most obscure of the nine ballot questions you’ll be asked to answer in November. Question 2 concerns the right of public defenders to unionize, and it’s an obvious “yes” vote. The reasons why they can’t unionize, despite being state employees, is considerably less obvious. Nathan Wong, a Worcester based public defender active in the Yes on 2 campaign came on to help explain it to us. After our conversation, I still only half understand the roadblock, but very much understand why it’s in place.

Episode 75: Defense Wins Championships (Ft. Nathan Wong)

Public defenders are a crucial stopgap in our legal system’s ability to administer its quiet class war. A check on power, much like local journalism when done correctly, and as it happens both professions suffer from the same malaise: low pay and long hours, high turnover, an impossible student loan debt-to-career prospects ratio. (Please subscribe ha ha.)

And so really what happened is that people would stay for maybe two years and would want to stay longer, but obviously people want to have families, right? People want to be able to buy a home and not work two jobs and sort of save for a better life. And that was just impossible. So most people... Like around that time, the attrition rate was pretty high.After about two years, two or three years, people just sort of left and turned over. And so what you had happened was not just a people drain, but you had an intellectual sort of brain. Like you would have all this great institutional knowledge sort of leave the agency and go into private practice or do other sorts of things. And also, too, the job is stressful. The job is really, really hard. $36,000 at that time wasn’t a lot. I mean, it’s certainly the starting salary is much, much, much better now.

In my last post, I spent some time illustrating the existing defacto criminalization of homelessness, a complex process in which the district court plays a leading role. Public defenders are sometimes the only people in the corner of an unhoused person put through the byzantine ringer of trespassing charges and default warrants and weeks- or months-long pre-trial bids in the House of Correction. I was happy I got the opportunity to ask him about it. This is what he said:

I mean, so if you’re precariously housed and the police arrest you and they put a bail on you that you cannot post and you’re held for 30 or 60 days, where are all your belongings?

Are they still in that place you’re couch surfing, your wallet, your ID, your birth certificate, all the sorts of things that we all take for granted and can use to access the banking system, employment, like all that stuff is gone. And like, where does it leave them? I mean, I think there is a direct role.

I mean, if you’re in district court, you will see that day in and day out.

And on the matter of the proposed $25-a-day fine that is now (fingers crossed) squashed, Wong said: “I would assume that the public defenders would file motions to dismiss fine, and that it’s also unconstitutional. To fine someone for being unhoused is preposterous and I think is anti-American. It’s not what we do. We don’t jail people who are homeless. At least not in the country that I want to live in.”

You can listen to the rest here.

“I Think She’s Drunk”

It came out recently the WPD amended its body camera policy as a direct result of the liberal use of the mute button during the Great Toomey Car Crash of 2026. Before the wreck heard round the world (sorry, I’ll stop now) the policy read that officers can use the mute button “when sensitive conversations are taking place, but the incident is still ongoing.” Now, after GTCC26, per the Telegram, it reads that an officer “shall state on the record the reason for the mute,” but, so they have an out, the language is softened with “whenever practicable.” Love to see a word like that, which could mean anything to anyone at a given time, thrown into department policy for the police, an institution that gets more benefit-of-the-doubt rope than it knows what to do with, and it knows a lot about what to do with it.

Body cameras were always and continue to be faux accountability—a withering technocratic initiative to lie to the public and expand the dragnet at the same time. But I’ve made my case on that matter a few times over.

In 2023...

“Special considerations for plain-clothes personnel”

And in 2020...

The case against body cameras

No need to rehash it. They’re not going anywhere.

Also Sam Turken over at GBH had a good one laying out the 911 tape and some witness interviews.

During the call, the woman told the 911 dispatcher that Toomey had several Worcester Police Department stickers on her car. When the caller asked about any injuries, the woman said Toomey said she was not hurt. The caller added that the left side and rear end of her own car were “completely ruined.”

“She kept slamming on her gas to get out, to get away, and I opened the door,” the caller said. “I don’t even think she knows what she’s doing. I think she’s drunk.”

I for one cannot wait for this internal investigation to come out. What’s 90 days from the crash? Need to mark my calendar.

“Porta-Potties Don’t Have A Great Reputation”

At Tuesday’s City Council meeting, business opened with a request for a reconsideration of an especially messy and stupid vote taken the week prior, at the Sept. 29 meeting.

The vote on Sept. 29 was against (sort of) a public bathroom proposal in the Canal District, akin to measures recently rolled out across New York City and in downtown Miami. It was introduced by District 2 Councilor Rob Bilotta and Councilor Khrystian King.

Both made good points about it.

Bilotta spoke about models in other cities Worcester would do well to emulate.

I know in Miami, they actually hired someone who was formerly unhoused and had some peer experience with the community that they were providing bathrooms to, and it was an overwhelming success, and it translated to public bathrooms for the broader community as well, which is equally important.

King stressed the urgent and obvious need to deal with the problem.

There is a basic contradiction when we’re complaining about human waste, public urination, etcetera, and fail to provide an adequate place for folks to use a bathroom.

Moe Bergman on the other hand tried to amend it, softening the language so as to give the manager more wiggle room to not do it, or so his thinking seemed to go. Ever the cunning legal mind, he motioned to change all instances of “...request the manager...” to “...request the manager consider...” a meaningless alteration, as orders are by default requests that the manager then considers. The council cannot mandate anything of the manager, really, and that’s not even what the order was trying to do. “Orders” are an inaccurate term for this feature of our city government. They are suggestions, generated by individual or sometimes groups of councilors, voted on, and thereby sent to the manager, who then considers what to do with them—usually nothing. And for that recurring default consideration the council has no recourse.

Put another way, all orders are requests to consider by default, making Bergman’s quibble a moot point if not for his intentions.

The fracas ended in two unanimous votes for the manager to put together a public bathroom plan, which could and would have happened in all of five minutes last week if Moe Bergman simply resisted the urge to be a sniveling little baby about it. But, like every other time there’s an order on having to do with homelessness, Bergman couldn’t resist.

Bergman cited, in his smarmy way, the concerns of “the business community,” which, as we’ll get to, is itself a euphemism.

I can’t imagine that there are business owners out there that are gonna have no opinion on whether or not you place porta-potties and permanent bathrooms in front of the business.

King refused to accept what was obviously a bad faith amendment meant to derail the proposal. He amended it himself to include language about consulting businesses.

King’s amended order failed by a 5-6 vote. The six against will read familiar: Bergman, Rivera, Toomey, Mitra, Economou, Fresolo.

The board then moved to consider Bergman’s amended version, which would have likely passed by the same breakdown in reverse, but King held it after a squabble we’ll get into in a little bit.

This particular vote came at about 11 p.m., deep into the meeting last week—a meeting that felt like a return, after a few weeks of the Toomey Show, to the mundane ritual of petty grievance and cruelty that’s been the norm since January. This week is set to be a continuation, as this weird fracas over public bathrooms spills over into a second meeting.

When I finally finished watching it, I felt myself lulled into an ambient dread… a dull depressive state filling in the silence after the last strike of the gavel, unable to think about what I’d just watched hard enough to figure out what was wrong with it.

This is, of course, the goal: the ideal rendered state of a city council viewer, a tithe on the psyche, a weekly dose of punishment for caring.

The end.

Just kidding!

I love my job haha please subscribe.

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The nothing drama over the bathroom proposal moment in question concerns public bathrooms in the canal district, in an effort to combat the very real problem of human pee and poo everywhere.

it came after more technically serious and significant matters, such as...

How do we hire more cops?

What do we have to sacrifice to pay for the construction of a new Burncoat High and Middle School, with “East Middle” taking suspicious foreground in the otherwise vague conversation. “We’re going to have to make tough choices,” said District 1 Councilor Tony Economou, without saying what exactly the choices will be between.

After King flagged East Middle’s inclusion in the report, CFO Tim McGourthy said he was the one who included it, “as an example, simply because I know this council has discussed the need to redevelop Worcester East Middle.

“And my concern is, unless we manage the finances of this project correctly, it could preclude other projects from occurring around the city.”

Later, Batista said it as well. “There’s real concerns about the availability of funds that we would have in the future to be able to redevelop a school like East Middle and redevelop it and build it brand new.”

In the next breath, he brought up the need to build a new police station. So…

Then came the public bathrooms ordeal.

This particular meltdown is worth explaining because it to demonstrates, in an anthropological sort of way, the structural powerlessness of the council, and the weird little games old guard councilors cook up to pass the time while being otherwise comfortably and contentedly useless.

Back to Round 1 of this inane drama.

Bergman wrapped up his spiel on a fittingly ridiculous line.

“Um, unfortunately,” he said, all self serious and dignified, in pursuit of such noble inquiries befitting a Councilor-At-Large in this, the 76th year of our city government so composed, serving his seventh consecutive term, “porta potties don’t have a great reputation.”

Couldn’t ask for a better line to encapsulate the dearth of self-awareness required to be a crank councilor. You’re up there in front of the cable access network and the youtubes and dozens of viewers at home, and you’re talking about the reputation of porta-potties like it’s Serious Official Business.

King responded: People have been pushing for this since at least 2019, and they’ve consulted business owners. And then, more directly to Bergman, he said, “to present this as this is some sort of rushed and inconsiderate act towards businesses... Yes, in fact, there are businesses who are open to this. There’s businesses that are willing to support it.”

A frustrated Bergman then showed his hand…

And quite frankly, I go to every Shrewsbury Street Business Neighborhood Association meeting I can go to, and I’ve gone to several in a row now, and the conversations I have, at least in private, with many of the business owners are totally inconsistent with what this order is asking.

Remember when, just a few lines up, Bergman was coyly presenting his concerns as “business owners might be concerned,” now he’s letting slip that he’s talked to specific business owners, making his initial framing disingenuous.

It’s worth noting that the Shrewsbury Street Business Association is an organization headed up by John Piccolo, the restaurateur who did the spray paint thing and, more recently, (allegedly according to many others but not me), let Councilor Kate Toomey leave his establishment in such a state as to ram into a parked car on her drive home, struggle to spell her name for the responding officers, and publicly embarrass herself and everyone associated with her in more spectacular a fashion than we’ve seen in recent memory.

In case you were under the impression the cranks represent anything more than an incestuously small perceived “in group,” of fellow townies.

Bergman was joined by his fellow members of the crank in group in voting the proposal down.

Then, they were about to vote on Bergman’s amended order—which was the exact same thing with a word change to make the expected action, already a suggestion to the manager, less definitive—when King got frustrated with the whole ruse.

It went like this:

Petty reads Bergman’s amended order, which sounds exactly the same. He stumbles through it. “Did I get that right?”

King: “Mr Chairman I would object. That’s the same order.”

“No,” Bergman said to Petty. “But A for effort.”

Bergman begins reading his amended order, and he too struggles.

King: “What are you talking about, it’s the same thing.”

Bergman: “Basically every time there’s request, I’m asking consider....”

King requests a ruling from the clerk. “That is the exact same thing as my motion just with different words. He’s filing this exact same thing Mr. Chairman.”

Petty: “This is important, so lets stop this...”

King: “It’s a personality issue that’s going on. This is the same order.”

“What are we doing here?”

Petty: “He’s asking to...’

King: “This is nothig more than a personality issue.”

You can watch the moment play out here:

Bergman’s amendment apparently, according to Mayor Joe Petty, did not constitute a new item, so he made the council vote on whether to hold the initial item, which they had just voted down, again. So the council voted something down, then also voted to put it on the next agenda. Utter nonsense. And all because Bergman cannot pass up the opportunity to poo-poo an effort to make the unhoused any less miserable, and do so on behalf of the “business owners,” a euphemism, when you look close enough, for “John Piccolo.”

But that was only the first half of the story.

Another round of petty little split votes on process opened the second week of this charade. Eventually, the stage was sent. Bergman opened.

Mr. Chairman, I mean, I spoke at length about it last week and all I wasn’t happy about the hold. It’s my colleague’s right to do so, but it certainly gave me an opportunity to reach out to key members of the District 2 business communities, including the Shusbury Street Business Association, the Canal Street Business Alliance. And I’m going to tell you, they were quite surprised.

Translation: Bergman talked to Piccolo and another guy, gave them whatever bad faith version–”they’re gonna put a portapotty right in front of your door”–and they were mad, either because they wanted something to be mad about or Bergman was mad and so they felt they should be too.

Asking two people you know is not a way to administer public policy. Luckily, the city council doesn’t do that. Imagine Bergman, skulking around all the last week, calling all the business owners he knows personally, wrapped up in the fiction he’s doing politics, indulged by people who don’t know or particularly care whether he is, actually, and all the while he’s cooking up how the Facebook post is going to read–the real prize of it all.

King understands the uselessness of his position and is trying to make it not so useless, a task for which he is bludgeoned weekly. He said he’s been talking to Health and Human Service’s Homeless Outreach Division since the summer to craft the proposal. And in those discussions, they decided it would require communication, community feedback, business feedback. Now, the drama on the council floor is much to do about nothing, he said.

“We’re parsing words here,” King said. “This is an important issue. And we certainly shouldn’t have let personalities get in the way of that. This is for the greater good.”

Joe Petty, ever the leader, tried to settle the matter by saying “we’re all on the same page,” despite Bergman showing he obviously was not.

Rob Bilotta took Bergman’s smarmy antics to task directly. “So I think I do take issue with inferring that this was done in a fast track or any way to cut out input. That’s disingenuous at best.”

“The several meetings that I’ve attended on Shewsbury Street with the Shewsbury” Street Neighborhood Association, which the exception of Councilor King and Councillor Toomey, I’ve been the only councilor there.”

Petty called for a vote, and Bergman insisted that they vote on his amendment rather than King’s, despite them being the same thing. A small quibble ensues, a repeat of last week. “It’s the same thing anyway,” King interjects. Petty gets mad. “You don’t have the floor.”

Bergman: “No, it’s just my request through the chair, procedurally, it’s agreed upon that we take 17C...”

Petty sighs. King interjects again. “Chairman can I withdraw my motion? I just withdraw it,” he said. “Let’s give Councilor Bergman his motion. It’s the same dang thing. It is the same thing. Whatever. “

Petty cuts him off. “Your time is up.”

Bergman: “I’m not the one that spends a lot of time at the microphone here.” Despite this being the second straight week of his forcing the council to spend an hour on his little quibble. The dude loves to say he doesn’t talk a lot, especially when he’s actively talking a lot. “So if I thought it was the same thing, I would...”

Petty cuts him off. “Okay, he’s withdrawing 17b, we’re gonna vote on 17c.” He rushed through “all those in favor opposed so ordered” in the special way he does. And with that, the drama was over.

Like you would a petulant toddler, King and Petty both placated Bergman, letting him think he was having his way so he’d shut up about it, and the proposal went through to the manager with no mandate he do anything differently than when it first appeared on the agenda last week.

Sheesh!

As is often the case, Bergman’s motivations run counter here to his stated motivations. A fact he let slip, in a moment of frustration, saying the business owners he talks to don’t want public bathrooms.

So, if we carry the zero, we can safely assume he wanted business owner input because the business owners he would arrange to give said input are against it. This whole act, then, becomes a weasel-worded way of opposing an order while saying otherwise. A low-rent move that appeases exactly no one, in other words, The Bergman Special.

This moment is worth zooming in on for two reasons. Number one: it’s pathetic. Number two, relatedly: it’s a neat little window into the way the city council works. Via thousands of little acts of sabotage like this one, the crank majority works to make what is already a feckless body all the more inert and useless. They do their best to torpedo any progressive idea, while bringing no ideas of their own, the net effect being a reflexive hostility to the idea of ideas. More than preserve a status quo, the city council actively fossilizes the municipality, keeping it stuck in an arbitrary past, the “back in the day,” when we “did things our way” which for most councilors means the late 80s to the early 90s. And brother believe me it shows. One way of looking at it is in our especially bad problem with pedestrian deaths: it can be seen as a brutal convergence of 90s road design with 2020s vehicle size, speed and volume.

Think of Mill Street, and how Bergman factored so heavily into the reactionary backlash to that entirely mundane road redesign. It’s what he thinks he’s there to do: to seize on and stoke reactionary hostility to a new thing as it arises. What the thing is matters less than the fact it’s there: Mill Street bike lanes, roundabouts on May Street, bathrooms downtown, the WRTA... in general, any changes to zoning whatsoever, any attempt to reign in the absolute power of the police. Whatever it may be, Bergman reliably stokes the grievances and petty resentments, and that’s all he hopes to do. While Bergman is particularly transparent about it, he’s not doing anything the other cranks aren’t also doing. This is their project—how they imagine politics in the absence of having any real political power. It only serves to make real city modernization efforts prohibitively annoying, and so a lot of stuff that could happen doesn’t. And the whole city is worse for it.

Odds And Ends

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Human Rights Commission meeting from Sept. 28 is still not online. What is going on with that?

The wonderful John Keough is throwing a Halloween show type deal at which I’ll be performing a few songs.

Interesting Michael Moore bit in MASSterlist.

Millbury Sen. Michael Moore, a Democrat whose last contested election was a decade ago, recently announced a $50,000 media campaign targeting his Worcester-area district. The blitz, according to Moore’s campaign, includes billboards with the slogan “Less Talk. Moore Delivers,” and a video that will run on TV, streaming services and social platforms.

Moore says it’s “about showing up” and making sure voters “hear directly from me about the work we’re doing, the results we’re delivering for our communities and where we’re headed next.”

Fun new database to poke around in, compiling state ethics disclosures, courtesy the Boston Institute of Non-Profit Journalism. A quick search of “Worcester” yielded some interesting ones! Will have to spend some more time spelunking.

Josh Homer is leaving his post at the WPL to become the Book Czar of Big Bizaro Worcester, sometimes called “Baltimore.”

As we mark three years of genocide in Gaza, gotta give props to Zach Bryan. Not my cup of tea far as country music goes but this is a kid who reaches exactly the kind of people who need to be reached to move the generational needle on Israel. Zach Bryan sets Gillette attendance record after ‘Free Palestine’ message

Finished “The Crying of Lot 49” the other day. Man, what an ending. Crazy-making and unsettling. Now onto “End Times Fascism” which is... crazy-making and unsettling.

Main St. Complete Street Visioning Workshop coming up. Wednesday, Oct. 14, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. YMCA, 766 Main Street.

The City of Worcester is seeking input on creating a safer and more accessible corridor for all roadway users on Main Street between Chandler St. and May St. Join us to discuss your transportation vision, goals, and needs for this segment of Main Street.

Project page

Survey

Saw PIL at Big Night Live the other day. Gotta say it, Big Night Live? Big thumbs down. Terrible venue. Hostile in design, intent and execution.

This is the best Public Image song I think. Ask me again tomorrow, it’ll be different.

Ok bye bye!

Here’s the link for tickets and such.

And also please subscribe! This outlet is 100 percent reader funded. Wouldn’t exist without you :~) —Bill

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Dear Shaun,

I know in the past you’ve given costume ideas for Halloween, and I thought it would be nice to read some more of your bad ideas as last year’s were so bad. Your readership thanks you in advance.

-Costume Curious

Dear Costume Curious,

I always struggle with the compliments I receive from this column. The title is of course Bad Advice, but I can’t help but squirm every time I’m told my advice is bad. Of course that is the goal, but as I write this in my ivory tower laughing at the huddled masses below I can’t help but bristle at the reality that people actually read this and then have an opinion about it. I thank you all for reading and you even think about it enough to decide one way or another about it. With all that said, here are your top six costume ideas for Halloween this, The Year Of Our Lord 2026, you fucking heathens.

1. Hasan Piker

You can be the lefty daddy that the entire internet desires (including the MAGAsphere). It is simple. You can be professional Hasan: suit, Clark Kent glasses. Or you could be thirst trap Hasan: no shirt, short shorts (if you don’t have the abs for this it would be funny to paint abs onto your normal torso). Either way if enough people go as Hasan for Halloween, Fox News will absolutely pick it up as a story because they have the biggest crush on him and maybe you could get a TV credit out of it!

2. Elizabeth Holmes

She’s back in the news with this Nathan Fielder documentary coming out. It is easy too, just wear all black, pin your hair back, and never blink. If you do it right those around you will have the same incredulous look Nathan Fielder has in the trailer.

3. The Parked Car City Councilor Kate Toomey Hit

Just a refrigerator box and some paint and you’ve got the victim of a botched police response and a charmed public official’s carnage. It can be a couple’s costume where your partner could go as Kate. It’s not an election year, so you don’t need to have her pretend she is injured or ailing you can be the normal asshole she is. For full veritas, make sure the person going as Kate gets wasted at the party and drives you home.

4. Me

You can get really wild with it. I mean you can be REALLY mean about it. Big ole mustache, stupid looking shirts, too many kids in your hand, Mets hat, you can paint your face to look like a sad clown, the high water pants can get really high, and make sure you also get drunk, but be safe about it and get an Uber like a normal sane person.

5. A US Senator

Pick any one of them. But dress as the most accurate ghoul you could imagine. I mean get a Hollywood make-up artist. Go all in on the design. Look as broken down, decrepit, and heinous as you can think. If there was a way to express selfishness, corruption, and apathy towards human suffering then do that. Maybe even hold a “bill” that states you don’t care about children.

6. IDK like a sexy IDF Soldier?

You can be scary and hot at the same time. I guess the more I think about this the more it is just Gal Gadot. So hot, so much blood on her hands.

There you go there are my 2026 Costume ideas. They are all terrifying in their own special way. If you end up going as any of these send them my way at woocomedyweek@gmail.com

NEWS

I am hosting the 2nd Annual Woostock at Off the Rails this Saturday. There is an amazing lineup of Worcester bands playing and it really should be a fun time. Bill, my boss, will be there with a table so go say what’s up and buy some merch.

Also the days are counting down till The Worcester Comedy Club Opens up! Tickets are moving don’t miss out on our opening night with Corey Rodrigues! Get your tickets for 10/23 or any other Friday for the rest of this year here!

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Listen to the end for Tuber Tourney updates and what I personally feel is the most pressing question before (certain select) voters in this midterm election.

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(Hey, Chris here making a late edit because we talk about Nathan and I’s beloved friend and colleague Adrian Angus. Here’s Adrian’s obituary, and an article in the Telegram about how his loss was felt in the Worcester legal community. We miss you and love you a lot, Adrian)

Intro music by Bill Shaner 10.3.26

Outro music: “Count Em Up (feat Lil Fame)” by Masta Ace & Marco Polo

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Also be sure to read to the end for some very exciting news! —Bill

October Horrorscopes

Libra- Halloween season has officially begun. Which means scaring anyone at anytime is allowed. Fake pregnancies, coming out to your MAGA uncle, and thinking about AI are all on the table.

Scorpio- Thank you for reaching HORRORSCOPES. This may be recorded for quality assurance purposes. If you want your horrorscope, enter your 9 digit social security number followed by the # symbol.

Sagittarius- Go leaf peeping, be a real pervert about it.

Capricorn- Fortune is on the horizon. You will never meet that horizon. The stars have the fortune on a fishing hook and they will keep reeling it out of your reach each time you bend over.

Aquarius- To be more socially conscious you must no longer use notepads. All of your to do lists are now tattooed on you, “Memento” style. If you need a good tattooer contact Katie Nowicki.

Pisces- The moon told me to tell you that they are not talking to you right now. If you have anything to say to tell me at woocomedyweek@gmail.com. I don’t know what you did but the moon is waxing and waning on your relationship right now.

Aries- If you live in Worcester, drunk driving is legal now. So either roll the dice or get the hell off the road.

Taurus- The next time you’re asked, “Any questions for me?” respond by asking what their body count is. I don’t care if this is at the Parent/Teacher conference, I don’t care if it is at a job interview. You’re either going to come off as bold, or you’re going to know that your new boss or kid’s teacher is prude as hell.

Gemini- In the sand there are two sets of footprints, yours and that guy at the beach that jogs with a weighted vest and screams during his push up reps. He is in shape, but he looks unhealthy? You know that guy? He’s walking next to you. Making you feel strange.

Cancer- The planets are tired of you asking. The planets are up there. Ask them how they are doing once in a while.

Leo- If you don’t have a Halloween costume idea for this season, what the hell is your problem? You should have decided back in July. Are you even into Halloween or are you just a poser? I bet you’ve never seen Halloween II. Me lol either, but I know witches are involved. Bet you didn’t know that. Just don’t go as inflatable T. Rex, go as something topical like RFK Jr.’s hot tub jeans or something.

Virgo- I forgot to mention last week, stretch before twerking (you’re not as young and nimble as you used to be).

NEWS

Tonight I am at Bill’s Bar in Boston. Saturday I’m at Wong Dynasty in Holden. Next week I am hosting Woostock at Off the Rails.

BUT HERE IS THE BIG NEWS.

I am helping open a real-live comedy club in Worcester! It is aptly called Worcester Comedy Club (266 Park Ave) and to ease our way into being a full-time club we are running shows on nearly every Friday for the rest of the year! Our opening night is October 23rd at 8PM. Headlining is the legend Corey Rodrigues. Please consider come celebrating opening night by getting your tickets here. If you’re busy that night, we are open every Friday going forward, minus Black Friday and Christmas.

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Writing about Worcester Public Schools while also advocating within the district has always been complicated. I have relationships with many of the same people whose decisions I sometimes question publicly, and I would be lying if I said I never calculate the consequences of what I write. But I keep coming back to the belief behind this newsletter: knowledge is power. Families deserve to understand the systems shaping their children’s education, and they should not have to be quiet, agreeable or endlessly collaborative to be heard. Advocacy does not become less legitimate simply because it is persistent, uncomfortable or inconvenient.

That feels especially important right now, as Worcester makes decisions that could shape our schools for years to come: redistricting. Another scenario is expected in October, with final recommendations in December. These decisions could shape school assignments, specialized programs, transportation, preschool, integration and feeder patterns for years. Now is the time to pay attention and I strongly encourage you to look at what is proposed for your neighborhood and for neighborhoods beyond your own. If you know someone with kids, even if they’re not school-aged yet, share this with them!

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Welcome to the September issue of WPS in Brief. Lots to cover, so let’s get to it.

Breaking News! Please read Tracy Novick’s blog post about the City trying to scare us into thinking a new Burncoat High School and Middle School will be too expensive. She writes, “I am, frankly, angry that all of this concern over fiscal capacity was nowhere to be found when we suddenly were using local resources to build a ballpark to earn money for those who already have much. When we need funding to meet the needs of local students, a constitutional obligation, suddenly we have scary memos.”

Meeting Moment.

Every so often there’s something that happens at a meeting that I think is worth watching, and this is one of them, which is why I’m starting out with the meeting moment. At the September 3 School Committee meeting, a public petition asked the district to restrict the flags displayed in schools primarily to the United States, Massachusetts, City of Worcester and POW/MIA flags. While Pride flags were never explicitly named in the petition, that was very clearly where much of the public conversation went.

This is one of those moments when I think it is important to stop listening to the adults for a minute and listen to the students. Konstantin Kibe, a senior at Burncoat High School, told the committee what visible support means for transgender and queer students: “A pride flag in a classroom can be the difference between a graduation and a suicide.” That is an extraordinarily stark thing for a teenager to have to explain to a room full of adults. His words are worth a listen.

The agenda recommendation was to send the petition to the Operations and Governance subcommittee. Instead, after public comment, the School Committee took it up that night and voted to “reject” it. Technically, “reject” is not an option available to the committee; if members did not want to advance the petition, the proper action was to file it. But whatever procedural language was used, I was glad to see the School Committee stop the petition in its tracks.

Gender Support Plan Petition.

At the September 24 Teaching, Learning and Student Supports meeting, the subcommittee finally heard a Burncoat High educator’s 2024 public petition asking WPS to consider using DESE’s gender support plan. During public comment three trans students relayed their experiences: of being outed by teachers without their permission, about repeatedly having to come out to adults because systems like attendance sheets still do not reflect a student’s chosen name, and about being bullied and feeling unsafe. They spoke directly to the fundamental question underneath the petition: What happens after a student tells one trusted adult their name and pronouns? How does that information follow the student appropriately and safely so they do not have to start over in every classroom?

When the item came up for discussion, Tom Toney, administrative director of positive youth development, essentially said ‘as it reads’ and not one single school committee member asked a question. Maureen Binienda (at large) moved to file the item, and asked for a written report about what the district currently does. I’m not sure why she didn’t ask the question to the people in the room? In the end, they spent just two minutes on this item, and most of that time was on a procedural question.

What makes me the most livid, though, is that not a single adult in that room publicly thanked the teenagers for coming to speak, in what I imagine was a really hard thing for them to do. It’s unacceptable.

The good news is that the gender support plan item is not dead. The subcommittee did vote to file it (2-1, with Guardiola [district D] and Binienda voting yes, and Alvarez [district B] voting no), but it has not completed the full School Committee process yet. There is still an opportunity for the full committee to ask those questions and change course at the next school committee meeting on October 8.

Girls Flag Football.

Also at the September 24 TLSS meeting was a proposal to start girls flag football as a club or intramural sport, with up to two paid coaches at each high school. Coaching stipends would cost up to $12,180, and the department asked to increase its daily bus allocation from 10 to 14. Uniforms, equipment, officials and other costs would have to fit within its existing budget.

I love flag football. Twenty years ago, I played weak side linebacker on my college intramural team. It was the biggest women’s sport on campus, and three times we reached the finals and got to play in Notre Dame Stadium. Some of my teammates are still my closest friends. I would love for WPS girls to have that kind of experience. But I’m hesitant to add costs when existing teams are fundraising for proper equipment and uniforms, and WPS cannot fully fund its academic needs. Community fundraising and volunteers seem like the right way to get this started.

The athletic director also pointed out that, because flag football would be a club sport, students could play it alongside another spring sport. Technically, perhaps. But when is a high school student supposed to play two sports in one season, keep up with schoolwork and sleep? The phrase is “student-athlete,” with student first, for a reason.

What struck me the most from that September 24 TLSS meeting, though, was that the committee spent ten minutes asking questions about flag football and no time asking questions about the proposed gender support plan. This is called bikeshedding, which is the tendency of groups to spend disproportionate amounts of time debating relatively simple or familiar issues while giving far less attention to complicated, consequential ones. This was a painful example.

Democratic City Committee Chair hired by WPS.

On September 18, WPS announced that former City Councilor Sean Rose, who is also the current chair of the Worcester Democratic City Committee, had been appointed the district’s new Chief of Access, Opportunity and Equity. The Cabinet-level position is focused on opportunity gaps, family engagement, recruitment and equity. The job oversees areas including Family and Community Engagement, student and family advisory councils, the Parent Information Center and community outreach.

Rose has most recently served as president and CEO of Thrive Support & Advocacy, which provides services to people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The district’s announcement said Rose has more than two decades of experience in “education” and “diversity, equity and inclusion,” but provided few details about that work. When I asked WPS specifically about his experience working within a public school system and leading academic-equity initiatives, a district spokesperson declined to answer.

The posting listed a salary range of approximately $192,000 to $197,000, which would be a significant pay cut for Rose, with Thrive’s most recent nonprofit filing listing his compensation at $296,231. The posting also required a Massachusetts administrator license. Rose holds initial licenses as a principal/assistant principal, issued almost 13 years ago. Initial licenses are valid for five years of employment, not five calendar years; the clock begins only when someone starts working in a position requiring that particular license. Rose therefore holds the required credential, but the licenses themselves do not demonstrate prior experience as a public school administrator.

Rose has also long been a public figure in Worcester. He served three terms on the City Council from 2018 through 2023, becoming the first Black councilor elected to represent District 1. Rose credits current School Committee member Molly McCullough, his cousin-in-law, with encouraging him to run. As Bill Doyle—no relation to me—reported in 2023, Rose married into a family with deep roots in Worcester politics:

“His father-in-law, Tom White, was a longtime state senator, state representative and city councilor. School Committee member Molly McCullough is a first cousin to Rose’s wife. James O’Brien, his wife’s grandfather, used to be mayor of Worcester. His wife’s uncle, also named James O’Brien, served on the Governor’s Council.”

None of that establishes that McCullough or Rose’s other relatives played any role in this appointment. But it illustrates that Rose has extensive political relationships in Worcester, which makes transparency around the hiring process particularly important.

Still, a district spokesperson declined to answer every follow-up question I submitted about its press release. That included who represented parents and the community during the multistep hiring process. The district has been similarly vague about the funding. Its June press release said the new position would be paid for through “an upcoming vacancy in another administrative position,” but did not identify that position. The director of the Office of Innovation subsequently left the district, and WPS did not refill that job, making it appear likely that the vacancy is funding Rose’s position, but the district declined to confirm that as well.

None of this establishes that Rose cannot do the job. His nonprofit leadership, human services background, political experience and extensive relationships across Worcester may all prove valuable. But an office charged with building trust should not begin by asking the public to take its hiring process on faith. That is especially true when the appointee is a prominent local political figure and the district refuses to answer basic questions about his relevant experience, who participated in his selection or how the position is being funded.

Superintendent’s Goals.

The School Committee approved Superintendent Brian Allen’s goals for the 2026–27 school year this month. If they sound familiar, that’s because most are continuations of work he started last year. Each fall, the School Committee approves goals for the superintendent and then uses them as part of his evaluation.

For the most part, you can see Allen’s progression. The student-achievement goal picks up almost exactly where last year’s left off: WPS got the percentage of students meeting or exceeding Star benchmarks in reading and math from 33% to 35%, just short of the 36% goal. This year, the target is 38%.

The collaborative teaming goal moves from establishing the practice to making it consistent across more schools. Last year, 84% of meetings reviewed included all four expected practices, but only 38 of 49 schools met the overall fidelity standard. This year, the goal is for 85% of schools to consistently implement the model. And last year’s Grow Your Own teacher pipeline, which enrolled 41 students against an initial target of 15–20, has a counterpart this year aimed at developing WPS’s own instructional coaches, deans, assistant principals and principals.

Redistricting also moves from analysis to implementation. Allen’s goal is to carry out the School Committee’s eventual boundary decisions, reduce overcrowding in at least 85% of schools currently over capacity and bring under-enrolled schools to at least 85% utilization. It explicitly includes feeder patterns, program placements and magnet/ citywide designations, which, once again, is why you need to pay attention to redistricting.

The genuinely new goal is around “strategic coherence.” Allen is participating in Harvard’s Public Education Leadership Program and plans to use that work to examine whether structures, systems and spending actually support what happens in classrooms. By June, he is supposed to present a revised strategic-coherence plan.

Taken together, there’s a pretty clear theme here: systems, structures and implementation. But that’s also why I was surprised by what’s missing. In his own 44-page self-assessment last year, Allen repeatedly identified communication and stakeholder engagement as areas where WPS needed to improve. He acknowledged problems around the Nelson Place principal selection, the proposed Worcester Alternative/ACT merger, and the equity reorganization. He talked about improving transparency, stakeholder engagement and the district’s advisory structures. There is no measurable goal asking whether families feel better informed and meaningfully involved in decisions—or, more simply, whether the district is just hearing the community or actually listening to it.

And there was very little School Committee discussion about any of this. Just one member asked any questions about the Superintendent’s goals (Sue Mailman). And there’s something to be said for having those conversations in public.

Too Much Testing?

The TLSS committee received a report on district assessments this month and depending on grade level, students may have roughly 30 to 50 (!) district assessments scheduled during the year, in addition to state testing and regular classroom assessment by the teacher. Parent Shawna Sylvia looked through the assessment calendar and counted 49 assessments for her third grader, who is reading below grade level. She told the committee:

“As a parent it’s hard to hear the district say there isn’t enough time in the day for teaching, and then to see how much of his time is being spent on assessments instead of learning.”

Maureen Binienda (at-large) pushed back on the idea that common assessments necessarily consume enormous amounts of time, explaining that they generally take part of a class period rather than days or weeks. Vanessa Alvarez (district B) captured an important part of this tension: families aren’t raising these concerns because they don’t care about academic progress. They’re raising them precisely because they do pay attention to their children’s education.

As an elementary parent, I have asked repeatedly for access to my child’s common assessments. Parents still cannot simply log in and see the questions their child was asked, how they answered or what the assessment supposedly tells the district. If these assessments are useful for understanding my child’s progress, I would like to see the results and understand what they mean, just like I would if they took the test on paper and brought it home.

Alex Guardiola (district D) framed the issue even more clearly: Does every assessment have a clear purpose? Are students taking too many? Do families know what assessments are happening? Are teachers getting results quickly enough to actually use them? And can the district demonstrate what it is doing differently because of the data it collects?

All great questions. Will we get the answers?

What happens if WPS gets hacked?

Sue Mailman (at large) requested a report on what systems the district has in place to make sure school could continue if it experienced a cyberattack. It’s not a theoretical question, as this month a severe cyberattack on Springfield Public Schools by an organized criminal group blocked access to systems the district needs for basic operations, including student medical information. Springfield lost four days of school while staff prepared to operate with limited technology. When students returned, some systems still required paper-and-pencil workarounds. The Boston Globe confirmed that the hackers stole student and staff data. As a parent, it’s hard to see what can happen when a district’s systems are breached, knowing how little control families have over the data collected about our children, where it is stored and who can access it.

Upcoming dates.

All school committee meetings have virtual options with Spanish translation, see the school committee site for more information.

• Citywide Parent Planning Advisory Council October 6, 6-7 p.m. at the Fanning Building

• School Committee meetings are October 8 and October 22, 6 p.m.

• Finance is October 21 p.m., time TBD at the Durkin Administration Building

• Operations and Governance is October 16, 5 p.m. at Vernon Hill

• Teaching, Learning and Student Support is October 16, 5 p.m. at Durkin Administration Building

  ---

Also.

Believe it or not, next year is another municipal election year. But the race I’m most interested in watching isn’t necessarily the School Committee, it’s mayor. (Remember Worcester’s mayor also chairs the School Committee.)

Mayor Joe Petty has served as mayor since 2012 and is currently in his eighth mayoral term. There is already political chatter about whether he’ll run again in 2027, but Petty has been rumored to be done before, so I would put approximately zero dollars on any rumor until he says something himself.

What is interesting is the possibility of School Committee members becoming part of that conversation. I’ve heard the names Sue Mailman, Molly McCullough and Maureen Binienda floated locally, although none has publicly announced a mayoral campaign. A mayoral race involving people with substantial School Committee records would put public education much closer to the center of Worcester’s citywide political conversation.

In terms of who runs for School Committee itself, my read of where parent organizing in Worcester right now is we may see more parents of younger children decide to run—people experiencing WPS day-to-day and navigating all the little systems you don’t fully understand until you’re trying to navigate them for your own kid. And that would be a great thing.

Thanks for reading, see you in October.

No?

Welp. Fellas, it’s been good to know ya.

Lots to get to in today’s post. Then right after I post this I’m giving the next WPS In Brief a read, then we’re getting that up. The fun never ever stops. Please think about keeping this outlet in business. If you don’t, no one will.

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Ok straight to it.

Release The Files

Heather Prunier spoke at council last week, demanding the city release the full report into its investigation of John Monfredo. You may recall last year we had Heather on the podcast (Episode 43: That Is My File) to go over a sliver of the report that was provided. Though only a handful of pages, it made the serious concerns about the integrity of the investigation all the more serious. There are, as Heather told the council, 78 pages in that file, and she’s only received 22.

“Not only that, it is my belief that I am not the only victim known to the police. This man is a predator who had easy access to some of the most vulnerable children in this city for decades. The statistical likelihood that there are even more victims yet to come forward is astronomical. Who enabled John Monfredo and silenced his victims? How can we hold anyone accountable or fix what’s broken without answering these questions? How do we know our kids are safe within the same system that left them in the care of a monster? Worcester has its own Epstein class that prioritizes its own comfort and privilege over the safety of our kids.

And, if you’re new here, please take the time to read the story we published in 2023 in which Heather comes forward for the first time, publicly, to describe what John Monfredo did to her as a child: “John Monfredo’s “teen-age accuser” takes her power back.”

Watch the rest of Heather’s comments here. Powerful stuff.

The Marino Dossier

Tom Marino, editor of This Week In Worcester, filed a 30 page document he wrote outlining how the Trump administration abandoned the pattern and practice investigation into WPD before it even really got going–a fact city officials know well and pretend they don’t. “It’s a four-stage process which was at a second stage when the Trump administration came in and abandoned the process,” Marino said.

Here’s the report he submitted to the council, which I pulled out of the middle of a 400+ page council “meeting packet” so you didn’t have to. Don’t say I never did nothin’ for ya.

Toomey ‘apologizes’

You may have missed it, tucked as it behind a paywall that’s been especially difficult to get around the past few weeks (throw tips and tricks in the comments if you got em), but City Councilor Kate “Call The Chief?” Toomey issued a short apology statement to our paper of record last week.

Toomey, in the four-paragraph statement sent to the T&G, admits she was wrong to “invoke the names of the Chief [Paul B. Saucier] and Sgt. [Anthony] Petrone. Regardless of my intent, I understand that doing so created the appearance that I was seeking special treatment because of my position and relationships.

“As a city councilor, I should’ve exercised better judgment. My position does not entitle me to different treatment, and I regret placing the chief, Sgt. Petrone and the responding officers in an uncomfortable position that may have raised questions about their professionalism and integrity,” she wrote.

“I am truly sorry for the distraction my actions caused and for putting the officers in this position. I hope they, and the people of Worcester, will accept my apology,” Toomey wrote.

There’s one glaring omission in this apology: the woman whose car she hit.

Some of you may recall in the HBO documentary about Woodstock ‘99 that came out last (?) year, there’s a clip of Fred Durst getting interviewed about the destruction and chaos their set unleashed and he petulantly insists “it’s not my fuckin’ fault” with his little soul patch and scowl and the hat on in the Durstian manner. The camera then cuts to him surfing over the crowd on a large plywood board, freshly ripped off a nearby frame, the garbage can fires in the background and he’s screaming “give me something to break.” (Legit a top 10 moment in rock and roll history if we can put on our big boy pants and admit that good performances need not be morally or ethically good.) That’s what I think of when I think of Kate Toomey’s insistance on blaming the “illegally parked” car. An East Side girl, she should know—in fact I’d wager she does know—that passenger side tire up on the sidewalk is the way everyone parks on every side street in that neighborhood, and that it makes your car less likely to get side swiped on the East Side’s often narrow side streets. (Though Harrington is wider than most.)

Put yourself in this woman’s shoes, reading in the papers that it was your fault actually that a city councilor wrecked hers and your car, waking you up just after midnight on a weekday with the loud pop and all the headache to follow, Toomey telling the officers she was on her way back from “a restaurant.”

Toomey apologizes to the police, but not to this person. And that says all you need to know about whether she’s sincerely reckoned with her actions.

The most recent Bad Advice covers this generally territory nicely.

We are still in metaphor mode here, but you realize in this whole hullaballoo that you may actually get in trouble. But then the police do not ask you to get out of the car, they do not ask you to perform a field sobriety test, they do not ask to check your ABV, they treat you like you’ve always been treated. I mean you didn’t kill anyone right? Your car is too damaged to drive and you are offered a ride home from the same folks who are not putting you to task. You got away with it again. And that whole scenario kind of perfectly encapsulates your situation. The norms you’ve created for yourself are protecting you from receiving any real consequence.

A nice little win

The council on Tuesday voted to “recommit” the manager’s camping ordinance—a little used feature of our wonderful municipality in which the council essentially makes the manager do a rewrite. A second draft, if you will. Which, speaking as a writer with some experience getting second drafted—brutal. Publicly second drafted? I’d disappear, same day.

A surprising amount of them bristled at the $25 fine, and most said they wouldn’t vote for any future proposal with such a component. Exceptions aside [cough Moe Bergman cough] councilors were brought by public pressure into a position they couldn’t morally abide, at least publicly. That’s a win! And with wins rare to come by these days, it’s worth putting a fine point on it.

It occurs to me I haven’t taken the time to lay out what exactly was in this proposal. It takes the form of a roughly 20 page report filed on the Sept. 15 Council agenda outlining a proposed initiative called “Disrupting The Cycle.” It was authored by the city’s new Commissioner of Health and Human Services, Seema Dixit. Hired earlier this year to replace Mattie Castiel, Dixit spent most of her career in the Rhode Island Department of Health, in a variety of roles that skew toward the medical side of things: disease prevention, healthcare disparities, nutrition, and the like. Where Castiel was an expert on the homelessness side of things, Dixit’s focus lies elsewhere. Nevertheless, Batista requested her office generate a report on how to execute what he called, in his summary memo, an “all-hands-on-deck strategy that aligns with my administration’s three-pronged approach to public health crises: prevention, intervention, and suppression.”

The first two prongs are then described with the usual buzzy terms, “superior service delivery” and “supportive transition to more permanent housing options,” that mean whatever the reader wants. The third prong, however, is quite specific, and the only component with an action item for the council, by way of an attached ordinance for the body’s approval. Batista described it thusly:

Institute a suppression mechanism through the proposed camping ordinance that would ensure public health, safety, and equitable engagement with unhoused residents.

A choice example of the freefall into meaninglessness the term “equitable” has experienced over the past two or three years. I for one love it when my suppression mechanisms ensure equitable engagement. I know what that means first of all and second I think it makes me sound like the good guy. Not at all like a fritzing droid in the background of a scene set in a Tatooine police station.

Robot voice: Protocols Set 2: SUPPRESSQUITY.

Two sentences later, we see the phrase “efficacious path forward” and then, after that, the grand finale: “trauma-informed response.” Not to get too ‘Old man shakes fist at cloud’ about it but words mean things—like, each word... every one of them, folks! ...carries its own discrete and generally agreed upon meaning, the core distinction between “word” and “sound made with mouth”—and it is not a coincidence that the most outright evil thing Batista has proposed comes to us gift-wrapped in language so vague and bizarre that the words revert to mouth sounds.

Batista and Dixit both tried to cast the outrage about the fine proposal as taking one small part of a comprehensive plan and blowing it out of proportion.

But the camping ordinance is the only part of the report that seems to mean anything at all. Other facets include “Reaching a community outreach agreement to establish a commitment to outreach efforts and hold community partners accountable.” Anyone’s guess!

A glaring omission: nowhere in the report is there talk of “building more supportive housing units.” The authors dance around the obvious reality that homelessness is a state produced by the lack of a home. A short section on the matter trades in hypotheticals and possibilities. “Based on historical data, increasing the number of beds would help to stabilize the shelter system, reduce chronic overcapacity, and ensure adequate coverage during extreme weather events and emergencies.” But there is no concrete goal or path toward it. Only a list of “potential funding sources.”

I’ve been covering this city a long time. I was around in 2018 when the city did put together a concrete goal to move from reliance on temporary shelter to a permanent supportive housing model. It was about 100 units in all. In the intervening eight years I’ve watched the quiet process of moving the goal posts, away from those 100 units, having only built 20 or so, to away from permanent supportive housing as an idea, a process that this report would have completed had the council not remitted it.

Now, it’s “we might add shelter capacity, but we will increase the punishment doled out to those without shelter.”

The manager basically said as much on Tuesday night, letting it slip that consultants recently suggested that the city really needs 150 units of permanent supportive housing, and has about 60.

“The challenge with this is that it requires millions and millions of dollars from city, state, and federal dollars to be able to get permanent supportive housing,” he said.

During public comment, Rhiannon Snide, a staff attorney at Central West Justice Center, put it well.

“The city’s goal to expand shelter capacity for unhoused people in the future does not meaningfully respond to or address the current need. The city reports that over 1,100 homeless individuals live in Worcester, but only 197 shelter beds currently exist. The ordinance provides no genuine offer of shelters to individual before criminal penalties are imposed, and there is no requirement that resources be available before these criminal penalties take effect. The proposed ordinance may state that being unhoused is not a crime, yet section E3 authorizes quote, “enforcement by criminal processes.” And section F imposes a $25 daily fine for noncompliance. People will be punished simply because there’s nowhere to go.”

Such is the rightward drift in action. What was, in 2018, reasonably attainable is, in 2026, unmentionable. “Off the table,” as they say.

Kudos to Jonathan Morales of the Worcester Affordable Housing Coalition for illustrating the fundamental insanity of the moment in a single line.

“We should be asking how we can make sure that more Worcester residents have a place to call home rather than asking how we can more effectively remove people who do not.”

Meanwhile, as the report indicates, shelter capacity is routinely over-full, especially during the winter months, and evidence of unsheltered homelessness accounts for a whopping 70 percent of all complaints lodged in the city’s 311 system.

Those complaints, anecdotally, are almost always requests for removal. The 311 app was designed for potholes, illegally dumped trash, roadkill and other blight. It is not designed to get people into housing. It is designed to report the trash and make it go away. And 70 percent of the complaints on the trash app are about human beings.

This mentality, that the city should be first focused on removal, was neatly illustrated by the goon the Chamber of Commerce dispatched to the meeting, to ultimately get booed out of the room, which was nice to see. But before that, the Chamber’s representative, a guy named Mike something-or-other, the one with civil war physiognomy, said “Treating public spaces as informal shelter alternatives serves neither this population or the community at large.”

But the plan doesn’t add any shelter space! And the space we have is at capacity, and is often poorly run, dangerous, and overly restrictive. To frame public space as an “alternative” to shelter space implies a consumer choice that does not exist. But it does help the Chamber’s various mouthpieces, both on and off the council, advance the rhetorical framework that there’s help available and people are choosing not to avail themselves of it. I.e, Gain’s next line: “We support the city manager of prioritizing this challenge and taking action.”

And, later in the meeting, another such mouthpiece, District 1 Councilor Tony Economou, put a finer point on it: “Some people just don’t want help.”

Say what you will about the man, Economou has a knack for expressing the most evil crank positions with panache. Gotta put “Some people just don’t want help” right up there with “Just words on paper.”

I don’t think anyone expected the outcome we got on Tuesday. After two hours of public testimony, almost all of it moral condemnations of the proposal to fine people for sleeping outside, Councilor Gary Rosen was first to speak, and also made the motion to recommit the manager’s proposal. That was all well and good, slightly better than expected but expected. It wasn’t until Mayor Joe Petty spoke, directly after him, that the 7-4 vote I was personally anticipating suddenly broke the other way.

Super duper inside baseball but it is rare for Petty to speak second. He likes to wait til the end when it’s an “around the horn” situation. And this was perhaps an on-the-fly change on his part. Perhaps he was expecting Rosen to go the other way, and, realizing he was a “no,” did some back of the napkin math... let’s see, Toomey recused for DUI-adjacent activities, Rosen a no, that leaves Rivera, Bergman, Economou, me... four out of 10.... sorry Eric. We’ll never know for sure but you have to imagine Petty would have let Eric walk it back ahead of time if he went into the meeting knowing he was going to vote no? Considering it’s his guy and all.

And the three hours of deliberation that followed were basically a public humiliation ritual for the city manager. Which rocks. If you put something so transparently evil as he did on the proverbial table, you deserve to be laid upon said table yourself, spatchcocked, basted and braised in a simmering wine sauce whilst resting on a bed of root vegetables, an apple in the mouth, etc. Which is what happened to one Eric Batista, by the way, and we all watched it in real time, gleefully.

The vote itself was a confusing mess and it would be counter-productive to try to explain it. Bergman was the only councilor who advocated out loud for the fines. Economou dabbled in it, by way of “other towns do it” rhetoric. Rivera was Geodude. Toomey put herself in speaking jail. Everyone else said they couldn’t support the fines. So I guess we could call it a 6-1-3 vote if we needed to. Which we don’t. The item has been recommitted, and so it’s on the manager to give it another shot. If he wants to. Which, after Tuesday, he might not. That is the real win in this situation. The manager got his shit shoved in a little bit in trying to steer our already draconian homeless policy further down Gulag Road.

We’re still on that road we just aren’t moving down it. How to get on a different road? Well, we’d need a whole new council at the bare minimum.

But for now? A win is a win is a win. We know we won by how poorly Bergman’s prepared spiel slotted into the reality this wasn’t going to pass

How he said “this might offend some people” then proceeded to say nothing at all, let alone something offensive.

“This isn’t about me being comfortable seeing somebody that’s unhoused. It’s about the person that’s unhoused, risking danger to themselves and others by not realizing that the encampment shouldn’t be their first choice to go. “

First choice! If only they realized, like I, a superior mind and thinker, realize all the other choices on offer!

What an asshole. Luckily, he was way way in the minority.

We got the council to go against the manager on his new homelessness response strategy proposal, the marquee feature being the $25-a-night fines for sleeping outside. And that is a win! One that was 100 percent due to the sustained public pressure that this council, the most right wing in recent memory, broke with the manager.

But in many of the comments, the framing was that this proposal would criminalize homelessness, as if it wasn’t already. I want to try to explain the myriad ways that homelessness is already de facto criminalized.

In a previous post I wrote that the $25 a day sleeping fine would just be a cherry on top of the already existing “fuck you” Sundae, but I didn’t really explain what I meant. So I’m going to take some time to lay out the way that homelessness is already criminalized. How the district attorney, the police, the sheriff, the business community and city hall form a nexus that administers criminal punishment for homelessness every day, and that, once you see it, you start to see this nexus as the primary engine of homelessness, an outcome running counter to the stated goals of all three institutions, and for which all each retain plausible deniability: where officials can say they’re “doing all we can” and at times can even mean it. Meanwhile, the bureacratic rube goldberg machine of “quality of life” complaints, 311 tickets, “community engagement” patrols, trespassing charges, default warrants, encampment sweeps, pre-trial detentions, neighborhood meetings, parole conditions, the ongoing deficit in shelter space and transitional housing, the gutting of social service providers, etc. etc. etc., ends in a big cartoon hammer coming down and bonking people in the head, one at a time, the same group of people, over and over. No one does it on purpose and no one has to.

Take for instance the situation described by Keith Linhares on Facebook the other day...

Ran into Worcester’s Finest patrolling Newton Hill this morning.

“What are you doing up here?” I asked.

“Looking for homeless in tents,” the officer replied.

“Oh.”

“You seen any tents up here?”

“Nope. What happens to the people living up here?”

A quick shoulder shrug. “We’ve got outreach services. I just do what I’m told. We’ve got Doherty High doing cross-country up here. Can’t have kids tripping on tents”.

No malice in his voice. Just the flat, bureaucratic shrug of someone executing an order designed to make a complex, intractable crisis disappear for the fall high school athletic schedule.

Structural failure gets kicked down to law enforcement. Use of law enforcement is justified by high school athletics and the 311 complaints of West Siders walking their dogs. And the people surviving in the woods become reduced to an awkward trail hazard on a 5k course. Just some clutter to be cleared away.

Somewhere out there, on paper, there are “outreach services.” But out on the hill, the “fix” is much simpler: sweep the problem out of sight before school lets out and the cross country team arrives.

Out of sight, out of mind. For now.

If the police ran into anyone, they’d have “engaged,” a process which sometimes results in “running their name.” This is a recurring fear among the unhoused people I’ve interviewed over the years: getting their name run presents the possibility of a default warrant, leading to their immediate arrest. Default warrants are generated automatically by the district court for missed court dates or parole violations or falling behind on some payments. Unhoused people have an especially difficult time, for obvious reasons, keeping track of court dates, or receiving notification of any kind that such a date has been scheduled. A trespassing charge leads to a failure to appear leads to a default warrant leads to an arrest and bam: square zero yet again. At any given time, they could have default warrants they don’t know about, so the threat of “running names” is a good one. Police can get people to effectively self-banish by simply suggesting they might run names. The “criminal consequences” promised in the manager’s draft proposal would probably take the form of default warrants issued for non-payment, though I’m not an attorney and can’t say that for sure. But, if so, it would be another entry point for the misdemeanor charge-default warrant spiral. Another way to criminalize homelessness via the existing method, not, as some suggested, homelessness suddenly turned criminal.

This reality also puts a fine point on the basic conceit of the manager’s framing. In his introduction, he wrote, “We must act, but at the same time, I want to be clear that being unhoused, is not a crime and will not be treated as such.”

Sit in district court for a morning session on any given day. Just one day. And it’ll be enough to see that homelessness is in fact a crime and has been treated as such.

One speaker during Tuesday night’s public comment, who identified himself as Peter from DSA, put the whole ruse well.

Why does homelessness exist? Why will it always exist under the current system? Why is the solution always to sick the police on unhoused people and push them somewhere else? And why, as union carpenters in the room will tell you, do cities like Worcester hand incentives to developers that steal their employees’ wages and threaten them with deportation? It’s because we’re told to rely on private capital to build housing, employ people, and run society. And so those things will only happen on terms that are good for the capitalist class.

He also mentioned a social housing platform that the Worcester DSA is putting up to voters in the Sixth Worcester District (Southbridge area). Pretty interesting stuff.

Central Mass & Worcester DSA has proposed a policy question which will appear on the ballot in the sixth Worcester State House district that instructs the district’s representative to support a measure using a tax on vacant properties and wealth and inheritances over $5 million to fund a robust, union-constructed, universal social housing program that “eliminates the role of landlords,” caps rent at 10% of household income, and places housing under tenants’ democratic management.

Capping his remarks, Peter said, “The free market has been unleashed on us for long enough.”

I have a lot more to say about the myriad ways homelessness is already criminalized, and show with data, annecdotes and public records, Too much for this post. But flagging for a post in the future on thed.

A few of my past pieces on the matter if you’re looking for that sort of thing:

We use our garbage police to police homeless people

Under Batista, the sweeps will never end - by Bill Shaner

“I wish I had a magic wand and I could find you an apartment”

If cruelty’s the goal, we’re doing a damn good job

Before Adam was dead, Adam was blight - by Bill Shaner

Some other good reading on the subject...

John Keough in This Week In Worcester: Worcester City Manager’s Homeless Strategy: Lock ‘Em Up

SOS Worcester Instagram post on the contradictions this council action put on display.

Coming up

HRC Meeting tonight, dealing with the CRB and, in particular, Kevin Lovaincy’s report about why the city doesn’t need one.

In my piece from a week ago, I began a timeline of Worcester chaos with a short scene from the last HRC meeting , in late August, detailing the chairman of the board asking the staff liaison to please attach a statement about the CRB to the next agenda…..

Like every other time, the staff liaison, Patricia LaFore, acted like Feldman’s request was a big inconvenience. “Yeah. It can be.” Feldman: “Okay, could we please have that attached to the minutes for the next meeting?” LaFore: “Sure.”

Take a look at the agenda. You see a statement? No? Hm. Neither do I.

At Council tomorrow, nothing too exciting. There’s an E-bike report, a few reports from the police department, and that’s basically it.

Tomorrow, there’s a “listening session” about the drastic cuts and rearranging of services in the Balkanization of Community Health Link.

Odds and Ends

Thanks for reading I really do appreciate so much that I get to do this for a living, even when it sorta sucks ass to do (no way out of the Dream Job Paradox). I need a certain number of people to voluntarily give me a small amount of money so I can continue having this job and not another one that would likely disallow me from writing about Worcester the way I do.

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Must watch: Doug Stanhope becomes the mayor.

Cooking dinner Friday night, had WCUW on the radio. Dr Gonzo’s “Turtleboy” was played. My ears perked up. It really was a song about Turtleboy, and a lewd one to boot.

So of course I made a note and went on WCUW’s website to look it up and luckily they host all previous sessions on their site.

If you go to this link, and punch in 6:45 for the time, you’ll hear half of Government Cheese then maybe the best Worcester song of all time

Oh turtle boy please just let him go
You gotta know when no means no

The Covid-Conscious Western Mass Lesbian Bar story is really that good.

A Western Mass. lesbian bar required KN-95 masks. When it changed the rules, all hell broke loose. - The Boston Globe

A good read from Commonwealth Beacon via the Telegram (via a hilarious Japanese website that [redacted] the [redacted] more efficiently than the rest of them right now) on voter turnout in gateway cities like Worcester.

【魚拓】Voter turnout is lower in Worcester. Why is that?

This song bangs, huh?

Ok talk soon!

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Dear Shaun,

I feel like I keep getting away with things. I thought I believed in karma, but I have yet to see the other side really get me. I haven’t done awful things, but I have got away with way more than I ever thought was possible. Craziest part is I think I have what younger kids call “imposter syndrome” where I think I don’t deserve any of the success I’ve experienced. I have never read your column, but I feel like I have no where else to turn. Could you guide me?

-Dismayed

Dear Dismayed,

I have definitely made mistakes [see my last column]. I have atoned for some, but not all. But I also can’t complain about my life right now. So yes, I too feel like I have gotten away with stuff that maybe I didn’t deserve. I have a wonderful family, a great community around me, a supportive system of loved ones and I am relatively happy. What you seem to be working through is different. I sense guilt in your missive to me.

I ain’t no therapist, but I do go to therapy. It feels like whatever you’re working through needs to be talked about, at length, with a professional. If the things you have done are so awful, have you sought forgiveness? Have you tried to right the wrongs you’ve committed? Do you know what is actually wrong and what is actually right or are you just going off what the righteous have told you?

My guess: you are looking for your feelings of guilt to be absolved without the work done on your end. This next part is purely metaphor and by no means is accusatory or based on a real scenario. But your situation, the looking for forgiveness with no real consequences, feels like if you were to have a couple of drinks at night. And after having a couple of drinks, you want to have a couple more. When you’re done drinking you definitely don’t feel good to drive, but hey you’ve done it before, you’ll take the risk. As you drive you find it more difficult than usual. Maybe you didn’t have a large enough dinner, maybe that last drink was one more than your aging body could take. Maybe, you shouldn’t drive drunk. As you’re playing all of those scenarios in your head you realize the car has stopped. You then realize that the reason your car has stopped is because you have hit another car. You panic and try to back your car out, but you can’t. You look and notice that no one is in the car, it seems to have been parked. As you’re running through ideas in your head of what to do next, the police show up.

Maybe you have a relationship with police. Maybe they recognize that you are that person that has a relationship with the police. You feel woozy. Woozy enough that it is difficult to find your license. Woozy enough that you can’t spell your name out loud, and even have a difficult time writing it. In your wooziness you ask if you can phone your friend. Your friend is also a powerful person.

We are still in metaphor mode here, but you realize in this whole hullaballoo that you may actually get in trouble. But then the police do not ask you to get out of the car, they do not ask you to perform a field sobriety test, they do not ask to check your ABV, they treat you like you’ve always been treated. I mean you didn’t kill anyone right? Your car is too damaged to drive and you are offered a ride home from the same folks who are not putting you to task. You got away with it again. And that whole scenario kind of perfectly encapsulates your situation. The norms you’ve created for yourself are protecting you from receiving any real consequence.

Here is my bad advice. Quit. Quit everything. Drinking, your job, your current life as it is constructed. You’ve got to start from scratch, like Bruce Wayne in “Batman Begins.” Go fight a scarecrow in Japan. What I wouldn’t do is blame the parked car, step away from your life long enough to where you hope the public forgets about your circumstances. That would be a cop out and you continuing your shitty behavior.

I don’t know who you are or where you live. But based on all this I would be embarrassed to know you, until you actually face your demons and heal your relationships.

NEWS

If you’re looking for something to do this weekend, come on up to the Portland Hotdog Safari. It is on Saturday September 26th and is going to be a real party.

Oh! Also stay tuned for some big Worcester Comedy news in the coming week. You’re going to want to know. Till then!

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In today’s episode we’re working heavily off the timeline piece I put up the other day: “Sticky, sticky, sticky” on the through line between the primary election to the Toomey Wreck to the CRB vote to the upcoming debate (tomorrow) on whether to fine people for not having a home.

Fresolo’s Petrone story

Lastly:

FAT BEAR WEEK 2026

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Intro music by Bill Shaner 9.21.26

Outro music: “When The World Is Running Down, You Make The Best Of What’s Still Around” by The Police

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Scenario 2 tells us a lot about what the district heard after the first proposal, and which tradeoffs it is now willing to make.

Let’s dive in.

What changed?

The biggest change is that the new scenario backs away from several of Scenario 1’s most controversial proposals.

• Worcester Arts Magnet will remain in its current building.

• Francis McGrath will continue as a neighborhood elementary school.

• The area where a parent spoke about how they had purchased a home specifically for access to Nelson Place and Forest Grove was moved back to Nelson Place. The revised boundary also returns School Committee member Molly McCullough’s neighborhood to Nelson Place after she advocated for an alternative boundary to keep it from being moved to Norrback.

• Belmont Street will remain in the North Quadrant instead of moving to Burncoat.

• Columbus Park will remain in the South Quadrant instead of moving to Doherty.

• Jacob Hiatt will still become a neighborhood school, but it will remain in the Doherty Quadrant rather than moving to South.

• Instead of converting the current WAMS building into a neighborhood school, Scenario 2 proposes opening a new PreK–6 school in the Greendale Head Start building, largely by dividing the current Thorndyke school community—although the new zone would also draw from several surrounding schools. Head Start could then move to the University Park Campus School building, while WPS explores some kind of merger or co-location between UPCS and Claremont. None of that has been decided.

• City View sixth graders would go to Worcester East Middle, joining Rice Square and Grafton Street sixth graders. (Can we make every Worcester middle school grades 6-8? The grades 7-8 model feels increasingly outdated.)

• The proposed school-day order has changed, too. High schools would still begin first at the brutal start time of 7:15 a.m., but elementary schools would move to the 8:15 a.m. tier and middle schools would start at 9 a.m. Those times are still under consideration.

  ---

What stayed the same?

The central structure of the proposal remains. Every neighborhood elementary school would feed into one middle school and one high school and the district’s nine split pathways would be eliminated. Granite Street would reopen as a PreK–6 neighborhood school in the current Gerald Creamer Center building, and GCC would move to the Fanning Building. The district would work toward having a preschool classroom in every elementary school. Voluntary transfers still have to be addressed, because boundaries cannot balance enrollment if large numbers of students continue attending schools outside their assigned zones.

The proposal does a much better job of matching students to available elementary space. Today, elementary utilization ranges from roughly 57% to 113%. Scenario 2 narrows that range to approximately 73% to 90%, with no elementary school modeled over capacity. But I have questions about the low end of that range.

Nelson Place—the newest elementary school in the district—would be the least utilized at approximately 73%, while Lincoln Street would be the highest at 90%. Lincoln Street is in a part of the city where the consultants anticipate enrollment growth, which is one reason they originally proposed converting the WAMS building into a neighborhood school and moving the arts program elsewhere. To me, it does not make sense to leave the newest school in the district (which has AC! And is ADA compliant! etc.) so underutilized. Seventy-three percent leaves a lot of empty space.

In terms of individual attendance zones, the largest reductions would be at Rice Square and Chandler. May Street, Belmont Street, Elm Park, Grafton Street and Thorndyke Road would also have substantially smaller zones. On the other side, Roosevelt, City View, Clark Street and Goddard would receive substantially larger zones. Flagg Street, West Tatnuck, Vernon Hill and Quinsigamond would also serve larger areas.

The chart below shows the net change in the number of students living within each elementary attendance zone, not the change in current school enrollment. It excludes the new Jacob Hiatt, Greendale and Granite Street zones because they do not have current attendance zones to use as a baseline. In other words, the chart shows how many students would be added to or removed from each school’s geographic zone, not necessarily how many students would enter or leave the school.

Less disruption, but less integration.

Scenario 2 preserves more existing schools and neighborhood assignments. That makes it less disruptive, but it does not necessarily make it more equitable. Nelson Place, McGrath and Norrback are the clearest examples. Scenario 1 would have ended McGrath’s neighborhood program and incorporated much of its zone into Nelson Place. It also would have created a much more economically diverse Norrback zone. Under that proposal, Nelson Place would have been approximately 48% low income and 24% multilingual learners, while Norrback would have been 46% low income and 21% multilingual learners.

Scenario 2 keeps McGrath separate and largely restores the existing demographic divisions. Nelson Place would be only 31% low income and 13% multilingual learners. McGrath would be 69% low income and 38% multilingual learners. Norrback would also be 69% low income and 26% multilingual learners—almost identical to the demographics of its current geographic zone.

The racial differences are also significant. Nelson Place would be 53% white and 18% Hispanic. McGrath would be 31% white and 43% Hispanic, while Norrback would be 26% white and 39% Hispanic. The underlying group of children is not dramatically different, but Scenario 1 would have educated more of them together. Scenario 2 preserves three distinctly different school communities: a comparatively affluent Nelson Place and much higher-needs populations at McGrath and Norrback.

Something similar happens around Thorndyke Road. The new Greendale school, created so WAMS can remain in its current building, is formed largely by dividing the current Thorndyke community, although it also draws pieces from several surrounding zones. Greendale is projected to be 57% low income and 23% multilingual learners. The remaining Thorndyke zone would be 67% low income and 28% multilingual learners. Among students currently living in the Thorndyke zone, approximately 58% are low income and 22% are multilingual learners. Scenario 2 would therefore increase those shares by roughly nine and six percentage points, respectively.

West Tatnuck and (East) Tatnuck provide another example. Under Scenario 1, the two schools would have been very similar economically: West Tatnuck would have been approximately 48% low income and Tatnuck 51% low income. Scenario 2 moves them in opposite directions. West Tatnuck falls to 37% low income, while Tatnuck rises to 59%. In other words, a three-point difference between the two schools in Scenario 1 becomes a 22-point difference in Scenario 2. The racial changes are more mixed, and the multilingual-learner percentages remain relatively close, but the economic separation between two neighboring school communities becomes much larger.

Districtwide, Scenario 2 does not produce dramatically worse demographic numbers than Scenario 1. But districtwide averages can obscure that the revised map abandons some of Scenario 1’s limited opportunities for integration.

The quadrant lottery model.

At the middle- and high-school levels, boundaries alone cannot balance enrollment. Worcester’s buildings do not line up neatly: North and South have more students than their high schools can accommodate, while Doherty and the new Burncoat High have available space. Scenario 2 proposes addressing this through quadrant-based proportional lotteries for specialized programs, including career technical programs, Goddard Scholars, the Hanover Insurance Academy for the Arts and the Burncoat Arts Magnet pathway. I think this is one of the most important proposals in this second draft.

As an example, the current Burncoat Arts Magnet High School program enrolls 345 students. Of those, 211—61%—come from the Burncoat Quadrant. Only 12 students, or 3.5%, come from the South Quadrant. Burncoat Quadrant students are dramatically overrepresented in a program that is supposed to serve the entire city. If a program is intended for students throughout Worcester, its enrollment should reflect students throughout Worcester. Worcester Technical High School already uses proportional representation to ensure students from different schools have access. WPS should apply that same principle more broadly.

Goddard Scholars, for example, already selects students based on Star scores. If the program expands, seats could be allocated proportionally among elementary schools and offered to the highest-scoring eligible students within each school. That would preserve the existing academic criterion while ensuring that high-achieving students are identified throughout Worcester, not primarily in schools or neighborhoods that are already overrepresented.

As the parent of children attending a true citywide magnet school, I believe that if WPS says a program is available to all students, it needs to be genuinely accessible to all students. That requires transparent admissions, proportional access and public reporting on who actually gets the seats.

And where is dual language?

The presentation included a list of specialized middle- and high-school programs being considered in the lottery and capacity discussion. Dual language was not on it. When School Committee member Molly McCullough asked whether the high-school dual-language program would remain at Burncoat, the answer was essentially. ‘the district is still figuring it out.’

As a dual-language graduate and now a dual-language parent, I find that infuriating. Worcester has spent years building Spanish–English dual-language pathways at Worcester Dual Language Magnet School and Woodland Academy. In November 2025, the School Committee approved a district dual-language plan with goals for developing a strong pathway through high school. Less than a year later, WPS is redesigning feeder patterns and specialized programs across the city, yet dual language did not even appear in the presentation. Families still do not know what will happen after eighth grade. It is deeply discouraging, and speaks volumes about the district’s priorities, or, in this case, its lack of priority for dual language.

If you’ve been a longtime reader, you know I will shout this from the rooftops: research shows that dual language is one of the strongest educational models we can offer for ALL students, regardless of background. Worcester is uniquely positioned to provide robust dual-language programming. We have thousands of multilingual students, experienced multilingual educators, two established programs and a School Committee-approved plan. Bilingualism and biliteracy are academic assets, workforce skills and central parts of who Worcester’s students are. A strong districtwide plan should include a clear PreK–12 pathway, equitable access for students from both programs, transportation that makes participation realistic and opportunities that expand rather than narrow as students get older.

Our students’ multilingualism is an enormous strength. Why does WPS keep shelving dual language instead of developing it to its fullest potential?

What happens next?

Right now, the district is asking for feedback, and this is where your input can be especially helpful. Families can see their current and proposed assignments and submit feedback through the district’s Community Input Mapping Tool or email alignment@worcesterschools.net. Of course, look at what the proposal means for your own family. But also look at the bigger picture: Does it use our buildings more fairly? Keep neighborhoods together? Create clearer pathways for students? Expand access to programs and opportunities?

Final scenarios are expected to go to the School Committee in December, following public meetings and community forums throughout September, October and November (see below).

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The events have been eventing at an exponential pace around here. Catching up it occurs to me I’ve got a unique vantage on the developments and how they all fit together, having been halfway across the country for most of them, blissfully unaware, and now, less blissfully, digesting them in all-at-once fashion.

We’ll go through them in timeline fashion.

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“Sticky, sticky sticky.”

Monday Aug. 31 — The Human Rights Commission had its annual meeting (translation: one meeting a year, for this board the manager said is the forum for public oversight of the police ) with the police department, to review what little data is provided and make suggestions on policy that are rarely adopted. The meeting opened with a sort of perfect metaphor of a moment: Chairman Randy Feldman asked if the letter they voted to draft in July asking the manager to reconsider his position on a civilian review board would be made public—something they are prevented from doing themselves, as a board, per rules Batista created several years ago explicitly to spite the HRC—in the minutes attached to the next meeting’s agenda. Already, it’s the quietest way to release a statement a municipal official could think of. I’d wager less than 1 percent of the city’s population could even find the HRC meeting minutes, and those of us that can will find it difficult and annoying and give up halfway through trying, as is by design. Every HRC meeting I’ve watched in the past few years involves some flavor of begging the staff liaison to make their work available to the public.

Like every other time, the staff liaison, Patricia LaFore, acted like Feldman’s request was a big inconvenience. “Yeah. It can be.” Feldman: “Okay, could we please have that attached to the minutes for the next meeting?” LaFore: “Sure.” While the meeting that followed is certainly worth catching up on, it’s too much for this week of all weeks.

Tuesday, Sept.1 — The police union and chamber of Commerce’s plot to crankify the state delegation failed big time. Both Jim O’Day and Mary Keefe smoked their Chamber- and police brass-backed opponents. Neither Raj nor Ron stood a chance, in retrospect, and the outcome called to question the true political influence, a of the police union and chamber, outside the city council, an arguably fake entity.

Wednesday, Sept. 2 — Kate Toomey rammed her car into a parked car on Harington Avenue just after the clock struck midnight, and while I guess we can’t say for certain we can allege with heavy confidence that she was on her way back from Ron Waddel’s election party, at crank HQ, Piccolo’s Fine Dining, taking a route back to her home on the Shrewsbury line south of Rte. 20. The route would appear nonsensical before considering a drunk driver might do well to avoid state highways and other known hot spots for state troopers, like lower Grafton Street.

We wouldn’t learn about this crash, nor how the WPD handled it, until a week and a half later. So hold onto the thought.

Monday, Sept. 7 — News broke of a UMass police lieutenant who was let off by WPD officers after a similar wreck in July, then subsequently charged after an internal review.

Tuesday, Sept. 8. — The public unaware of her own extremely similar incident, Toomey chaired a public safety standing committee meeting. They spent their time on the city’s noise ordinance, advancing an assault on one particular African church for being too loud in a ‘neighborhood that matters’ if you catch my drift. They talked about nothing else during the hour and 15 minute meeting, scheduled in such a way that it couldn’t go past an hour and a half, with the full council meeting scheduled in the same room providing a convenient “hard out.”

At the full council meeting, Toomey took possibly the most consequential vote on a WPD matter in her career, joining six other councilors in deciding to cease consideration of a civilian review board, over and against extremely loud community demand.

The vote came after another heated round of public comment. Labor organizer Kevin Ksen offered a through line that, in retrospect, really ties the whole room together.

The undermining and dismantling of the Human Rights Commission by this administration is disgusting. Disgusting. And it’s frustrating to see that having been done and then to turn around and say, “But don’t worry, we’re paying attention. We’re investigating transparency.”

Just last week, the T&G reported that the police turned their backs on drunken driving over at UMass Chan. Frustrating. Because those of us that have lived in the city decades know this has been an ongoing issue of the police turning their backs when somebody’s been stopped drunk driving. And the chair of the Public Safety Committee hasn’t done anything about it, and we as the city haven’t done anything about it. And it’s about time we start doing something to hold police accountable for their misdeeds.

Hmmm if only we had some evidence of exactly why the chair of public safety wouldn’t do anything about that. Then we could say something like “Worcester is a corrupt municipality and not a smart enough one to hide it very well.”

A reminder for those who are not municipal sickos: Kate Toomey is not just a city councilor, but the longtime chairwoman of the Standing Committee on Public Safety, the closest thing to a public police oversight body the city has, in theory. It is not, under Toomey’s leadership, used that way.

Where Kevin’s critique ages like a bottle of red, Toomey’s brief explanation of her vote, a few hours later, curdled in a way you rarely see.

The question isn’t whether we want police accountability. We absolutely do. The question is whether creating another civilian review board is the best way to achieve it.

The question is very much whether we want police accountability. This is a reality evidenced by Toomey’s own actions—in high profile fashion of late and on a more steady, mundane pace for decades. It is an open. fucking. question.

It is surreal that Kate said this—“…we want police accountability” —a week after she demonstrated exactly how much accountability we lack and exactly how she personally benefits from that arrangement. I mean, my god. Resign now while you have a shred of dignity. If you refuse to do so, Kate, I’m talking to you directly here, you will forever be remembered as a caricature: municipal corruption for and by police, distilled to its fundamental contours then exaggerated for comedic effect. “Kate Toomey” will cease to be a name so much as a symbol for this specific and, far as I can tell, universal flavor of municipal regulatory capture: the informal power structure of the police stuffing public office with their doddering buffoons, who then provide cover in exchange for some limited membership to the club. The public has glommed onto the Toomey Wreck Story in a big way. It’s never been so widely felt or publicly known that this arrangement is the way of things. It will not go away quickly.

And you are that way in, Kate. You are the avatar. You are the quiet part made loud as a car crash. Only a swift and full resignation gives you a shot, Kate, of making it temporary. Take that shot while you can.

Ok now back to addressing everyone else.

As we’ll get to she has not taken said shot, though she has inched closer.

The quote’s not over, though. This is how she ends it.

And I believe that Worcester should focus on an oversight system that’s independent, transparent, timely and grounded in professional expertise while preserving due process for our officers and protecting the public.

Nothing short of a lie.

Friday, Sept. 11 — Though the Toomey Wreck story ran on Saturday, via the Telegram’s Rachel Gow, the police confirmed the situation and supplied the body camera footage to the Telegram on Friday afternoon. I am realizing now this happened on the 25th anniversary of 9/11. Reality racks up another score on satire. Game is a blowout.

Not to be outdone, on the same afternoon of never forgetting, the city manager put an encampment fine proposal on the council agenda for the following Tuesday, calling for $25 a day tickets for people found sleeping outside in our little slice of the land of the free, where what makes us different than the bad places of the world is our freedom from tyranny, which we achieve by sending our young people into the bad places, where they see the defense of our freedom up close, then come back veterans, who then experience the highest per-class-category rates of suicide, drug addiction, and—bringing it all back around—homelessness. That’ll be $25 please thank you for your service. If you don’t pay on time? Default warrant. Now you’re on the sharp end of the freedom stick you used play a part in holding. How’s it feel?

Saturday, Sept. 12 — The telegram releases an abridged cut of the body camera video the outlet was supplied by the WPD. Over the next few days they would release four unedited tapes from four different officers’ perspectives.

I went through the effort (considerable, for me at least) of getting all four views synced up on the same timeline

Let’s work through the minutiae. Lot of interesting little tidbits.

12:13 a.m. — She flashes a keycard badge at the officer closest to her, who’d asked for her ID. “That’s one,” she says, really chewing on the ‘apostrophe s’ sound in a way that only a drunk person does, as if it’s stuck in the back of their mouth like a spoonful of peanut butter. “That’s not your license, though,” the cop says. “I’m looking for it” she says, copping an attitude that’d get me yanked out of a car. The cop loses patience and asks her to spell her name so he can look it up. She spells her name wrong. “K - T - H” she begins... and it doesn’t get much better.

Meanwhile...

12:15 a.m. — A bystander, an older white man who lives nearby, says “looks like she might have clipped someone else too.” The back left of the white car has obvious black scuffing on it. The car she hit, with the front right side of hers, was white. The cops don’t ask Toomey about this detail in the available footage.

During the same exchange, he says “what, do you guys not lock em up anymore?” and then, after sharing a story about a similar crash in the past, he says that Toomey tried to get away, just like the other guy: that she was revving her engine and the ar wasn’t going anywhere. “My daughter comes out screamin’.” He also says a cop told them, after this similar crash in the past, that “we just serve ‘em papers, we don’t take ‘em in anymore.” Then later: “She didn’t know where she was. She kept saying “is the person all right?” I says ‘you hit a pahked frickin cah.”

This exchange occurred a few yards away from Toomey’s vehicle, where other officers are seen huddled around the open drivers side door as she continues to search for her ID.

Cut to: Cops next to Toomey.

A cop asks Toomey if she’s called someone to pick her up yet. “I have not yet,” she said. Then, “I tried to....” Another cop asks again and she says “I can....” One asks her if she needs an ambulance and the way she responds is no-doubt-about-it the slurred speech of a hammered person. They do not ask anything in any recording about whether she had anything to drink, this instance included. Must be nice. I’ve been asked a lot more, myself, for a lot less. I’m sure most people who’ve been pulled over can relate.

12:16 a.m. — Toomey hands the officer nearest a card, which the officer grabs like it’s a license, but we don’t know it’s a license, because it’s blurred out. He jots down some information then hands it back. Toomey then does something weird:

She flashes the license back at the officer, nods at him, knowingly, several times, then tries to call him over, closer. The officer to his credit just says “what’s up” then ignores her.

It’s at this point she decides to play the card.

“Can you...” She thinks about it for a minute: perhaps whether she should take it where she’s about to take it. And then she takes it there. “...call the chief?”

After she says that, a cop instructs our POV cop at that moment to step away from the vehicle. They move over to a nearby cruiser for a sidebar, during which the body camera is muted. The camera stays muted for the rest of that particular officer’s video.

A cop standing some 20 yards away, the sidebar conversation happening in the background on one side, the one-on-one conversation with Toomey happening on the other, whispers to himself, “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”

12:19 a.m. — Toomey says “I’m sorry, I’m trying to get ahold of Anthony Petrone.” Playing her second card.

Here I should say it’s been five minutes and not a single cop has asked her anything about drinking. She plays her second or third get out of jail free card, with no indication whatsoever the cops were considering taking her to jail.

To the Petrone comment, an officer responded, “that’s totally fine. We just need you to call for a ride.” “Thank you, sir” Toomey replied, sounding genuinely grateful. “Thank you thank you thank you.”

12:21 a.m. — The cop who was talking to Toomey comes into the frame of the officer wisely standing out of earshot of that conversation. The cop looks at our POV cop knowingly, scratches the back of his head, says “sticky, sticky, sticky...” as in sticky situation. I’ll say!

Three minutes later, the “sticky sticky sticky” cop looks at our POV cop’s body camera directly, waiting for it to be muted. When the POV cop mutes it, he starts talking. They talk for a minute or so. After the cop walks away, the POV cop puts his mic back on. Several seconds later someone is heard saying “What? Are they gunna call fuckin’ Duffy?”

Duffy, for those unaware, is the president of one of our three police unions. Like Petrone, he is a well-connected power broker, but less of a political animal and more of a “cowboy up” type: the leader of the gang unit when the gang unit was racking up civil rights lawsuits at a steady clip.

A minute later, a cop is heard saying “Gotta love the City of Worcester, man,” while our POV cop whistles a work-a-day tune.

It’s just after this that an elderly woman strikes up a conversation with one of the idling officers. They’re just waiting on a tow at this point, milling around. She says something just on the edge of audible about a house down the street and what’s going on over there, some criminal conspiracy surely. Having duly reported the alleged crimes to the appropriate authorities she says, clear as day, in what-are-ya-gonna-do fashion, “well, they’re colored.” Cops laugh. One says “you said it, not me.”

A minute later the tow truck arrives and the body camera footage supplied to the Telegram ends. Toomey is still sitting in her car. It is unclear what happened from there.

With the full footage, even if most of it is muted... a feature of the Axon product that seriously dispels the myth it’s an accountability measure... we’ve had all week to digest what is very clearly two things: a public officials brazenly and cartoonishly flaunting her perceived immunity, and cops who may not have charged her with anything in the first place, despite there being probable cause a few different ways, and certainly didn’t after learning who she was.

It is also worth noting that Toomey was immediately lawyered up by Friday, when the story was in motion, speaking to the Telegram through one Michael Wilcox, a lawyer among the most prominent in the city, who’s also representing the family of deceased state police recruit Enrique Delgado Garcia. “There’s nothing nefarious about this situation,” Wilcox said, confirming the nefariousness of the situation. The car was illegally parked on the sidewalk, he added, as if to close the case. That Toomey was not charged with a crime but nevertheless contracted a defense attorney (and an expensive one, I imagine) to speak on her behalf is notable.

Monday, Sept. 14, another update: the chief of police made it known he didn’t speak to Toomey “during or immediately after” and would investigate whether any other police officials took a call. He used the investigation he’d just announced to decline to comment on why officers didn’t administer a sobriety test. Convenient! When that investigation will conclude and whether the details will be made public is anyone’s guess.

Around the same time, the coalition of community groups pressing for a CRB demanded in a statement that Toomey resign from the public safety subcommittee.

Massachusetts General Law c. 268A, § 23(b) is explicit and states: “An elected official may not invoke his position to seek preferential treatment from police officers during a traffic stop.” Body camera footage shows Councilor Toomey attempted precisely this, asking officers to “call the chief” and stating she would “get a hold of Anthony Petrone,” a Worcester police sergeant and former Union Police leader. These were clear attempts to leverage her official position for preferential handling. No officer challenged or documented this violation of conflict-of-interest law.

Full thing here.

The next day, she did, albeit “temporarily.”

Tuesday, Sept. 15 — Her momentary resignation was announced by way of a statement in which she otherwise maintained her innocence. Here’s the full text:

On September 2nd, I was involved in a collision with an unlawfully parked vehicle.Fortunately, nobody was injured. But to be clear, the police investigated the incident, I cooperated fully and was allowed to return to my home.

I was not in any way impaired and will face no charges.

In order to avoid any potential appearance of a conflict, I have decided to temporarily step down from the Public Safety Committee and recuse myself from any matter involving the Worcester Police Department until the investigation is over. I’m doing this out of an abundance of caution and to ensure that the work of our Committee and the integrity of the Worcester Police Department remain above reproach.

Flagging that she said with no equivocation she “will face no charges,” despite there being an active investigation into the incident, and that it’s extremely similar to another, involving the UMass cop, that ended in charges. “Have not faced” and “will not face” are two very different clauses in such a “live situation” to use some copspeak.

She also said she’s going to recuse herself from all police matters until the investigation is complete. This, of course, after voting on the most significant police matter in recent memory a week after she did what she did, but about three days before it became public knowledge.

Now, though, for sure...

The city council camping ordinance was held by Khrystian King, but still, dozens of speakers showed up to give the city the business about it, including several members of the unhoused community. Toomey attended remotely, with no camera on, and didn’t speak much. Her roll call votes sounded especially maudlin. She abstained as she said she would from votes concerning the police.

At the end of the meeting, District 3 City Councilor John Fresolo got up “under suspension,” a feature of the tail end of council meetings in which councilors bring up things that didn’t make the agenda proper, and read a lengthy statement. You can watch the whole thing below, it’s a trip. And it concerns a character that’s perhaps as much of a through-line over these past few weeks as Toomey: one Anthony Petrone, a WPD sergeant and local power broker, whom Kate Toomey is on video trying to call after totaling her car after an event that Petrone was almost certainly also at, given he was an advisor of sorts to Waddell.

Fresolo begins by explaining that he voted incorrectly on the civilian review board the week prior. He said he thought “file” meant to delay the vote to another meeting, not throw it in the trash (an honest mistake for a first-time councilor). And then he explained why he believes a civilian review board is necessary, by way of an unsettling story about Anthony Petrone.

Fresolo hinted at some sort of story involving a corrupt officer on Sept. 8, and apparently in the intervening week Petrone had confirmed it was about him via a Facebook post, so Fresolo decided to tell the whole thing publicly, since “sergeant Anthony Petroni has come forward publicly and said he’s the person I was talking about.”

Here’s the meat of said story:

My daughter was home that day. She was in our driveway cleaning her car. When the unmarked cruiser pulled up on our block she saw him and he saw her, in her words their eyes locked. She watched him take the picture and she called me right away to tell me what had just happened.

When internal affairs looked into this, my daughter spoke with them and told them everything she saw, in the end they found there wasn’t enough to act on. No discipline, not so much as a note in his file that a complaint had ever been made, so let me be very clear: My daughter and I did not wake up that morning looking for a fight with anyone. We didn’t go looking for this. It pulled into my driveway. ... I didn’t create it and my daughter didn’t either. It was created by the decision he made to drive a department vehicle to my home, on the clock, and take that picture.

I’m sorry, but that is brazen. And that is exactly why it belongs in this debate. If a city councilor somewhere with a microphone and a seat at this table can have his home photographed by an on-duty officer, have an eyewitness give a first-hand account to internal affairs, and watch the whole thing end up with nothing on paper, what is the ordinary resident supposed to expect when they file a complaint?

It’s not a question about one sergeant it’s a question whether the system we have works it matters for residents and it matters for the good officers too who deserve a process the public trust when it clears them.

Fresolo deserves credit for inserting Petrone’s name into the record and articulating, in public, an instance where he’s behaved as he behaves. Petrone has been allowed to broker so much power with so little accountability for a long time. If you remember the sprinkler ordinance fracas last fall, you may remember I put forward the theory that Petrone instructed Toomey and Mero-Carlson to axe it. I think the theory has aged quite well if you ask me.

That Fresolo used the council floor to bring the Petrone issue to light is a significant step and one likely, we can hope, to have a ripple effect.

And that’s a fitting place to end our timeline.

What to make of it all? I’ve spent six years doing my best to articulate the quiet reality that Worcester is run more like a gang than the democratic institution it is on paper—that the way it’s supposed to work is a smokescreen for the way it actually works—and this September so far has been one news item after another that confirm the observation in an exaggerated fashion that borders on the cartoonish.

Fresolo owning up to the mistake (and props to him, sincerely) changes nothing materially. But it does change the math in a significant way. A 7-4 vote is a different animal than an 8-3 vote. A 7-4 dynamic is corrected by removing just two of the seven.

Two councilors. That’s it! Get rid of two cranks. They may feel immovable because they’ve been there forever and the last election went, you know, how it went. But they are not. Far from it.

Luckily, one is extremely vulnerable and luckier still he is among the rudest and most obstinately opposed to anything that carries a whiff of “left.” Moe Bergman is on the council by a fingernail. A first-time challenger whose profile has only increased in the intervening months came within a margin so slim there was a whole recount. Half the battle right there. And he makes our case for us just about every week.

And another is currently embroiled in what should be a career ending scandal—what would be so in a normal place. With any luck, Kate Toomey has the poor judgement to run again, dragging the rest of her block down with her as the public happily finds a new opportunity to refocus on how she was let off on an obvious and dangerous DUI, and perhaps they’ll focus, then, on where she was coming from, and who she was with, and how they all let her drive.

And if that’s not enough, District 1 and District 5, Economou and Rivera, are also among the seven that need flipping.

Like Kamara, Linhares put up a stellar showing for a first timer. And Economou has used his time in office to uhhhh talk about how Worcester is the only city with neighborhood parks. And sound a little... you know... while doing it. (Allegedly; I heard someone else say one time; in a speculative and also fictional sense. Watch the clip though. )

In District 5, Rivera’s unprecedented 30 percent vote increase from 2023 to 2025 may be difficult to maintain if Duffy and Petrone and Murray find they have bigger fish to fry, or else find themselves bored by a district race with no assault and battery on police charge thrown into the mix. This, then, leaving Rivera to campaign on his own merit, defending his own record, using words in sentences successively arranged to articulate ideas. All of which he may find difficult. That’s what we call a vulnerable incumbent right there.

If the civilian review board vote doesn’t capture the attention of voters, in those two districts especially, where engagement skews higher and sentiments more liberal, then the homelessness criminalization pitch Batista dropped into the mix surely will, as was evident on Tuesday, the dozens of commenters who stilled turned out despite a well publicized delay, and the many resonant, well articulated claims that the proposal is both anathema to “who we are here” and also straight out of the Project 2025 handbook, in other words “pretty Trumpy.”

Since city hall is high school, that 7-4 split on the civilian review board thing will undoubtedly be the same vote on the camping fines proposal. It’ll either go that way or the mayor will, behind the scenes, orchestrate a rug pull. Batista will walk it back. And that will make the manager look weak to the goons who put the idea in his ear. And that will in turn make Petty look like he’s unsure of his chosen man. And since that’s the only job he has that matters, in turn his only real legacy, might the seven term incumbent find it’s a good time to hang up the cleats? Before that sentiment is allowed to mature in the polity? Hm, Joe?

And then, in that event, we arrive at a really fun question: who do they have on the bench?

Oh baby Worcester’s getting fun again!

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But the fun isn’t over. The camping fine proposal is back on the agenda Tuesday and we need another strong showing to underscore how unpopular this proposal is with the public.

Here’s the agenda and here’s the report on the proposal. Meeting’s at 6:30 p.m., City Hall third floor.

Also on the agenda is this hilariously obtuse order from Toomey’s second fiddle on public safety:

9/22/26 Council Agenda: Order 10d. Request City Manager request Police Chief provide increased traffic enforcement on Harrington Way to address speeding concerns in the area. (Bergman)

TY to reader Steve Hart for flagging that one. What a world. In his words, “you can’t make this stuff up.”

Ahead of the council meeting, the Carpenters Union will be holding a demonstration outside city hall, calling on the city to do something about Optline, a contractor working in the city that loooooves to call ICE on workers who try to get their overtime pay. Optline was at one time banned from working on taxpayer funded projects but has since been un-banned, in keeping with the way everything else is moving around here.

And on Wednesday there’s a journalism panel on public safety reporting at the library, which should prove interesting given everything going on of late. Here’s the event page. Two homies on the bill: Chris Faraone from BINJ and John Keough from TWIW.

Ok that’s all for me for today.

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Again please consider helping this outlet stay afloat. This only exists because you make it so. There’s been a lot written about the Toomey situation but ask yourself if any of it looked remotely like what you just read! We don’t try to “beat the competition” to getting the same story up quicker we try to offer a way in to really understanding how it all fits together.

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Recording a podcast episode tonight! Look out for it tomorrow.

New Boy Harsher record is very sick. Jeans is the standout jam. They’re from Western Mass btw pretty cool.

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Dear Shaun,

I am starting my freshman year in high school and so far the transition has felt very overwhelming. I am having a hard time finding my classes, I don’t know where to sit in the cafeteria, and a lot of my friends from middle school are in different classes. I just want to know does it get better? Or am I in for a real hard four years?

-Fretting Freshman

Dear Fretting Freshman,

Don’t believe the hype from pop culture. High school is neither the best time of your life nor is it the worst time of your life. When all is said and done it is just another phase of your miserable existence. If you go into high school knowing that life is shit and we all just have to move forward because the clock has informed us to, the easier everything will be.

Now, should you strive to be a good student? If that is what you want, that is what you should do. If you want to pick and choose where to succeed in your academics, be my guest! (It worked for me). If you want to wreak havoc, by all means, go for it. With all of these choices there are consequences, of course. Try hard? You may have less of a social life. Pick and choose? You may have fewer options for yourself post-graduation. Wreak havoc? Most likely you’re arrested.

I had done some pretty stupid things in my high school career. Partly because I reminded myself that it all doesn’t matter. I used to stomp around the cafeteria like a Velociraptor. I would jump on to tables and eat kids’ food without my shortened hands. I would yelp and scream and cause absolute chaos. I never once got in trouble for it. Including my last lunch when I was a senior, I received a stand ovation from the entire cafeteria including the teachers, who told me they were going to miss my performances.

In another instance, I started streaking at parties. At first, some folks didn’t really like it. The mood was homophobic. It was always guys yelling at me. It got to the point that after a while it became known that I was the guy that got naked at parties, and after a while I was just a naked guy at the party. I would play beer pong or sit and have a conversation. I guess you could say I was a nudist? If anyone ever yelled or asked me to put my clothes on, I would. But most times everyone kind of didn’t see me as naked. They treated me as an equal.

You do not have to perform as a extinct creature or expose your body in public. That is not the bad advice. The bad advice is care less. Can’t find your class? You’ll be late, and then you’ll get a detention and then maybe you meet your new best friend in that detention. Don’t know where to sit in the cafeteria? Just start sitting. If that table doesn’t talk to you, go to the next one. My freshman year the older punk kids I tried sitting with would mock me for liking Cave In and not Saves the Day (you don’t need to know these references). Eventually they realized that it didn’t faze me and they kept letting me sit. You only see your friends after school? Perfect, why would you want to hang out with them while learning about Mesopotamia? Go get into trouble outside of school and drink a dirty soda or whatever.

I’m doing a lot for you here. I hesitated putting in writing the getting naked thing. But I did it for you. Don’t blow this.

NEWS

This weekend I will be playing in a basketball tournament run by a bunch New York comedians. It is called The Big Walkowski. It is run by Joel Walkowski. He just wrote a great book titled Honolulu Blues. Go get yourself a copy. This year we are honoring a great friend that I’ve mentioned here before, John Rosenberger. The tournament raises money for LiveOnNY a organization that helps with Organ Donation. If you feel like donating, please do.

Next week Hot Dog! is back on September 18th. Stay tuned!

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HORRORSCOPES

Virgo- Twerk like no one is watching.

Libra- The stars were just wondering if you had a few bucks you could lend them. They are good for it. I can vouch for them. They’re good. Yeah, they have their past and some of them have died recently, but the ones who are asking are chill and reliable. Be cool, man.

Scorpio- The planets are aligned. They have unionized and have demands. First, they feel grossly underpaid. I’m just the middle man, so I’m going to stay out of this. But you should definitely come to the negotiation table and offer a solution quickly.

Sagittarius- The NFL season has started. Kiss your loved ones, and we’ll talk to you again in March.

Capricorn- The Red Sox are doing well, so things in your life are not going as well. You haven’t noticed yet because of the rose-colored glasses you are watching these games through. On their next off day just check in with those you care about, there are some things you must attend to.

Aquarius- The moon is pissed.

Pisces- Try something you’ve never done before. But it has to be illegal. The stars are still waiting on that loan and want to see if you can come through for them. Maybe just stick your hand in a tip jar? Or commit some light wire fraud?

Aries- Watch someone twerk like they don’t see you watching.

Taurus- Start to keep a diary. This will help you get out some of those thoughts you feel even your therapist can’t hear. Write so much that eventually you’re thinking this stuff is pretty genius. Write to the point where you think that someone is going to have to read this. That is when you finally get to post your Charlie Kirk / JD Vance Erotic Fan Fic. Part zombie apocalyptic tale, part lustful romance where they use all the holes.

Gemini- Ooooh, okay. The moon is into you. He is telling everyone how much of a crush he has one you. Keep doin’ what you’re doin’.

Cancer- Remind yourself that you are not an expert and no one cares about your half-brained theories on crimes that you have only read about on the news and on Reddit pages. You don’t know shit.

Leo- When in doubt ask yourself what Dolly Parton would do. She made so much fucking money, you should probably follow her footsteps. Even if that means making some shitty Hallmark Christmas movies. Exploit yourself, become uber-rich and people will still think you’re a good person.

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NEWS

Tonight we have a great show at Boland’s Irish Bar and Patio. The show is always free and we honestly should charge for how good the lineups are. This one is no different. Show starts at 8PM!

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For now, I got the hotspot engaged and “getting this out” in workman-like fashion. So I’ll keep the plug short...

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There’s an election today with significant ramifications for Worcester politics. Our state delegation either stays “pretty good” or becomes “depressingly dreadful” in the same way our city council went last November. The same people that were behind the concerted, and ultimately successful, effort to replace our best city councilor with a real-lfie Geodude have taken a big whiff of their own oats, as they say, and are now trying to do the same thing to Mary Keefe and Jim O’Day, both longtime members of a relatively progressive state delegation, in the McGovern tradition—unlike our city council, which always tends to lean more reactionary... seeing itself as some hunger games arena for three or four shadow homeowner’s associations, the police union presiding over the games, zapping anyone who tries to actually legislate with the city’s ostensible legislative body, an electric fence they monitor with their collective hand on a big cartoon switchbox.

This primary contests in the 14th and 15th Worcester Districts are a concerted attempt to expand the boundaries of this metaphorical electric fence. And it is going to be a very low turnout election, odds that tend to favor the fencers more than the fencees if you know what I mean.

If you can vote in either the 14th or the 15th Worcester District State Rep Democratic Party primaries, you really, really should.

You have to live in either of the districts. The 14th Worcester, O’Day’s district, is generally the Burncoat / Greendale area up into southern West Boylston.

The 15th District, where Keefe serves and, to her great credit, lives right in the core of, stretches from the downtown area across the highway over the east side, right up to the lake.

...and when you get to your polling station, you have to request a Democratic ballot, rather than a Republican one. Whatever’s going on on the Republican ballot: not my business. Best of luck or what have you.

If you’re unsure, you can look up your voter information, including polling place and state rep. district, via this tool. You have until 8 p.m. to get down to your polling location and I can all but guarantee there will not be a line.

Audio version of this voter guide plus some serious tangents as we do can be found on the Outdoor Cats podcast feed: Episode 73: Kate Gooney

On the Dem ballot, there’s also the Markey / Moulton contest for U.S. Senate. That one is easy. Do the opposite of what an unenrolled member of the Bush Family tells you and vote for the candidate who wasn’t among the most over-eager in the country to throw trans kids under the bus after Trump won in 2024.

Vote for Markey. Moulton stinks.

It’s going to be a wash anyway, it looks like.

So let’s get to the local races. In the two local races, vote Keefe for District 15 and O’Day for District 14.

Here’s why....

The Freaky Little Primary

Sickos, cranks and other careful observers of Worcester’s local political landscape may have noticed a Facebook post the other day by one Guy Glodis, in which the former sheriff uses AI to soft launch his new guy for District 2 City Council. John Piccolo, the restaurantuer and political insider who committed the most baffling and notable act of political violence in the city’s recent history (the Spraypaint Incident). The AI render depicts Piccolo via an “urban grafitti” sort of stock filter featuring meaningless bits of text like “REAL WORK.”

The comments, mostly relishing in the act of political violence Piccolo was convicted of committing, feature a line from one Anthony Petrone, landlord, police union guy, state Democratic Party insider guy, local kingmaker, which reads:

“Can’t wait to help Pic represent the Eastside. First Ron Waddell then Pic !”

Petrone’s helping Ron Waddell’s campaign against Mary Keefe, then, after that, he plans to help Piccolo ummm paint District 2 red.

Petrone is also an advisor, albeit of an informal variety, for another campaign: West Boylston Selectman Barur Rajeshkumar, whom we’ll refer to as Raj for the rest of this post so I don’t have to keep checking my spelling. He’s likely the driving force behind a recent change of tone in the Raj campaign’s mailers: Like Glodis, the Raj campaign has made garish use of AI. More on that later.

Between Raj and Ron’s campaigns, there are 246 unique donations, per OCPF, but only four names found on both of the candidate’s donor lists: Crank-about-town Steve Quist, local not-a-developer and husband-of-Candy Joe Carlson, city councilor Satya Mitra, and, ding ding ding Anthony Petrone.

The lists are otherwise a rogue’s gallery, and you can look at them combined via this spreadsheet I made.

But the point I’m making is that the people who’ve donated to both of these candidates are the most likely to understand a certain larger project, and as it turns out, the names—especially Carlson and Petrone—confirm that analyisis. These are the people, along with cheapskate Tim Murray, who only donated to Ron, that are best understood as the real powerbrokers behind this anti-progressive backlash.

Today’s primary becomes, then, a test of whether they have the juice to remold the entire political landscape in their quasi-Trumpian though still ostensibly Democratic image, or if their Jose Riverafication of District 5 City Council last year was a one-off.

That is a very important dynamic to keep an eye on, and one no one involved is going to say out loud

Keefe v Waddell

Keefe is a member of two significant caucuses: the progressive caucus and the criminal justice reform caucus.

Waddel on the other hand works closely with the county sheriff, via his Legendary Legacies, most notably securing a $1.3 million state grant in 2021 for a re-entry program in partnership with the sheriff and the Worcester House of Corrections called Legendary Links. The sum was a large amount for the state to dole out, as noted in a Worcester Business Journal article at the time, for a relatively new organization, founded just a few years earlier, in 2018.

At a recent candidate forum, Waddel bragged about the growth.

“It is not common for a nonprofit without any, you know, ties to money like that to build an organization that is now just short of two million dollars in less than eight years.”

Per available tax information, 2021, the year they received the $1.3 million grant for their partnership with the county sheriff, was the organization’s biggest fundraising year by a wide margin.

To consider Waddel’s success as tied at least partially to his proximity to the sheriff, and to see among his backers police union leadership like Anthony Petrone, and then on top of that to also to consider the fact he sits on an advisory committee to the Executive Office of Public Safety, puts Keefe’s role on the criminal justice reform caucus in the crosshairs. Might that be a reason why Tim Murray and Anthony Petrone put this challenge together?

Waddel’s answer to a question about the civilian review board is illuminating. He began by saying the decision is a municipal one.

“There is not much I could offer in changing that,” he said. Then he goes on a long, circuitious non-answer, which I’m including in full bellow:

However I am on record saying that the research that the city has gone through in the process that they’re up to. I support where they are. But what I can say is this. One of the things that just came out in July 2026 was a report from the Violence Funding Services Joint Commission...

(He means Special Commission on Violence Prevention Services Funding, pretty sure. If not, funny committee name)

...and this talks about how we can improve the community trust between public safety and law enforcement. I think this is not so much about accountability but it’s more about community trust. And this is the work that I’m in. The work that we’re doing is being able to build those partnerships so that you can intervene before those challenges even happen where you have to worry about accountability. When you think of public safety there’s three pillars. There’s suppression which we’re most familiar with. There’s prevention, stopping it before it happens. And what I’m talking about is funding intervention. Intervention are community based experts that are able to intervene before an event happens so that we don’t even need law enforcement to have to. These are the partnerships that we developed in that report talks about that extensively. And there’s a lot in it that we can act on to improve that. And as a state rep., those are the levers that I have to pull and those are the things that I would focus on.”

So, to translate: ‘Can’t support a civilian review board and won’t say why. Hey, look over here though.’ [Waves shiny object.]

Why he can’t support civilian review is obvious: his bosses in this race are Tim Murray and Anthony Petrone, two of the most outspoken opponents of the manager’s now-reneged CRB proposal.

For comparison, here’s the meat of Keefe’s answer to the same question. Notice how she says what she means on the matter at hand, rather than changing the subject, and says what she means clearly. She started with the WRRB report on the matter, called it well vetted and well researched, then connected the current moment to a long history of struggling for more police accountability in this city.

This is 50 years of work. It goes back to the establishment of the Human Rights Commission under City Manager McGraw and it’s been fought over for that long. So please just look at the report. I stand with the people and what they really feel would make our city better and that is to have a civilian review board.

Not a hard question to answer when you’re allowed to say what you mean!

This small exchange shows basically everything you need to know about Keefe v. Waddel. Vote Keefe.

O’Day v Raj

Raj’s challenge to O’Day has been marked by his absurdist and, ultimately, evil, use of AI imagery, text and relentless SMS spam.

His most evil mailer, seen below, was the subject of most of a recent Outdoor Cats episode, so I won’t retread that ground much, except to say “man, what an asshole.”

Prior to that, Raj’s messaging was less evil and more endearingly weird. I live in this district, so I get all the mail, and there was one the other week I want to focus on—one that ended, in what was then his signature phrase, OVERLOOKED NO MORE.

The Petronification of this campaign took OVERLOOKED NO MORE away from us and replaced it with the overdone copaganda bullshit above. What a shame.

It’s the little things that distinguish a true artist. In a section headlined “follow the money,” there’s a subhead / command: “YOU DECIDE” with four check boxes.

The journeyman would let the viewer decide, so shortly after requesting they do so. Not the master, though. He checks the box for you. YOU DECIDE Borat voice: Nahhhhht.

Remember: Anthony Petrone is personally advising Raj’s campaign. Petrone, as I’ve covered a few times, is a local kingmaker, an insider’s insider, who cultivated his influence by way of a police union leadership role and personal connections to other power brokers like State Sen. Michael Moore and “Character from ‘The Wire’” Joe Carlson.

But Petrone, of course, doesn’t make the literature. Instead, Raj writes:

“Whose interests matter more on Beacon Hill, the residents of Worcester and West Boylston, or the lobbyists, special interests and political insiders funding Jim O’Day’s campaign?”

Petrone is among the most significant local lobbyists, representing the special interests of cops and/or landlords (not that there’s much of a distinction), and has perhaps the most “political insider” pull of anyone in the game.

And the third page of the mailer looks like this…

So take Raj’s advice and vote for Jim O’Day.

Odds and Ends

Thank you for reading, please go vote today! We’ll have results up at least on the website tonight as well.

Katie and I were at Shaw’s yesterday getting our powdered donuts and pringles for the trip an Katie’s grabbing her Gogurts when a woman looks at me and goes “love your writing. Subscriber for life.” Maybe the best complement of my life. Didn’t catch your name but if you’re reading this, thank you again. And to the rest of you: be a Subscriber For Life.

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What also helps is evangelizing this fine outlet in your personal networks. Know someone in your life who should be reading this? Or Aislinn’s WPS In Brief, or Shaun’s Bad Advice, or any of the other recurring features? Bug them about it!

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And that’s all today I gotta take over driving. Don’t forget to drop those recs for stuff to do in or around or on the way to Austin!

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Did you know, for instance, Austin was at one time as significant a psych rock city as San Francisco?

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The Worcester School Committee meets Thursday, September 3, with an executive session at 5 p.m. The public meeting is set to begin at 6 p.m, but actual start time depends on how long executive session takes. See the full agenda. You can watch it via zoom or YouTube Live. Spanish translation is available on zoom.

Here’s what’s on the agenda:

Flags in Schools.
A public petition asks the School Committee to prohibit schools from displaying any flag other than:

• The United States flag

• The Massachusetts flag

• The City of Worcester flag

• The POW/MIA flag

The proposed exceptions would allow flags used temporarily for classroom instruction, school sports and spirit flags, and flags representing branches of the U.S. military. The petitioner, Michael Douglas, describes the proposal as a way to create “symbolic uniformity,” reduce division and maintain “educational neutrality.” Although the petition does not name the Pride flag, the practical effect seems fairly clear: It would prohibit schools from displaying Pride flags, along with flags recognizing cultures, identities or causes that are not on the approved list.

The contrast is especially interesting because another item on the same agenda, filed by Molly McCullough (district A), asks the School Committee to establish an annual recognition of June and September as Pride Months and encourage “appropriate recognition and acknowledgment” of Pride as a time for visibility, celebration, education and advocacy.

The petition will likely be referred to the Operations and Governance Committee.

Teachers don’t have a contract.
The committee will enter executive session to discuss contracts for four Educational Association of Worcester bargaining units.

The teachers’ and paraeducators’ contracts expired August 31, meaning the new school year will begin without successor agreements in place. Negotiations reportedly began last October, but union representatives told the School Committee earlier this month that they had not yet received a complete financial proposal and wanted Committee members to become more directly involved. According to state law the school committee is “the legal employer” when it comes to negotiating with employees. It’s not clear if the Mayor has appointed a negotiating subcommittee of the school committee.

Voluntary Transfer and Communicating Policy
The agenda includes a district response to a public petition requesting a review of the district’s voluntary-transfer policy, process and decision-making criteria. The response largely reproduces the voluntary-transfer language in the approved 2026–27 Student Policy Handbook, but the language is different from what the School Committee’s JCA policy currently says, which still contains the version approved on May 21, 2020.

So which one governs? Are families supposed to rely on the student handbook? I have done that before, only to be told later that the handbook contained an outdated policy the district no longer followed. Should families instead rely on the school committee policy manual, even though it apparently is not updated to reflect the rules the committee subsequently approved through the handbook process?

The school committee is also being asked to review several other policies specifically “to ensure that the policy manual and student handbook align.” But the purpose of the handbook should be to accurately communicate policies the School Committee has adopted, not to become a separate and potentially conflicting source of policy information. Families should not have to compare several district documents, search through years of meeting records and guess which version of a policy is actually being enforced. In this case, the confusion is not helping anyone understand how transfer decisions are made or whether the rules are being applied consistently.

Report of the Superintendent this week is about the Opening of Schools. No slide deck posted yet because school just started.

Preschool and literacy grants.
The Committee will also consider several grants, including:

• A $521,064 Commonwealth Preschool Partnership Initiative grant supporting partnerships between WPS and private early-education providers. The funding is intended to expand access to high-quality preschool while addressing barriers including cost and access to special education services. WPS staff will continue providing itinerant services to children with IEPs through community preschool partners.

• A high-dosage literacy tutoring grant for students performing below or well below benchmark, with first graders prioritized. The final amount will be determined through cost reimbursement, and the funding will pay stipends for tutoring staff working in elementary schools across the district.

  ---

A new policy under the PROTECT Act.
The Committee will consider developing a new policy governing interactions with law-enforcement officers in schools. The policy is required following passage of Massachusetts’ PROTECT Act and will likely be referred to Operations and Governance for review.

Have a good week! If you have feedback you can always get in touch: aislinn.doyle@me.com

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