Happy spring! Hope you had a restful April vacation. Before we start I wanted to give a quick plug for an unofficial middle school enrollment guide I put out earlier this month. This month’s WPS in Brief covers key topics from two school committee meetings and two subcommittee meetings.

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Let’s get to it:

Redistricting.

The district is now in its third month of a formal redistricting process aimed at better aligning school boundaries. Two community forums were held this month (April 15 and 27), and a few key takeaways stood out:

Worcester experienced 20% population growth from 2000–2020, and that growth was spread across the city rather than concentrated in one area. Looking ahead, most future growth is expected to be among older adults (50+). At the same time, school enrollment has been declining. Over the past decade, the district has seen a 2.7% overall drop in enrollment and a 10% decline in kindergarten. Schools in the Burncoat quadrant saw the steepest kindergarten decline at 20%, while schools in the Doherty quadrant saw the smallest decrease at 3%.

Above you can see a slide from the forum that shows the percentage of enrollment change over the last ten years, with Burncoat being the only quadrant seeing a decline and no growth. The area with the largest enrollment growth (in the middle of the map on the right) is also high poverty, with 83-94% of students designated as low income.

Currently, 20% of elementary students attend a school outside of their assigned zone (this is students under voluntary transfer, and does not include those in magnet or hub programs). That’s 23% of Burncoat elementary students and 24% of North quadrant elementary students, versus 16% of South and Doherty quadrant students. Complicating matters further, not all elementary schools feed into the same middle or high schools, and some elementary zones are not geographically contiguous. As an example, outlined in yellow is the zone for City View Elementary:

I highly recommend reviewing the FAQs, which address many of the questions raised at recent forums or through the survey. (If you haven’t already, please complete the WPS Realignment Initial Input Survey. It’s open through May 15.) I’ve been asked to serve on the working group as a parent representative, so definitely reach out if you have comments or concerns. There are also two upcoming virtual forums that will cover school capacity and utilization, school-level trends, and travel time:

• Tuesday, May 5, 2026 (5:30–6:30 PM): Community Forum #4 (virtual)

• Wednesday, May 13, 2026 (7:00–8:30 PM): Spanish-language Community Forum (virtual)

These will be the final meetings before initial redistricting scenarios are presented to the School Committee in June. Then there will be more community forums in August, September and October to learn about the scenarios and offer feedback, with a tentative final school committee vote taking place in November for implementation in the 2026-2027 school year.

New Elementary Math Curriculum Approved.

The school committee authorized the purchase of a six-year contract for a new elementary math curriculum, Reveal Math, not to exceed $3.2 million. The district says the new curriculum would provide more consistent instruction across schools, stronger support for multilingual learners, more opportunities for discourse and problem solving, and better alignment with grades 7–12, which have been using Reveal since last fall. District leaders feel that because teachers have been heavily supplementing the current curriculum, students are not receiving the same learning experience across classrooms. They have also pointed to the fact that Reveal is already being used in grades 7 through Algebra 2, saying a K–6 adoption would improve K–12 “vertical alignment.” (I was not able to find examples of other Massachusetts districts using the same math curriculum across K–12.) They also used this rationale to say it’s an “extension” of a current curriculum in use, rather than a new curriculum, which appears to be a way to get around following best practices for selecting a new curriculum. (For comparison, here’s an example of what another district did in its curriculum choosing process.)

The district also outlined a yearlong implementation plan intended to support the transition. Math Curriculum Specialist Heather Farrington said elementary curriculum maps would be updated by mid-May, followed by district onboarding in early June and several days of training for teachers. That training will take place during the school day, with teachers pulled from classrooms, meaning lost instructional time for students.

Questions remain about both the process and the timing of the change. Elementary teachers did not pilot the curriculum, and it was not clear how they were involved in the selection process. The teachers’ union was also not informed until the proposal appeared on the School Committee agenda. At the same time, district data reportedly shows that midyear math performance across grades 1–9 is currently the highest it has been since Worcester began using the Star assessment. Curriculum changes at this scale carry some risk. When teachers are learning a new program, instruction is less consistent at first, which is normal, but can impact students. The district is only in its third year of implementing a new ELA curriculum, and many teachers are finally becoming comfortable with it; adding another large-scale change raises legitimate concerns about capacity and implementation. A district needs teacher buy-in, family buy-in, and a clear plan to support the transition. Moving forward, Sue Mailman (at-large) requested a report for a more clear curriculum review cycle, which is a best practice standard in Massachusetts (see here, here, and here as examples). It’s surprising that Worcester doesn’t already do this.

Autism Program Updates.

One of this month’s Report of the Superintendent was on Autism program updates. The focus was on the SAIL program, which stands for Specialized Approaches to Individual Learning, and is in four hub schools in each quadrant. Reporter Jesse Collings covered it well in the Telegram, so it’s worth checking out there (Links: Telegram, Apple News, WPL).

¡Elementary Libraries!

If you’ve been reading me for a while you know that, as the child of a library para, school libraries are close to my heart. And as a member of the Worcester Elementary School Library Coalition, we have been working hard to advocate for libraries to be reinstated in elementary schools (for background on libraries in WPS read this) I’m excited to share that at a recent subcommittee meeting the district informed the committee that 7 elementary schools will now be using the 4th or 5th prep periods to provide elementary students with regular access to library services. The schools are:

• Belmont Street Community School

• Flagg Street School

• Gates Lane School

• Nelson Place School

• Norrback Avenue School

• Quinsigamond Elementary School

• Worcester Dual Language Magnet School

Right now a handful of elementary school libraries have been functioning mostly because of parent and community volunteers (who were recognized at the April 16 school committee meeting), and it takes a lot of commitment. This is an important step for making sure students have equitable access to books, literacy support, and spaces that foster a lifelong love of learning. Check out more about the Worcester Elementary School Library Coalition here.

Middle School Grading Policy Change.

There was a report on the progress of the high school grading change to “mastery based grading” and an update on the roll out for middle school which is planned for the 2026-2027 school year. The goal is for grading practices to reflect “understanding over task completion, encouraging deeper engagement and skill development” and to “ensure grades reflect learning, not external challenges.”The school committee originally approved the updated policy as a pilot at the high school level, and it’s not clear if this report was a formal approval of the policy for the middle school level.

Culture and climate program updates.

The second Report of the Superintendent this month was on the culture and climate wellness rooms. The rooms are in Worcester’s middle schools and high schools and are generally used as a space for students to take a break or get academic support. Again, Jesse Collings covered it well in the Telegram, so it’s worth checking out there (links: Telegram, WPL, Apple News).

Middle School Sports Grant.

The School Committee approved a $50,000 grant from the PlayBall Foundation to support middle school athletics, funding four spring sports–baseball, softball, and boys’ and girls’ soccer–across five schools. The money will cover uniforms, equipment, transportation, and coaching stipends. Jermaine Johnson (district F) asked whether the grant would expand offerings or simply offset existing costs; North Quadrant Executive Director Kareem Tatum said it will add teams, particularly in soccer, while baseball and softball may start as clinics due to lower student interest.

What’s Behind Alex Guardiola’s Energy Infrastructure Push?

Alex Guardiola (district D) published a bizarre op-ed in the Telegram arguing that investing in energy infrastructure is essential to improving student learning. He points to school closures during heat waves and the possibility of students spending nights in cold homes due to grid failures as evidence, ultimately concluding that “investing in modern infrastructure is not just an energy issue, it is an education imperative.” (links: Telegram, WPL, Apple News)

But that argument is quite the leap. In Worcester, if a student is in a cold home, it’s far more likely due to not being able to pay heating bills than a widespread grid failure. And when schools close during heat waves, it’s not because of energy infrastructure, it’s because most WPS school buildings lack air conditioning, period.

Reading the piece, it’s hard not to ask: who is Guardiola writing this for? He runs his own consulting and lobbying firm, yet he is not registered as a lobbyist with the state, has not publicly disclosed his clients, and he also has no conflicts of interest on file with the City of Worcester, aside from attending WooSox opening day. Transparency is something he often emphasizes on the School Committee floor, but this op-ed sure leaves you wondering.

Upcoming Dates.

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

• May 5: School Boundary and Quadrant Alignment Forum, 5:30pm (virtual)

• May 6: 2026-2027 budget released

• May 7: School Committee Meeting, 5:30pm at City Hall

• May 13: School Boundary and Quadrant Alignment Forum in Spanish, 7pm (virtual)

• May 13: Burncoat Building Project Community Visioning Input Session, 6pm at Burncoat High

• May 18: Operations and Governance Meeting, 5pm at Durkin Administration Building

• May 20: Finance Meeting, 5:30 pm at Durkin Administration Building

• May 21: School Committee Meeting, 5:30pm at City hall

• May 28: Teaching, Learning and Student Supports Meeting, 5pm at at Durkin Administration Building

• May 28: Public Budget Hearing, 6pm at Durkin Administration Building

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Also.

You may have seen the news article in early April about an AI-generated photo of Auburn student prompts police investigation and the Globe story, “He made a fake nude of his middle school classmate. Nothing Happened.” Even elementary students in Worcester have access to AI image generation through Canva (and the district touted its use by kindergartners in a press release). As much as I hope the safeguards put on AI image generation keep our kids safe in school, it leaves me really uneasy. The Worcester Families for Safe Technology group is holding a community meeting on Wednesday, April 29 to have a conversation about AI and Technology in WPS. Hope to see you there!

Thanks for reading. I hope these briefs are helping you stay informed without feeling overwhelmed. If they are, please consider a paid subscription or a tip to support the dozens of hours of work it takes me to put these together. See you next month!

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Before we get to the agenda preview, I want to share two things:

Please come to the district realignment forum this Wednesday, April 15 at 5 p.m. at Doherty High. Also be sure to fill out the Initial Input Survey, which is open until May 15.

Last week I put out a Guide to WPS Middle School Enrollment, which is a very unofficial guide to navigating Worcester Public Schools’ middle school magnet programs and voluntary transfer policies. If you have kids in elementary school, check it out.

Ok here’s the preview:

April 16 School Committee Meeting
The next school committee meeting is scheduled for April 16. Executive session starts at 5 p.m. and the regular meeting is scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m. The actual start time depends on how long the executive session takes. See the agenda here. You can watch it via zoom or Youtube Live. Spanish translation is available on zoom.

Report of the Superintendent

This month’s Report of the Superintendent is on the culture and climate wellness rooms. The rooms are in Worcester’s middle schools and high schools. Also, I missed the rebrand, because up until this year the office was called climate and culture, but I guess it’s culture and climate now.

Farm to School Grant.
Massachusetts Farm to School was awarded $100,000 to lead a two-year project to facilitate local food collaboration for Boston, Worcester and Springfield. According to the grant the purpose is “to support alignment of menu items to increase local food purchasing and promotion. The districts will work together to establish ‘New England Harvest Menus’ that feature multiple items that utilize locally grown, raised, or caught foods.” Up for approval is $20,000 of the grant to come to Worcester.

Middle School Sports Grant.
Also up for approval is a grant for $50,000 to support middle school sports from the PlayBall Foundation. The grant will support “four Spring sports (baseball, softball, boys’/girls’ soccer) across five middle schools within the district. Funds will support the purchase of uniforms, equipment, transportation and coaches’ stipends.”

Reports From Administration On:

• Supports for unhoused students

• School nurse staffing levels

• Dropout prevention plan

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Other Items.

• Sue Mailman (at-large) has an item requesting an update on the plan to move the transitions program out of the Fanning Building.

• Molly McCullough (district A) is requesting an update on the supports and services currently offered for students with dyslexia and other language-based learning disabilities.

• Alex Guardiola (district D) is requesting a report on the custodial and grounds staffing at Foley Stadium, with a long list of what he’d like to specifically see included.

• Vanessa Alvarez (district B) has an item asking for data on enrollment and participation of Hispanic/Latinx students in advanced coursework.

• The administration is requesting a renewal of the McGraw-Hill Contract for five years for “History- grades 6,7,9, Psychology, Sociology, and Legal Aspects.

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

This week, the district shared with families at Worcester Dual Language Magnet School that the school will be expanding into a pre-K through 8 model. Since then, I’ve been part of a lot of conversations with fellow elementary parents about Worcester middle schools — and wowwww, there is so much confusion and misunderstanding out there. That’s what motivated me to put together this guide to middle school enrollment.

For this guide I’ve pulled all the scattered info into one place and will break down the biggest sources of confusion: how magnet programs work, how voluntary transfers are handled, and the practical details like transportation, school hours, and extracurriculars.

If you know other parents with older elementary kids who are confused about middle school, please share this guide with them! Here is a PDF version as well.

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I’m just a parent sharing what I’ve pieced together from five years of watching school committee meetings and talking with other parents. To the best of my knowledge, this is as accurate as possible, but my own family hasn’t gone through this process yet. I highly recommend checking out the district’s specialized programs page and enrollment videos, and definitely contact the district directly if you have specific questions. I’d also really appreciate any clarifications or insights from families who have been through it. And one final thing I’ve learned over the years: policy and what actually happens in practice are not always the same thing…

Let’s start with the basics.
A student’s official middle school assignment is determined by the district’s street list, which assigns every address to a middle school. *Update that the district has released a new tool that allows you to search by your address which is way more user friendly than the street list. It also includes distance from school which is helpful to know whether your address qualifies for a bus or not (for the secondary, elementary school transportation is not so clear cut.) Here are some examples of the results:

There are five middle schools a student can be assigned to: Burncoat Middle, Claremont Academy, Forest Grove Middle, Sullivan Middle and Worcester East Middle. There is also a line in the student handbook that states: “Spanish Bilingual, Structured English and Special Education Programs are offered in certain schools. Any student requiring these services will be enrolled in the school that will meet their assessed needs.”

But, as I wrote about in my district realignment piece, ”the pathways students take through the system don’t always line up neatly. Chandler Elementary, for example, feeds into three different middle schools, while several others — including City View, Belmont, May Street, Norrback, Quinsigamond, and Vernon Hill — feed into two.” It’s always good to double check the street list and never make assumptions of where your student is assigned!

There’s also a bunch of middle school options that are citywide magnets or programs that require applications. They are: Goddard Scholars Academy, Hanover Insurance Academy of the Arts, Visual and Performing Arts Magnet at Burncoat Middle School, Worcester Dual Language Magnet School, and University Park Campus School. We’ll take a look at each of them, but let’s start with the first middle school opportunity for students.

Goddard Scholars Academy.
While middle school in Worcester starts in seventh grade for the vast majority of students, 50 students each year start in 6th grade at Sullivan Middle School as part of the Goddard Scholars Academy. According to the website, “Goddard Scholars Academy (GSA) provides a rigorous and accelerated academic program in a safe, nurturing, and personalized atmosphere. The student body is a select group of Worcester Public Schools’ students, grades 6-8, who have demonstrated academic proficiency.” That academic proficiency is determined by Star scores. Star is a private standardized testing company that the district contracts with, and students take Star tests in September, December, and May each year starting in first grade.

Each March, about 300 to 350 fifth grade students are invited to “apply” for the program if they have Star scores in reading and math above the 75th percentile (some students take Star tests in Spanish, but those scores do not count towards GSA eligibility). I put apply in quotes, because it’s not really an application in the way most of us think of one —students simply check a box saying whether they want to be considered. Students are ranked based on their highest Star score from May of fourth grade, or September or December of fifth grade, and offers are made in that order. What’s not clear is exactly how that ranking is calculated, and families also aren’t told where their child falls on the list, so a student could be near the top or way down at #275 and the family would have no idea. I’ve heard this is a major frustration for families, especially given how many invitation letters go out for so few spots.

If accepted, students have to maintain at least an 80 average in all subjects and should expect one to two hours of homework each night. GSA students are guaranteed a spot in the high school Goddard Scholars program that continues at South High.

Hanover Insurance Academy of the Arts.
Hanover Insurance Academy of the Arts is a second honors program, established in 2017, that is available at Burncoat Middle School, and continues on to Burncoat High School. (It is different from the Burncoat Middle School Arts Magnet program, which I’ll get into next.) Like Goddard, there are 50 spots and acceptance is based on Star scores. But unlike Goddard, it doesn’t begin until 7th grade, so eligibility is based on scores from spring of 5th grade and fall and winter of 6th grade. Hanover, as the program is often shortened to, also differs from Goddard because students take honors academics, but can also participate in the Performing, Visual, and Media Arts Magnet Classes at Burncoat High. If you want to understand the history and some of the questions around how this program was created, I highly recommend reading former School Committee member Tracy Novick’s blog. She has written about this a bit and, among other things, has pointed out that there does not appear to be any formal arrangement around the Hanover Insurance name being attached to the program.

It’s also worth noting that at a November 2024 Teaching, Learning and Student Support subcommittee meeting school committee member Sue Mailman (at-large) raised concerns that the honors programs in the district are not following similar acceptance criteria as Worcester Tech, like having allocations by quadrant, for example.

And that concern makes sense when you look at the demographic data reported back in April 2024 for both the Burncoat Hanover Insurance honors program and the Goddard Scholars honors program (see above). Enrolled students in those programs do not reflect the WPS student body and disproportionately come from the Burncoat and Doherty quadrants. One data point that wasn’t included, but that I’d really want to see, is how many students are low-income versus non-low-income. At a recent school committee meeting Mailman requested updated demographic data for these programs and I will include that here when it is released.

Visual and Performing Arts Magnet at Burncoat Middle School.
The longest standing K-12 magnet program in the city (dating back to around 1985), the Visual and Performing Arts Magnet at Burncoat Middle and High School is a continuation of the K-6 Worcester Arts Magnet (WAMs). Students can concentrate in dance, media arts, music, visual arts and theater.

It’s my understanding that students who go to WAMs automatically get a spot in the magnet at Burncoat Middle, but I could not find that in writing anywhere. If your kid wants to join the magnet, but doesn’t go to WAMS, they can be a part of the arts magnet program if Burncoat Middle is their assigned middle school. If you don’t live in the Burncoat quadrant, you would need to submit a voluntary transfer request to attend. As far as I can tell, this is less of a separate admissions process and more about whether Burncoat is your assigned school or whether you’re able to transfer in.

Voluntary transfer is the process families use to request that their child attend a different WPS school than the one they are assigned to. Students are accepted on a “case-by-case” basis, and transportation is only provided if a student receives specialized transportation as a related service through an IEP or 504.

While not explicitly stated in the policy, which can be found on page 5 of the student handbook, families are told in practice that voluntary transfer can be rescinded for “lack of seats, attendance, or other issues.” That kind of case-by-case decision making, combined with the ability to rescind a placement for essentially any reason, creates an inequitable process for families. It means there is no real transparency around how many seats are available at different schools, who gets them, or who decides.

I have heard stories of favoritism in the voluntary transfer process, including seats being held for gifted athletes, district employee’s kids, students that school committee members advocate for, or for certain arts magnet students. But it is hard to verify these stories because the process itself is not transparent. And that is a problem: when there is no clear system for who gets access and why, families are left to rely on rumors, relationships, and luck. A public school system should not have a process this consequential operating this informally.

Worcester Dual Language Magnet School.
The district recently announced that the Spanish/English dual language program 7th and 8th grade will no longer be at Burncoat Middle, but will be at Worcester Dual Language Magnet School. If space is available, students can join in 7th or 8th grade if they speak, read and write in both English and Spanish. This is a big change, but one that could create a stronger and more cohesive pathway for students continuing in dual language through middle school.

University Park Campus School.
University Park Campus School (UPCS) is a 7-12 school and the application is open to students who live within the UPCS zone. According to the district, the school’s partnership with Clark University means student teachers provide individualized support, students have access to Clark’s athletic facilities, and upperclassmen can take courses at Clark and could qualify for the Neighborhood Scholarship, which covers four years of free tuition as long as they have lived in the UPCS zone for at least five years before enrolling. Enrollment for students who live in the zone is determined by a blind lottery, with sibling preference.

A few other things to keep in mind.

High School Career Technical Education Admission: Admission to Worcester Tech is determined in part by the middle school a student attends. Lottery seats are distributed to each middle school based on its share of the total WPS 8th-grade enrollment. Below is the slot distribution for Worcester Tech’s incoming 9th graders (Class of 2030).

For the CTE programs at Doherty, North and South High Schools, there are no seat allocations based on where students attend or live.

School hours: You can find school hours on each individual school’s website. The middle school day is 18 minutes longer than elementary school, and start times vary— some as early as 7:20 a.m. and others as late as 8:47 a.m. (This is also one of the things that could potentially change through the district’s realignment process.)

Transportation. If you live within two miles of the school, your kid will need to walk, take the city bus, or you’ll need to drive them; unless they qualify for specialized transportation services as written in their IEP or 504. If you live two miles or more away, they will generally be assigned a bus, assuming they are not a voluntary transfer student. Two miles is a lot, and one expressed goal in the realignment process is to create more transportation efficiencies, so that more students can get access to busing. But as of right now, two miles is the rule.

Extra-Curriculars: Every middle school has extra-curricular offerings, but what’s available may vary by school. You can check out athletics here, and here are examples of what’s offered at Worcester East Middle and the clubs offered at Burncoat Middle. I could not find similar sites for Sullivan and Forest Grove.

Star Scores. The district does not automatically send parents their students’ star scores, and they are not available in Woo Edu. You can sign up to get your student’s Star scores emailed to you when they take them. To do that, log in to their Clever account and then click on the Renaissance app. If you scroll to the bottom it says “For parents and guardians” and click “get email updates.” The only way you can get past Star scores is to ask your child’s teacher to send you the reports. If you do not know how to log in to your child’s clever account, it’s their school email as the username (student.studentidnumber@worcesterschools.net where studentidnumber is the 6 digit number assigned to your child) and the password is their birthday (DDMMYYYY).

I hope this is a helpful starting point for families trying to make sense of Worcester’s middle school options. If you’ve been through this process and have anything to add or correct, please share. I’d genuinely love to make this guide more useful and accurate for other families. You can reach me at aislinn.doyle@me.com

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April 2 School Committee Meeting
The next school committee meeting is scheduled for April 2. Executive session starts at 5 p.m. and the regular meeting is scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m. The actual start time depends on how long the executive session takes. See the agenda here. You can watch it via zoom or Youtube Live. Spanish translation is available on zoom.

Here’s my preview:

Executive Session consists of discussing collective bargaining strategy, as well as strategy with respect to negotiations for Tammy Murray, Director of Special Education (and husband of Tim Murray).

Adding Recess to the Middle Schools.
There is a public petition from Sullivan Middle School students requesting that recess be added back to the middle schools.

Report of the Superintendent

This month’s Report of the Superintendent is on Autism program updates. The focus is on the SAIL program, which stands for Specialized Approaches to Individual Learning.

New Elementary Math Curriculum Approval.
There’s an item requesting the school committee authorize the purchase of a six-year contract for a new elementary math curriculum, Reveal Math, not to exceed $3.2 million. The backup does not include the contract up for authorization.

For some background, the district says the new curriulum would provide more consistent instruction across schools, stronger supports for multilingual learners, more opportunities for discourse and problem solving, and better alignment with grades 7–12, which have been using Reveal since last fall. District leaders feel that because teachers have been heavily supplementing the current curriculum, students are not receiving the same learning experience across classrooms. They have also pointed to the fact that Reveal is already being used in grades 7 through Algebra 2, saying a K–6 adoption would improve K–12 “vertical alignment.” (I was not able to find examples of other Massachusetts districts using the same curriculum across K–12.)

At the Teaching, Learning, and Student Success subcommittee discussion on March 23, math curriculum liaison Heather Farrington described Reveal as offering stronger language supports, more structured problem solving, more opportunities for student discourse and collaboration, built-in differentiation, better digital tools, and a clearer lesson structure. The district also outlined a yearlong implementation plan intended to support the transition. Farrington said elementary curriculum maps would be updated by mid-May, followed by district onboarding in early June and several days of training for teachers. If some of that training takes place during the school day, it could also mean teachers are pulled from classrooms, raising concern about substitute coverage and lost instructional time for students during the transition.

Questions remain about both the process and the timing of the change. Elementary teachers did not pilot the curriculum, and it was not clear how they were involved in the selection process. The teachers’ union was also not informed until the proposal appeared on the School Committee agenda. At the same time, district data reportedly shows that midyear math performance across grades 1–9 is currently the highest it has been since Worcester began using the Star assessment.

Other Items.

• Sue Mailman (at-large) has an item requesting the implementation of a formal process for logging race-related complaints across all sports.

• There is a report on the progress of the high school grading change to “mastery based grading” and an update on the roll out for middle school which is planned for the start of the 2026-2027 school year.

• An update on programs that address cyber bullying and social media

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Proposed Policy Updates.

A bunch of proposed policy updates are up for approval, including:

• The removal of the third party service opt-out form as related to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act

• A policy update that due to electronic messages between public officials potentially being considered public records, “the district shall provide district e-mail addresses, cellular telephones, and laptop or iPad to members of the School Committee, which are archived” and the school committee members must use these for all district business

• A policy clarification that schools cannot host raffles or games of chance as the sponsoring organization, and that students and student groups are also barred from hosting raffles and games of chance, and from participating in sales or buying tickets.

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

Welcome to the March 2026 WPS in Brief. This month covers key topics from two school committee meetings and the redistricting forum, as well as some other important updates.

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Let’s dive in:

Potential Conflict of Interest.
The School Committee is currently negotiating contracts with multiple collective bargaining units, including teachers, assistant principals, paraeducators, and transportation staff, among others. Until this current committee, it was unprecedented in Worcester for a member to have immediate family employed by the district. Now, three members do: Maureen Binienda (daughter Mairecait Binienda, teacher), Kathleen Roy (daughter Katie O’Leary, School Adjustment Counselor), and Molly McCullough (husband Donald “Moose” Huban, Climate and Culture Specialist). Coincidentally, all of them work at Burncoat High. Binienda and Roy’s children were hired before they were elected to the school committee; McCullough’s husband was hired in August of 2024, while McCullough was serving on the school committee.1

Back on November 4, I requested the executive session minutes from previous meetings, which, after filing an Open Meeting Law complaint, I finally received on March 9. The minutes from September 18, October 9, and October 23 show that Binienda, McCullough, and Roy did not recuse themselves from discussions related to collective bargaining that could impact their family members.

A 1984 opinion from the State Ethics Commission states:

“School committee members may not participate in any way in the formulation, adoption or revision of any aspect of the budget or a collective bargaining strategy or position which may relate to the wages, hours or conditions of employment of any member of his or her immediate family employed by the school department. This principle must be followed both if the family member will be directly and immediately affected or if it is reasonably foreseeable that the family member’s interest will be affected.”

The first recorded recusals from Binienda, McCullough, and Roy happen at the November 20, 2025 meeting, sixteen days after my request. The minutes also note that “it was recommended that any individual with an ethics question contact the state board of ethics for guidance on recusals,” without identifying who made that recommendation.

There is precedent suggesting that even across different bargaining units, a financial interest may still exist if those units are part of a union that negotiates jointly across contracts. Binienda and Roy’s daughters are part of the A/B unit of the EAW, which includes teachers (A) and non-principal administrators (B). McCullough’s husband is part of the paraeducators unit. The EAW also represents bus drivers and monitors, parent liaisons, therapy assistant and ESL Tutors.

Given these circumstances, it appears that for at least a few meetings, multiple committee members participated in collective bargaining strategy conversations despite ethical guidance suggesting they should have recused themselves. This raises serious concerns about whether the integrity of the bargaining process was compromised, particularly given that these ethics laws exist to ensure public confidence and that elected officials remain loyal to the public interest.

Proposed New Math Curriculum.
The district has proposed adopting a new K–5 math curriculum, Reveal Math, to replace the current Savvas enVision Mathematics. However, the discussion at the March 19 school committee meeting left more questions than answers.

In discussion, Molly McCullough summarized the district’s report by framing this as a system-wide improvement and as an opportunity to upgrade instruction, align K–12 curriculum, and support strategic goals around equity, consistency, and high-quality education. She also noted how she appreciated the collaboration between elementary and secondary educators in this transition and pointed to early success in grades 7–12. But after extended questioning from multiple members, no clear evidence was presented by the district to support those claims. (For comparison, here’s an example of what another district did in its curriculum choosing process.)

There are also serious questions about the process. There was no clear explanation of how elementary teachers were involved in this decision, and no pilot was conducted. The rationale given was that this is an “extension” of the secondary curriculum, but K through 5 classrooms are fundamentally different environments, with different instructional needs. I also confirmed with the EAW that the teachers’ union was not informed of a potential curriculum change and only became aware of the proposal after it appeared on the school committee agenda, raising additional concerns about transparency and stakeholder engagement.

Looking more closely, both enVision and Reveal are rated as Tier 1, high-quality curricula by EdReports. Both “meet expectations” across key categories like focus, coherence, rigor, and mathematical practices. This is not a case where one curriculum is clearly better or more aligned than the other, and both already support the district’s stated goals.

A major justification offered was “K–12 vertical alignment.” But using the same publisher across grade levels does not, on its own, guarantee alignment. Vertical alignment depends on how content is implemented, how teachers are supported, and how well concepts build from year to year in actual classrooms. The district did not lay out any concrete plan on how that would happen with a new curriculum roll out. At the same time, midyear Star data shows math performance across grades 1–9 is currently the highest it has been since the district began using the assessment. It’s unclear what portion of that growth is happening at the secondary level, which switched to Reveal in the Fall of 2025, and whether a major shift at the elementary level could disrupt that progress.

All of this raises a fundamental issue: this proposal is moving forward without without clear evidence of how the new curriculum will perform in our classrooms. Curriculum changes at this scale carry some risk. When teachers are learning a new program, instruction is less consistent at first, which is normal, but can impact students. The district is only in its third year of implementing a new ELA curriculum, and many teachers are finally becoming comfortable with it; adding another large-scale change raises legitimate concerns about capacity, implementation, and teacher buy-in which the district has not yet addressed with evidence or data.

The item now moves to the Teaching, Learning, and Student Success subcommittee on March 26 for further discussion, with approval planned for the April 5 School Committee meeting.

Key Takeaways from the District Realignment Community Forum.

On March 23 there was a district realignment community forum, aka the meeting of the decade (click that link for background, I’m not going to cover that here). The Telegram has some good coverage, too. Basically, the consultant the district hired to facilitate the process gave an overview (you can see the slidedeck here) and then most of the time was an open floor for public comments. There was also an initial input survey and mapping tool to provide feedback. A consistent thread to the public comments was the need to make sure decisions are equitable, transparent, and inclusive from the start. Here are my takeaways:

Transportation: Transportation, or lack thereof, was the topic of the evening. Parents expressed safety concerns, lack of clarity on eligibility, and the need for more access. Bus eligibility, walk zones, and overlapping school start times were identified as major constraints for the district right now. The consultant said they are exploring changing the tiered start times for schools which could potentially allow for expanded transportation access due to improved efficiencies. Though these changes introduce additional complexity to the redistricting process.

Equity & Systemwide Consistency: Participants emphasized the need to address historical inequities, ensure socioeconomic diversity, and create a more consistent, clear enrollment system. Parents voiced frustration with inconsistencies across the system, particularly around magnet schools, feeder patterns, and voluntary transfer policies. These inconsistencies were seen as undermining predictability for families and raising broader equity concerns about who has access to which opportunities.

Student Impact: Families expressed concern about disruption to students, and stressed the need for maintaining peer groups and minimizing reassignment. The consultant emphasized the district’s intent of minimizing disruption, and that efforts will be made to avoid reassigning students already enrolled in schools whenever possible.

School Capacity: The district is analyzing over-enrollment and under-enrollment at schools, with updated capacity data expected soon. People at the meeting felt that they needed that information to better understand the development of school boundary scenarios. And participants emphasized the need to account for future enrollment trends and potential other factors, including shifts in enrollment tied to immigration enforcement.

Community Engagement: While the district has prioritized outreach through forums and surveys, participants raised concerns about accessibility, including the overreliance on technology, language barriers, and bias in how feedback is collected. There were strong calls for more inclusive engagement, especially with multilingual families, and for parents and students to be included in the working group now. (The vibe was an emphasis on NOW, aka YESTERDAY…and just a plug from me to have a public nomination process or something, because inevitably they pick the parents who have political connections.)

Those are my quick takeaways. The next community forums are April 15 and May 5. Mark your calendars!

Family and Community Engagement.

At the March 19 school committee meeting the family and community engagement office and the communications office presented the report of the superintendent on family and community engagement. The report touched on how family and community engagement remains a central focus of the district’s strategic plan, and is grounded in values of partnership, equity, access, shared responsibility, and authentic voice. With the goal of improving attendance, academic outcomes, and students’ sense of belonging, Director Casey Starr emphasized a more intentional, systemwide approach that is moving from reactive responses to streamlined, proactive systems that ensure families don’t fall through the cracks. Key efforts include strengthening parent groups, expanding shared decision-making, increasing access to translation and interpretation, and continuing to build out the role of wraparound coordinators, now in their third year in every school, and universally described as transformative.

On the communications side, Chief Communications Officer Dan O’Brien described how the district has developed a more cohesive framework spanning internal, external, and crisis communication. Internally, this includes weekly principal updates, a new all-staff newsletter, and a centralized memo system. Externally, tools like the ParentSquare platform have significantly improved communication, particularly through real-time AI translation, with survey data showing strong family preference for text-based updates and overall improvement in communication over time. Next steps include refining data collection of surveys and finalizing a communications framework to guide long-term strategy.

Meeting Moment.

At the March 5 school committee meeting, the district had a report back in response to two items from Jermaine Johnson (district F) and Alex Guardiola (district D) around district accountability and MCAS. The report outlines three key indicators in the state’s accountability report: MCAS scores, chronic absenteeism, and graduation rates. In the meeting moment above, Maureen Binienda talks about ways to “get more points” on these accountability measures, raising the question as to whether the district should chase accountability for accountability’s sake, and what actual outcomes that will have on a student’s education.

This report is specifically for Hispanic students, English learners, and students with disabilities and outlines ways schools are trying to motivate students to take the MCAS seriously, including “friendly competitions.”

As you see in the chart above, the pattern from previous years continues, with scores fluctuating the same way as the state. This fluctuation continues to raise questions of the validity of the MCAS as an assessment. In terms of the breakdown between the different student demographics in the report, one thing worth noting is the high degree of intersectionality for the Hispanic and English learner groups–last year about 45 percent of English learners also identified as Hispanic. This overlap means that when looking at testing data, nearly half of the Hispanic subgroup’s test scores are heavily influenced by language proficiency. At the end of the report is an extensive description of the district action plan to improve these metrics, as well as a section on roles and responsibilities.

If you read me frequently, you know that when standardized tests come up I will continue to emphasize that:

• Out-of-school factors have the biggest impact on MCAS, like language spoken at home, family income, and parent’s education.

• Research shows that children who are bilingual and biliterate outperform their monolingual peers on standardized tests, something that is true in Worcester, where former ELs in elementary school have the highest percentage meeting or exceeding expectations on the MCAS of any demographic group.

• One third of Worcester’s student body is a year younger than every other district in Massachusetts, so developmentally it is not an equal comparison.

And repeat after me: MCAS scores ≠ literacy rates!

Recommended Reads.
South High basketball players targeted by racist social mediacomments

Worcester adds 20 electric school buses to move city “into the future”

With fewer students and higher costs, many Massachusetts districts weigh school closures and mergers

Upcoming Dates.
All school committee meetings have virtual options with Spanish translation. See the school committee site for more information.

• Teaching, Learning and Student Supports is March 26, 5pm

• Finance, Operations and Governance is March 30 5pm

• School Committee Meetings are April 2 and April 16, 5:30pm

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Also.
Just a reminder that it’s budget season and it is the most important thing you can pay attention to if you care about schools. Wish it was a shorter walk radius for secondary schools? Want to have smaller classes? Wish all elementary schools had an after school program? It all comes down to how the school committee decides to allocate the budget. For the details of the preliminary budget, read last month’s brief.

And I guess it should go without saying that all that will go out the window depending on the status of federal funding. WPS gets $52.3 million a year from the federal government, which completely funds student nutrition, head start, and entitlement grants. That money supports 460 jobs and is 6.5% of the budget. According to a Superintendent’s Update on March 10, DESE shared “the preliminary Census data indicates a 10 percent drop in Massachusetts’ share of the national poverty total. Therefore, we anticipate a significant decrease to Massachusetts’ Title I award for FY27.” According to the FY 26 (2025-2026 school year) Budget Book, “These funds support a portion of the Grants Director, 63 instructional coaches, 44 wraparound coordinators, and five other program and support positions.”

Thanks for reading. I hope these briefs are helping you stay informed without feeling overwhelmed. If they are, please consider a paid subscription or a tip to support the dozens of hours of work it takes me to put these together. See you next month!

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Dearest reader, I know we’re all busy and I don’t say this lightly. But if I were going to tell you to attend one Worcester Public Schools meeting during the 13 years your child is in the district, this would be the one.

On Monday, March 23 from 6:00–7:30 p.m., WPS is holding a community forum on the School Boundary and Quadrant Realignment Project at South High Community School. The district is asking parents, caregivers, and community members to share priorities as it begins a process that could reshape which schools Worcester students attend starting in the 2027–2028 school year.1

If you have kids, or plan to, please consider coming. There will be childcare and translation available (but no dinner). The important thing is that the district is at the very beginning of this process, which means now is the moment to weigh in.

So what exactly is this “realignment”? Worcester is beginning to rethink the lines that determine which students attend which schools. Most people call this redistricting, though district staff prefer the term “realignment.” Right now WPS generally uses a neighborhood elementary model (K–6) that feeds into middle schools (7–8) and then high schools (9–12). The current boundaries can be explored using the Worcester Regional Research Bureau’s interactive map, though official assignments are determined by the district’s street list, which assigns every address to an elementary, middle, and high school.

Below is a quick overview of what the district is considering, why it’s happening now, and what this could mean for Worcester’s students.

This conversation has been brewing for a while. Back in September, 2023, Worcester had one of the lowest enrollments it had seen in a long time, but the district still reported that there were only about 1,000 open seats across the entire system. Some schools were already over capacity. Lincoln Street and Chandler Street were leasing additional space to alleviate overcrowding, and Belmont Street was already full.2 At a School Committee meeting that month, then-superintendent Rachel Monárrez said the district would likely have to look at changing school boundaries at some point. As she put it, it’s something “no one likes to do,” but it was probably unavoidable. A formal agenda item to begin that process appeared in November, 2024.

A lot has changed since then. Immigration into Worcester has slowed significantly due to federal enforcement actions. As one staff member at the Parent Information Center recently told me, referring to new student enrollments, “It’s like a tap was shut off.” At the same time, birthrates in Worcester have been declining for more than a decade. Taken together, those trends suggest that elementary enrollment will likely continue to decline over time.

Across Massachusetts, that dynamic has already led to school consolidations and closures. Worcester went through something similar in the early 2000s, closing seven schools over a four-year period.3 The district says it does not anticipate school closures as part of this process, but enrollment pressure remains uneven. Some schools are overcrowded while others have space, and the district has also struggled to expand preschool opportunities because elementary classrooms were already full.

The redistricting project is meant to address some of those issues. According to the district, the focus will primarily be on elementary schools, with the goal of reducing enrollment in schools that are over 90 percent capacity and increasing enrollment in schools that are under that threshold. In previous meetings the district has publicly identified Belmont Street, Chandler Elementary, and Rice Square as schools experiencing overcrowding, with Rice Square sixth grade moving to Worcester East Middle to create space. The district has also said that Forest Grove and Sullivan are “exceeding capacity,” which means too many kids are feeding into those schools. There’s also weird boundaries that have emerged over the decades. As an example, a friend of mine can see McGrath Elementary from her front steps, but her address is assigned to Nelson Place, more than a mile away.

Designing boundaries for 33 elementary schools across a city is not simple. The district has to consider how many school-aged children live in each neighborhood, transportation and safe routes to school, balancing enrollment by grade, and what the ideal size of each school should be. To help model potential scenarios, Worcester hired Dillinger Research and Applied Data. But before those scenarios are developed, the district wants community input, which is the purpose of next Monday’s forum.

Another issue the district is looking at is what it calls “illogical” feeder patterns. Worcester is divided into four quadrants tied to the city’s comprehensive high schools, but the pathways students take through the system don’t always line up neatly. Chandler Elementary, for example, feeds into three different middle schools, while several others — including City View, Belmont, May Street, Norrback, Quinsigamond, and Vernon Hill — feed into two.

Even when students attend the same middle school, they may split again later. Students from McGrath and Nelson Place all attend Forest Grove Middle School, but some continue on to Burncoat High School while others go to Doherty. (And oddly enough, students who live on Nipmuck Road attend May Street and Forest Grove, but are assigned to South High.)

The dual language program is another example of how complicated the system has become. Elementary programs are located in the South and Doherty quadrants, but the program continues at Burncoat Middle and Burncoat High, meaning it is currently overseen by three different executive directors.

At a recent meeting (video above), Superintendent Brian Allen also discussed the possibility of “grandfathering” students into their current schools if boundaries change — meaning students already enrolled could stay where they are. The trade-off is that it could take six or seven years for overcrowding issues to fully resolve.

I understand the instinct to avoid disrupting students, but as a parent whose child was forced to transition to a new school building in first grade, elementary-aged kids are pretty adaptable, especially if the result is more balanced class sizes across the district. And transitions already happen in Worcester. When families move within the city, students are typically required to change schools unless parents can provide transportation. For families experiencing increased housing costs and housing instability, school transitions are, unfortunately, already a regular occurrence.4

There’s another piece of this conversation that doesn’t get talked about enough, and that’s the socioeconomic segregation across Worcester’s elementary schools. Because Worcester relies heavily on neighborhood schools, the distribution of financial, social, and political capital varies significantly from school to school. That shows up clearly when you look at PTO fundraising.

Based on demographic data for the 2025–2026 school year, Flagg Street (26.3 percent low income) raises about $60 per student through its PTO. West Tatnuck (36.4 percent) raises about $58 per student, and Worcester Arts Magnet (43.4 percent) raises about $54 per student. Meanwhile, Worcester Dual Language Magnet (53 percent low income) raises about $29 per student, Gates Lane (73.3 percent) raises about $9 per student, Woodland (85 percent) raises about $3 per student, and Belmont Street (89.6 percent) raises nothing at all. This is not a matter of which parents work harder or which communities care more. It’s about who has access to resources.

Neighborhood schools are deeply embedded in Worcester’s identity, and I don’t expect that model to change anytime soon. But it also reinforces socioeconomic segregation. Right now, 43 percent of Worcester elementary schools enroll 81 percent or more low-income students, with a median of about 85 percent, while 30 percent of schools have 60 percent or fewer low-income students, with a median of 49 percent. For comparison, about 41 percent of students statewide are low income. Realignment alone won’t undo decades of housing and policy decisions, but adjusting the quadrant model could create better balance. Currently, Doherty Memorial High School is 58 percent low income, while North High School is 78 percent.

School boundaries shape how students move through the district, which schools they attend, and what resources they have access to. And once those lines are drawn, they tend to stay in place for decades. So if you want a voice in that conversation, next Monday night is the time to weigh in. I hope to see you there!

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Agenda Preview: March 19, 2026 School Committee

The next school committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday, March 19. Executive session starts at 5 p.m. and the regular meeting is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. The actual start time depends on how long the executive session takes. See the agenda here. You can watch it via zoom or Youtube Live. Spanish translation is available on zoom.

Here’s what’s on the agenda:

Approval of a New Elementary Math Curriculum.

The district is requesting authorization for a six-year contract, not to exceed $3.2 million, to purchase the Reveal Math curriculum (published by McGraw Hill) for grades K–6. According to the district, the program is “better aligned with the district’s standards for High Quality Instructional Materials and capable of meeting the complex needs of all students in our Pre-K–6 setting.”

Elementary teachers have not piloted the curriculum. The district already uses Reveal Math from 7th grade through Algebra 2 and reports “very positive feedback” from secondary teachers, arguing that adopting it in elementary grades would “enhance vertical alignment.” The report also states that “adaptations of the existing resources and instructional approaches have led to inconsistencies in student outcomes,” implying that a new curriculum would address those issues.

Unlike the English Language Arts curriculum adopted three years ago, the report does not indicate whether other curricula were considered. I also wasn’t able to find examples of specific lessons online.

Most surprising, though, is that the recommendation is to approve and file the contract without first sending it to the Teaching, Learning, and Student Supports (TLSS) subcommittee for a deeper discussion. When the district discussed adoption of its new ELA curriculum in April 2023, TLSS Chair Molly McCullough noted that “procedurally, it needs to go to TLSS.” Committee member Tracy O’Connell Novick added:

“I’m thinking of some second grade teacher who is wondering what the heck she’s going to be teaching next year, and that doesn’t feel fair. And the reason we even have any say in curriculum at all in Massachusetts is for the public process piece, and it feels like we’re skimping on that… I trust your judgment… I’m just worried about us as a body not doing the part of the job that really is ours — which is actually less about our judgment and more about the fact that we do it publicly.”

Again, it is a six year contract that is up for approval.

Public Petition.

WPS parent and former school committee candidate Nelly Medina has a public petition requesting “a comprehensive, published K-12 calendar of all district-wide and state assessments..and request that parents and caretakers be notified of specific subjects and testing dates at least one week before the start of any assessment to allow us to prepare our students mentally and academically.” Interestingly, I recently attended a school site council meeting where this request came up from parents, who also expressed the desire to help their children prepare.

Report of the Superintendent.

This meeting’s report of the superintendent will be on Family and Community Engagement.

Other Items:

• There’s a report about the lack of an organized fire prevention education programs in WPS, and the plans to implement one for fifth grade.

• Molly McCullough (district A) has a request to look into creating guidance as part of the Quadrant teams.

• Two requests from Alex Guardiola (district D): one for a report on special education transportation and another for a report of Head Start enrollment.

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The next school committee meeting is scheduled for March 5 with executive session at 5 p.m. and the regular meeting starting at 5:30 p.m., depending on how long executive session takes. See the full agenda here. You can watch it via zoom or Youtube Live. Spanish translation is available on zoom.

Since there was a meeting last Thursday, the agenda is slim.

Here’s what’s on it:

Executive Session.
Executive session includes review of executive session minutes, a grievance, and three open meeting law violation complaints. Two of those open meeting law complaints are from me; one is around a request for executive session minutes and the other is regarding the committee following its own rules when it comes to policy approval.

Report of the Superintendent.

This meeting’s report is on the Vision of a Leader, an effort that comes out of the strategic plan and aligns with the district’s Vision of a Learner.

School Accountability and MCAS.
The district has a report back in response to two items from Jermaine Johnson (district F) and Alex Guardiola (district D) around district accountability and MCAS. The report outlines three key indicators in the state’s accountability report: MCAS scores, chronic absenteeism, and graduation rates. This report is specifically for Hispanic students, English learners, and students with disabilities. The report also outlines ways schools are trying to motivate students to take the MCAS seriously, including “friendly competitions.”

As you see in the chart above, the pattern from previous years continues, with scores fluctuating the same way as the state. This fluctuation continues to raise questions of the validity of the MCAS as an assessment. In terms of the breakdown between the different student demographics in the report, one thing worth noting is the high degree of intersectionality for the Hispanic and English learner groups–last year about 45 percent of English learners also identified as Hispanic. This overlap means that when looking at testing data, nearly half of the Hispanic subgroup’s test scores are heavily influenced by language proficiency. It’s also worth noting that 2025 was the first year some students could take math, science and civics MCAS in Spanish. At the end of the report is an extensive description of the district action plan to improve these metrics, as well as a section on roles and responsibilities.

If you read me frequently, you know that when standardized tests come up I will continue to emphasize that:

• Out-of-school factors have the biggest impact on MCAS, like language spoken at home, family income, and parent’s education.

• Research shows that children who are bilingual and biliterate outperform their monolingual peers on standardized tests, something that is true in Worcester, where former ELs in elementary school have the highest percentage meeting or exceeding expectations on the MCAS of any demographic group.

• One third of Worcester’s student body is a year younger than every other district in Massachusetts, so developmentally it is not an equal comparison.

And repeat after me: MCAS scores ≠ literacy rates!

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

A previous version of this Brief incorrectly called the amount the city is required by law to pay each year as net school spending. It is called the “required local contribution.”

Welcome to the February edition of WPS in Brief. This month covers key topics from two school committee meetings and three subcommittee meetings. I know February is the shortest month, but Jesus Murphy it has been looooooong. Please consider subscribing to support our work.

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Let’s get to it:

Preliminary Budget.

It’s budget season, which is the most important time to be paying attention to WPS governance. CFO Sara Consalvo gave a presentation at the February 5 school committee meeting, sharing the preliminary estimates for the FY27 budget (covers from July 2026-June 2027). Consalvo outlined that the general fund baseline budget will increase by $27.8 million, but the cost increase to maintain the same level of services is $27.9 million. That means the district is basically breaking even.

It can be hard to follow if you’re new to all this lingo (and even if you aren’t) so here’s a breakdown on how the school department budget works. Stay with me, because understanding the budget is one of the best ways to know what is happening in Worcester Public Schools.

Worcester gets over half of its funding from the state. These funds are called “Chapter 70” and make up a good chunk of what is called the “foundation budget,” or what the state sees as the minimum foundation of what is needed to adequately educate our students. The funding formula used by the state to decide how much aid a district gets is determined by:

1. Student enrollment on Oct. 1, 20251

2. An inflation factor

The state decides what the City of Worcester must contribute (called “ required local contribution”) based on local income/property tax wealth, which is about 29 percent of the foundation budget. The estimate for next year is the city will contribute $161 million to schools2, $4 million more than this year, and the state then makes up the difference.

The Student Opportunity Act (SOA), passed in 2019, updated Massachusetts’ school funding formula over a six-year phase-in to better reflect the real costs of educating low-income students, English learners, and students with disabilities, as well as rising health insurance expenses. Because of Worcester’s student population, the city has seen foundation budget increases during this phase-in. But this year marks the final year of those increases. Without that buffer, and with enrollment likely to continue declining due to lower birth rates and reduced immigration, Worcester may face more difficult budget years ahead.

Decreased enrollment and decrease in low income students and English learners.
This year WPS student enrollment decreased by 101 students (0.41%), and it’s the first year of enrollment decrease after an increase over the last three years. For context, the total public school enrollment in the state decreased by 15,442 students (about 1.7%). For Worcester, high school enrollment increased by 22 students, middle school enrollment increased by 45 students, and elementary school enrollment decreased by 171 students.

Even more impactful to the budget than the slight enrollment decrease, is the significant decrease in low-income students (-595) and in English learners (-243). Superintendent Brian Allen addressed this at the meeting, saying “We knew there was going to be a state-wide low income drop because Covid era benefits expired last year, but we didn’t know the extent.” The district does not know what criteria students are qualifying for to be considered low income (i.e. SNAP, MassHealth) so could not estimate the decrease. In terms of the decrease of English learners, Allen said it’s “a combination of newcomers not coming and also the testing of our students.” Based on ACCESS testing from last year the district knew that English learners were testing out, which Allen said “is a good thing, but means a corresponding revenue decrease.” All these enrollment changes equate to a decrease of $4 million.

Federal Funding. The foundation budget is the meat and potatoes of how WPS is funded, but WPS gets funding from other sources too, most notably the federal government which completely funds student nutrition, head start, and entitlement grants to the tune of about $53 million each year. That money currently supports about 600 jobs.

If you want to give input, see above for the times and places you can do that. The official public hearing on the budget takes place on May 28.

Culturally Responsive Pedagogy.

The February 26 meeting report of the superintendent covered “culturally responsive pedagogy” (CRP), a strength-based, student-centered approach to teaching that recognizes and leverages the knowledge students bring from their experiences. The initiative is directly connected to the district’s strategic plan and positioned as a research-grounded “lever of change” that affirms students’ identities, cultures, and lived experiences while advancing academic achievement, cultural awareness, and critical consciousness.

Underway at South High and Sullivan Middle, it is framed not as an add-on but as a core method for building a culture of belonging and upholding high standards of academic excellence. The work aligns the curriculum with teaching methods and focuses on building capacity through sustained educator learning, strengthened instructional coaching, and expanded leadership capacity at the school level. Next steps include continuing professional development, identifying three to five “non-negotiable” specific, observable actions and behaviors in a classroom, embedding culturally responsive practices into existing systems, prioritizing coaching cycles, and using walkthrough data to monitor implementation.

In comments after the presentation Maureen Binienda (at-large) claimed that culturally responsive practices were already underway at WPS during her tenure a decade ago, and that the walkthrough tool was also in place at that time. Dianna Biancheria, Sue Mailman and Vanessa Alvarez made comments in support of the CRP work.

Meeting Moment.

At both school committee meetings this month, as well as at the infamous TLSS standing committee meeting, members discussed Chromebook use, screen time, and student data privacy. In the above clip, the district responds to questions about whether biometric data is collected (yes — photos, videos, and voice recordings, though not for authentication purposes) and whether student data is used to train AI (yes — but only after it has been de-identified). The district will be having discussions within the technology advisory committee about an opt-out option for the collection of biometric data and then will bring a recommendation forward to the school committee. There was also some excellent public comment around these issues from elementary parents at the TLSS meeting, see clip below.

The district also shared updated screen time guidance. If you have an elementary student, it’s worth reviewing. The guidance provides clearer expectations around 1:1 device use, screen time, and instructional time than we’ve seen in recent years.

Improving Public Participation with Clear Meeting Start Times.

Sue Mailman (at-large) proposed a rule change that school committee meetings should begin no later than 15 minutes after the posted start time. Because executive session happens first, it’s often unclear when public comment will actually begin. When start times vary widely, meaningful public participation becomes extremely difficult, especially for families with school-aged children who are arranging childcare, work schedules, extra-curricular pick ups, and dinner. A few years ago, when I attended to speak on behalf of a school site council, the executive session ran an hour and twenty-two minutes past the posted start time. Needless to say, I wasn’t able to stay to speak.

The strong reaction to Mailman’s proposal was surprising to me, with members inferring that the implication was that they intentionally don’t respect the public’s time and taking personal offense, while also suggesting that meetings rarely run late due to executive session. I ran the numbers, and from 2022 to 2025, 44 meetings included executive sessions. Of those, 41 percent began 30 minutes or more later, and 11 percent began an hour or more later. Just 23 percent of the meetings started within ten minutes of listed start time. The average delay was 24 minutes.

Mailman’s item highlights that even with the best intentions of the committee, executive sessions are unpredictable because there are often important, complicated discussions. As Mailman noted, there are workable alternatives: recess executive session to begin the public meeting on time and then go back to it after the meeting, hold public comment first, or move executive session to the end. It’s all a question of what the committee’s priority is to make meetings accessible to the public.

But instead of exploring how executive session has unintended consequences for the ability of the public to participate, the committee voted against the item 7-2 (with Alvarez and Mailman for it), thus filing it without sending it to committee for broader discussion. It’s an interesting choice at a time when the district has invested significant resources through the Family and Community Engagement office to make district meetings more accessible, including providing food, childcare, and translation. Ensuring that school committee meetings begin at a predictable time feels like a modest, reasonable step to accommodate the public. (Anyone interested in filing a public petition?)

Indoor Track at Burncoat High School.

At the February 26 meeting the committee voted to grant District C Member Dianna Biancheria’s request for reconsideration of a vote taken at the February 5 meeting (7-2, with Mailman–who wrote the original item–and Alvarez voting no). The committee then took two separate votes: one on supporting state legislation to create a commission to study the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA), and another on supporting plans for an indoor track to be built at the new Burncoat High School. The proposed state commission, filed by Senator Robyn Kennedy, would study the MSBA building process, a system that reporting by the New Bedford Light, along with analyses from the Worcester Regional Research Bureau and MassINC, has found disproportionately benefits suburban districts. One potential outcome of such a review could be changes to what projects are eligible for MSBA funding, including indoor tracks, which are currently prohibited.

That means if Worcester wants to build a regulation indoor track at Burncoat, the city would have to fund it entirely on its own. Based on a comparable project at Lexington High School last fall, the estimated cost of a MIAA-regulation indoor track is roughly $55 million. Members Biancheria, Binienda, and Roy voted against supporting the commission to study the MSBA, but did vote in support of building an indoor track. Look forward to hearing where they think that $55 million will come from.

Bits and Bobs.

• The quarter two finance report listed a deficit of (-$792,747) in the teacher salary line due to an unanticipated doubling of teacher degree changes, which increases their salaries.

• Superintendent Allen reported that due to 15 new electric buses, paid for by a grant, the district may be able to lower the walking cutoff to a mile and a half for the third tier (later start) middle schools for next school year. In terms of the high schools, the last time the district looked at it in December 2023, it was reported that to decrease the cutoff to 1 mile it would take 49 more buses. To decrease it to 1.5 would take 34 more buses. Each big bus costs around $150,000 and then obviously bus driver pay and bus maintenance costs.

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Recommended Reads.

Snowbanks, no sidewalks make it tough to walk to this Worcester elementary school: If you have children in WPS, I caution you before you watch the video from the meeting. Seeing why they voted down installing sidewalks (that the city was willing to pay for) adjacent to an elementary school will infuriate you!

Chicopee 1st to install cameras on school bus stop signs to prevent violations. Just yesterday morning two cars drove through the stop sign of my kids’ elementary bus. It’s been over a year since the city council and school committee approved cameras on school bus stop signs, and still no update on when it will happen.

Also.

It has been a struggle to be a pedestrian in this city after all this snow, and I don’t know what the solution is, but I’m about to do a gofundme to buy some snow dragons and create a fleet of volunteers to clear the paths to school. Let me know if you want in!

Upcoming Dates.

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

• School Committee Meetings are March 5 and 19, 5:30pm at City Hall

• Budget and Transportation presentations to the Citywide Parent Planning Advisory Council, March 11, 6pm-7:30pm at Doherty High

• Operations & Governance (OG), March 9, 5pm at Durkin Administration Building

• Teaching, Learning and Student Success (TLSS), March 26, 5pm at Durkin Administration Building

See you next month!

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Ok! Commercial break over. Now to the SC preview.

February 26 School Committee Meeting

The next school committee meeting is scheduled for February 26. Executive session starts at 5 p.m. and the general meeting is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m, but it depends on how long the executive session lasts. See the full agenda here. You can watch it via zoom or Youtube Live. Spanish translation is available on zoom. A reminder that this is a quick preview and does not include everything on the agenda.

Reconsideration: Burncoat Indoor Track.
Member Dianna Biancheria (district C) filed for “reconsideration” on an item from the February 6 meeting from Sue Mailman (at-large) that said “To unanimously support legislation filed by Sen Robyn Kennedy S390 - to create a commission to study MSBA to look at the funding process and the award process. Support for such a commission is especially important as we work on plans for a new Burncoat High School and explore the possibility of an indoor track facility.” Reconsideration can be filed within 48 business hours of a vote and according to the school committee rules, a reason needs to be supplied by the requesting member. Here is Biancheria’s reasons (provided in the agenda backup):

Senator Kennedy’s legislation is asking for a commission to look at the MSBA (Massachusetts School Building Authority) building process, which as reported by the New Bedford Light (below) and in an excellent report by the Worcester Research Bureau and MassINC, shows that the MSBA’s core program disproportionately benefits suburban districts.

One of those things a new commission could change is allowing schools to build indoor tracks, which is currently prohibited. And for Worcester specifically, since the closing of the old South High indoor track in 2021, it means student athletes have had to go all the way to Northbridge to access one. (Highly recommend reading Jesse Collings’ Telegram article on this for more context).

Comments from Members Maureen Binienda (at-large), Alex Guardiola (district D) and Biancheria on this item at the February 6 meeting focused around supporting the idea of the commission, but with concerns around how the support of legislation may weaken the relationship with the MSBA and could impact Worcester’s negotiating position. The item passed 7-2 with Biancheria and Roy voting against. City council had a similar item (without the Burncoat track part) that was approved unanimously on February 3.

Under the current MSBA structure, in order for Burncoat High School to have an indoor track, Worcester would have to pay for it. Which, according to a similar project at Lexington High School this past fall put estimates for a MIAA regulation indoor track at around $55 million.

Reconsideration is voted on before public comment, so email is the best way to communicate to school committee members before the vote.

Report of the Superintendent.

This meeting’s report is on Instructional Framework - Culturally Responsive Pedagogy Enhanced.

School Committee Rule Change.
Sue Mailman (at-large) has an item to amend school committee rules so that the start of the public meeting is not delayed longer than 15 minutes of published start time. Because executive session happens before the public meeting, it can be especially challenging for people to know when to expect public comment to start. A few years ago, when I was there to speak on behalf of a school site council, the executive session went over an hour past the published start time.

Lowering distance for walkers.

Jermaine Johnson (district F) has a request to lower the walking cutoff from 2 miles to 1.5 miles. This applies to middle and high school students, as most elementary students are assigned a bus route if they live a mile or more from school. In January of 2025 the district received a grant for electric buses that allowed the district to add 15 more school bus routes, which the district said at the time could potentially allow the district to reduce the walk radius for middle schools from two miles to 1.5 miles and reduce the walk radius for high schools to less than two miles.

Blocking websites from students.

There is a response back from administration to an item from Kathi Roy (district E) about what firewalls and precautions are in place to prevent students from connecting to internet sites that are outside the educational uses of chromebooks/ipads.

Collecting student biometric data.
Two petitions I filed last July are back on the agenda after being voted down in standing committee. One calls for explicit parent/guardian consent before any third-party vendor can use student data to train artificial intelligence; the other requires explicit consent before collecting biometric data such as audio, photos, or video. Both stem from a specific incident in which the district allowed the venture-backed company Amira Learning to record and retain early elementary students’ voices to train its AI system without informing parents.

The petitions were heard at the February 3 Teaching, Learning and Student Success (TLSS) meeting, where ten parents spoke in support, all parents of primarily elementary-aged children. The majority of the committee voted to file the petitions and largely dismissed the concerns; I’ve never seen that many people speak on a single issue at a standing committee meeting.

The petitions now go before the full committee for a final vote on Thursday. I sent an email to committee members afterward, voicing my concerns, and asking them not to file the petitions. I’m also appreciative of the superintendent for hearing parent concerns and expressing at the February 5 school committee meeting the district’s willingness to work collaboratively toward a resolution.

Other Items.

• A request to get an update on proposed changes to Woodland/Claremont.

• A proposed revision to remove the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act opt out form from the Student Handbook.

• A request to get an update on girls flag football in WPS.

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

Imagine you have an eight-year-old and a five-year-old, and you need to bring them to a 5:00 p.m. school subcommittee meeting.

You pick them up, race through the McDonald’s drive-thru, and park outside the Durkin Administration Building so they can shove chicken nuggets into their mouths and wash them down with Hi-C. With five minutes to spare, you coax them out of the car. Since they’ve had indoor recess again for what feels like the thousandth time this winter, you decide to take the four flights of stairs instead of the elevator, hoping to burn off a little energy before asking them to sit still.

As you climb, you give the speech.

“Remember, this is an important adult meeting. The expectation is that you’ll be quiet and considerate. These are the people in charge of all the schools in Worcester. We need to show respect.”

The eight-year-old asks, “Will there be pizza?”

“No,” you say. “It’s not that kind of meeting.”

You try the spiel again. “Do you both understand what I’m saying?”

You’re answered with two deeply annoyed YES-es

The meeting room is small, about the size of a college seminar classroom. You all sit down in the seats available for the public, and your kids start drawing on the whiteboard on the wall. As you wait for the meeting to start, a school committee member asks other people in the room if they saw the email complaint about snowy sidewalks leading up to Goddard elementary school. The other people say no.

Oh that parent is a pleasure, the school committee member says.

The tone was sharply sarcastic.

You look around the room and think: Is no one going to say anything? Is it just normal for them to talk about parents this way?

The school committee member continues their dismissive diatribe with an I’ll tell you what, it’s not about the snow. It’s because her kid is at that program.

Your jaw drops. The casual disdain is stunning.

Did they really just say that about a parent? About a child? In public?

You sit there with your kids, who you just finished lecturing about respect, and wonder what, exactly, they’re learning right now.

You go home and tell your spouse what happened. They’re appalled too. You sit with it all weekend, replaying the moment and how inappropriate it felt. You weigh the pros and cons of saying something. You ask people you trust for advice. Finally, you decide to email the chair of the school committee and the chair of the subcommittee where it occurred.

You write:

You describe what you witnessed. You don’t speculate about intent. You don’t demand punishment. You simply say that speaking about a parent in what felt like a sarcastic and denigrating way, in public, crosses a line, and that parents need to trust that disagreement will be handled with respect.

The Mayor’s Chief of Staff responds to you two days later:

It’s an astonishing reply that centers reputation over accountability and closes ranks. From the office of a mayor who claims to listen, include, work across differences, and bring people together. (Just not people like you, apparently.)

Meanwhile, the aforementioned parent had sent the same email about the snow issue to city councilors. One of them placed an order on the city council agenda about ensuring streets and sidewalks around schools are thoroughly cleared after snowstorms, specifically citing Goddard School of Science and Technology.

Speaking on the item, City Councilor Gary Rosen says:

“I brought up Goddard School because I got a long and very good email from a parent who has a student at the school, I guess in a special program there, and remarkably she notices all that’s going on and she noticed how many students were walking in the street and how dangerous it is.”

How can two elected officials have such different responses to the same email?

Why is a parent’s complaint treated as petty, suspect, and self-interested by one, and as legitimate, civic-minded, and worthy of public discussion by another?

This wasn’t an isolated moment.

We’ve seen this pattern before, most recently at the February 3 teaching, learning, and student success standing committee meeting, where parent concerns about an AI company’s data harvesting practices were consistently reframed through inaccurate assumptions and familiar red herrings. Questions about process became questions about motive. Instead of engaging with what was actually being said, the response appeared to be shaped by what some members already believed parents were trying to do.

That’s confirmation bias, not governance. Those who ask questions are not seen as constituents, but as potential disruptions and variables to be managed. Concerns are filtered not through their merit, but through how inconvenient they are. Inventing narratives about the public to make their advocacy easier to disregard is not okay. When concerns are filtered this way, parents are sorted into “pleasant” and “problematic.” And when the dynamic shows up repeatedly, it stops feeling accidental.

To be clear, this is not true of every school committee member. In the past week alone, I’ve also seen genuine, good-faith efforts to engage on these topics by Vanessa Alvarez, Jermaine Johnson, and Sue Mailman. That looks like doing the research. Asking questions with real curiosity and listening to the answers. It looks like humility and acknowledging what you don’t know, and showing a willingness to step outside familiar bubbles to learn more. It’s about not letting political “loyalties” get in the way of doing the right thing. That’s how trust is built. Even when a vote doesn’t go the way we might hope it will, those good-faith efforts make a difference. They tell us that someone listened, did the work, and was transparent about how they arrived at their decision.

And the contrast between those good-faith efforts and shutting down constituents shows that the problem isn’t disagreement on policy, it’s how power is exercised.

As we climbed those four flights of stairs the other night, I had told my kids that these were the people in charge of all the schools in Worcester. That they deserved respect. What I didn’t have words for was how, sometimes, respect didn’t seem to flow both ways.

If we believe that the main purpose of public schools is to teach kids how to participate in a democracy (which I do), then district governance isn’t a side issue, it’s the curriculum. When constituents are treated as adversaries rather than partners, we’re teaching a very specific lesson about power: who gets to speak, who gets believed, and who gets talked about when they’re not in the room. This is why district governance matters more than we’re often willing to admit. Because kids are always watching, even when we think they’re just quietly drawing on the whiteboard in the back of the room.

So the question becomes, what is the lesson we intend to teach them?

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The next school committee meeting is scheduled for February 5 at 5 p.m. There is an executive session, which starts at 5, and then the general meeting is scheduled to start at 6 p.m., but it depends on how long the executive session takes. See the full agenda here. You can watch it via zoom or Youtube Live. Spanish translation is available on zoom.

Let’s dive in:

Preliminary Budget Estimates.
The report of the Superintendent is on the preliminary budget estimate. The good news is that we’re in better shape than a lot of other districts in Massachusetts, but the bad news is that the budget outlook for next year isn’t great. From the presentation slide deck it looks like the general budget will have an estimated increase of $27,804,976 and the estimated cost increases to maintain current operations is $27,900,000. So we’re looking at about a $100,000 deficit.

This is because enrollment is down 101 students from last school year, which means less money because the state funds education “per pupil.” Even more so than enrollment being down, the demographics of the student population have shifted, with 595 fewer low income students and 243 fewer multilingual learners. I do not know if that means Worcester is gentrifying, how students are classified as low income has changed, immigrants are leaving or being forced to leave, or more multilingual students are reaching proficiency. Regardless, this is a pretty big demographic shift.

Screen Time Policy.
In response to an item from Sue Mailman (at-large), the district is not recommending a screen time policy, but outlines some guidelines. If you have elementary students I highly recommend you read it. It offers more clarity around the 1:1 devices than I’ve seen in my 3.5 years of being a WPS parent, and it’s helpful to understand what is expected in terms of device use, screen time, and time on learning.

Other Items:

• An item supporting legislation changes to the Massachusetts School Building Administration (MSBA) program to allow schools to build indoor tracks in the hopes the district can build one at the new Burncoat.

• An item to request changing the school calendar for the 2026-2027 school year to give two weeks off for “Christmas break.” This would add three days on to the school year, which if tacked on to the end would push the last day of school to June 22, 2027. (If they do that, pray we don’t get any snow days.)

• A request for an enrollment report for the Hanover Program and Goddard Scholars program, including sending schools and demographics.

TLSS Subcommittee Meeting Rescheduled.
I have two petitions on the TLSS agenda around student data and privacy, which I wrote about in an op-ed in the Telegram last weekend (here’s a free link). Give it a read, and if you’re so moved, please email school committee members your thoughts or come speak at the meeting. Due to technical difficulties the meeting was rescheduled to Tuesday, February 2 at 5 p.m. at the Durkin Administration Building. Here’s the agenda.

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

Thank you to everyone who has read, shared, asked thoughtful questions, or engaged with this work along the way. Your trust over the last three years means more than I can say. And a special thank you to my husband, for the steady encouragement and countless small acts of support that allow me to do this work.

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And one last thing before we get into this month’s brief–an op-ed I wrote was published in the Telegram this weekend (here’s a free link), and it’s about two petitions I filed with the school committee on student data and privacy. Give it a read, and if you’re so moved, please email school committee members your thoughts. My petitions are on the agenda for the Teaching, Learning and Student Support meeting this Thursday, January 29 at 5 p.m.

Ok let’s dive into what happened this month, which covers key topics from three school committee meetings.

School Buildings.

The January 22 report of the superintendent focused on facilities and how the district is planning and prioritizing the gargantuan task of getting our school buildings in better shape and maintaining them. A long term plan to improve facilities is one of the strategic plan goals, as many WPS buildings are in desperate need of work, mostly due to deferred maintenance for many, many, years. Chief Financial Officer Sara Consalvo stressed the fundamental shift in the district from being reactive to proactive when it comes to the district’s 57 buildings, 4.6 million square feet of interior space and 1,700 classrooms. Fundamentally, the main catalyst of this shift is increased funding due to the Student Opportunity Act. I cannot stress this enough. The reason that Worcester is able to spend more money on our buildings versus six years ago is because the state of Massachusetts changed to a more equity based funding model (which is still imperfect, but has been incredibly impactful for districts like Worcester).

The presentation was an overview of safety priorities, an overview of the five year capital plan, an update on the new Burncoat High/Middle School, and an update on the facilities master plan process, which is a joint effort with the city. According to Consalvo, the district is taking a high-level, strategic approach. “By coordinating our master plan with public facilities, city investments, MSBA partnerships and our school boundary realignment goal we will ensure every building will be utilized at capacity for students and staff” she said. Here are some highlights from the presentation:

• Burncoat High (and potentially Burncoat Middle) has entered the feasibility phase of the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) process, and that phase is expected to last through 2028. The MSBA will then decide whether the middle school can also be replaced since they share mechanical systems (typically the MSBA will not fund two buildings within one district at a time). The projected opening is 2031–32, when current first graders are in 7th grade. Here is the most updated list of the 39-person school building committee appointed by Mayor Petty.

• The district completed $1.1 million in classroom door lock and hardware upgrades, establishing a new standard lock type districtwide. Intercom replacement is next, with the goal of standardization.

• The district believes that schools should be a hub for the community, and are working to support partnerships to expand opportunities. For example, they are collaborating with YMCA and the Guild of St. Agnes to expand out of school care using a hub model.

• The response to repair requests has increased significantly, with 100% response or completion time within 72 hours. The district says this is due to both an increase in funds and improved systems.

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Superintendent’s Mid-Year Review.

The superintendent’s January 8 report provided a midyear progress update on his yearly goals. Evaluating the superintendent is, arguably, one of the school committee’s most important responsibilities. Last year, committee members Dianna Biancheria (district C), Maureen Binienda (at-large), and Kathi Roy (district E) voted against accepting then-Superintendent Monárrez’s midyear goals report without offering amendments. This year, those same members voted to accept Allen’s report, despite the goals and progress being largely similar. That contrast is hard to ignore. Let’s look more closely at Allen’s goals:

Student Achievement Goals
According to Star assessments1 for grades 2 through 9, reading and math both increased by three percentage points at midyear. Reading remains at its highest midyear level to date, though the district will need an additional four-point gain by the end of the year to meet its target. Math performance is also at its highest level since tracking began.

While results typically peak at midyear and dip slightly by year’s end (with no clear explanation why), this year’s gains are notable: math scores are 15 percent higher than when the district began using Star assessments, and the six-point increase from beginning to middle of year is the largest observed so far.

Professional Practice Goals
The district continues to strengthen professional learning communities (PLCs) and implement them with greater fidelity. A new data system now captures feedback after meetings, and the use of PLC structures has steadily increased. Participation by multilingual and special education staff has improved, though it remains an area for growth. Allen emphasized that research consistently shows PLCs are among the most effective strategies for improving student achievement.

District Goals

• Communication strategy: Efforts are underway to streamline internal communication, reduce one-off emails, and prevent conflicting messages to staff.

• Grow Our Own: The program to recruit WPS students to become WPS teachers has reached capacity with a group of 32 students enrolled, drawn from six high schools across the city.

• School boundary and quadrant alignment: In his report, Allen cited overcrowding at Belmont, Rice Square, and Chandler Elementary, as well as capacity concerns at Sullivan Middle, Forest Grove, and South High. He also highlighted confusing quadrant feeder patterns (for example, Chandler Elementary students feed into three different middle schools or McGrath students go to Burncoat Middle, despite being on the same campus as Forest Grove). Next steps include scheduling community forums to gather feedback and then developing recommendations for implementation in the 2027-2028 school year.

Which leads us to:

Meeting Moment.

In this meeting moment Superintendent Allen responds to a question from Alex Guardiola (district D) about how the school boundary assignment realignment may impact high school students who may be assigned to a different school than they currently attend, especially if they’re on a sports team or in a club. Allen reiterates that the realignment will mostly impact the elementary schools and he is going to highly recommend that students get “grandfathered in” to their current schools. He also says that could mean it might take 6 to 7 years to alleviate the overcrowded schools. That would take us to the 2033-2034 school year, when fourth graders are entering their senior year of high school. I get that we don’t want to make kids transition too many times, but as a parent whose child was forced to transition to a new school building in first grade, I think it’s manageable for elementary-aged kids, especially if it means expediting equity across the district in classroom sizes. This also isn’t just a redistricting issue. When students move within Worcester, they are required to change schools unless a parent can provide transportation. For those who do not have housing stability, the concern about students’ education being interrupted by moving to another school boundary assignment is a common occurrence in the district already.2

Budget Update.

Every year the school committee votes on the district budget in June, often before the final state budget is known, which can lead to midyear adjustments. This year, charter school and school choice tuition costs came in higher than projected, creating a $2 million gap. To cover it, the city manager allocated free cash, directing $3.8 million to the school department’s general fund for the remainder of the year. This fully closes the gap without cuts and leaves an additional $1.7 million to allocate. The district proposed using the funds for items including a new secondary ESL curriculum, high school graduation costs, classroom furniture, and several staffing additions. For details see my January 8 agenda preview. The school committee voted unanimously to approve the allocations.

New Committees Assignment and New Vice Chair.

Committee assignments were released shortly after I sent my January 8 agenda preview, where I noted that, if based on experience, subcommittee chairs would likely be Jermaine Johnson, Maureen Binienda, and Sue Mailman (vice chairs typically do not also chair subcommittees, which is why I did not include Molly McCullough). I also warned that if Mayor Petty prioritized political allegiance over experience, Binienda and Mailman would be passed over.

The reality was worse than I expected. Mayor Petty demoted Vanessa Alvarez from vice chair of TLSS, awarded Dianna Biancheria two committee assignments (everyone else received one) and named Biancheria chair of the new Finance Committee. Biancheria’s record raises serious questions about the rationale for that decision: she is frequently late to meetings (including arriving more than 30 minutes late on January 2), has disparaged climate and culture specialists as “glorified bouncers,” delivered an objectively unreasonable evaluation of former Superintendent Rachel Monárrez, and told Brian Allen he “better not screw this up” before voting to appoint him superintendent. These are not leadership behaviors to be rewarded.

At the January 2 meeting, Molly McCullough (district A) was elected vice chair in a 7-2 vote (Vanessa Alvarez and Sue Mailman voted for Mailman, and coincidentally are the only two school committee members who are not chairs or vice chairs of a subcommittee).3 McCullough is the granddaughter of a Worcester mayor and has worked on Joe Petty’s Mayoral campaigns for many years. She is the second longest serving school committee member, after Dianna Biancheria. This is McCullough’s second time being vice chair (she was vice chair in 2019, although the vice chair position back then was not the same as it is now.) The main job of the vice chair is working with the clerk and the superintendent to assemble the school committee agenda and to make sure the committee meets with the Student Advisory Council.

Roosevelt Parking Ban.

At public comment at the January 22 meeting, two grandparents who pickup their grandchildren every day came to speak against the Roosevelt Parking ban approved by the city council. In response to questions asked by Jermaine Johnson (district F) and Sue Mailman (at-large), Superintendent Allen emphasized that the district knew from the outset that the new parking lot would alleviate some of the issue, but not address the whole issue.4 One positive is that the parking lot work separated school buses from car traffic, which was an issue because once the bus lights were deployed cars couldn’t pass them. Now the challenge is how to utilize space on school grounds to get cars off the street. There are, on average, about 170 cars that pick up students every day, about the length of 7 soccer fields. Allen said he believes everyone is working quite hard to find a solution and help keep kids safe. He also mentioned that in the past, the district offered transportation to families even if they wouldn’t typically be eligible. Allen said, “For example there are a number of students at Roosevelt who are there due to voluntary transfer to help alleviate Rice Square overcrowding a couple of years ago. We’ve offered them transportation before, we could certainly try to do it again.” There was also a suggestion to have more police officers at school drop-off and pickup to help direct traffic, but that would come at a cost since the district would be charged by the city.

Recommended Reads.

• Check out my op-ed in the Telegram about petitions I submitted with school committee around student privacy, biometric data, and AI.

• Teachers are mad at Nelson Place.

• It’s been a year since the legislature passed a law allowing cameras to catch people passing buses and ticketing them. It’s been a slow rollout across the state, but Brockton is doing it: Drivers caught on camera passing Brockton school buses face police fines.

• Google’s work in schools aims to create a ‘pipeline of future users,’ internal documents say

• Poll shows most Mass. K-12 students have used AI for schoolwork

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

• Teaching, Learning and Student Support is January 29, 5 p.m.

• School Committee meetings are February 5 and 26, 5:30 p.m.

• Operations and Governance is February 9, 5 p.m.

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Also.
It is Kindergarten enrollment time! If your kid was born in 2021 it’s time to enroll them in kindergarten. I strongly encourage you to check out the Spanish/English dual language program. As a dual language parent and a dual language graduate, I can say from personal experience that it is an incredible way to be educated. And you don’t have to take my word for it, because longitudinal research over decades has shown that dual language programs have an “astounding effectiveness” for ALL students, especially students with disabilities and monolingual students of low socioeconomic status, not just English learners. If you want your kid to achieve at the highest levels, be bilingual and biliterate, and have cultural competency, apply for the dual language program lottery.

That’s it for this month. Enjoy the snow, send your girl a tip, and see you in February!

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First, let’s talk about what’s not on the agenda:

Public Petition.
President of the Education Association of Worcester (EAW), Melissa Verdier, confirmed with me that she filed a public petition in reference to the no confidence vote at Nelson Place, but it is not on the agenda. Verdier was told that she submitted her item too late. She submitted it at 1:30 p.m. last Wednesday, past the noon deadline. While the new school committee rules were updated last month to say noon, the policy linked on the public petition form is not updated and simply says “Any member of the public may file a petition to the Committee on any matter under the Committee’s purview by submitting such a petition in writing (on paper or electronically) by the Wednesday of the week prior to a regular meeting of the Committee.”

Handbook Policy
At last week’s Citywide Parent Planning Advisory Council (CPPAC) meeting, a caregiver referenced an item that Member Kathi Roy (District E) had submitted for the agenda, calling on the district to follow the student handbook, which states that parents may opt out of third-party services. When the agenda was released Friday, the item was not on it. I contacted Roy, who confirmed she had submitted it and was told it was rejected because a related item will be discussed in subcommittee. No such item appears on the OG, Finance, or TLSS outstanding items list. I previously wrote about the third party opt-out in June 2025, but that item was pulled from the agenda before the meeting and never discussed. It’s not clear why the district didn’t address it then. To be clear, just by “attending Worcester Public Schools, students and caregivers acknowledge and agree to abide by the policies and procedures outlined in the Student Handbook.” This matters for a simple reason: the student handbook is not a suggestion. It is school committee-adopted district policy. Families and students are told to rely on it to understand their rights and responsibilities. As a matter of governance, when the district does not follow its own handbook, it raises the question, who are they accountable to?

I emailed both the school committee clerk and vice chair Molly McCullough (district A) to inquire about these items, but since the agenda comes out late on Fridays and it’s a long weekend, I haven’t heard back. Will update here if I do. Update on January 20: I heard back by email from the school committee clerk, Kristi Turgeon, and she said that the public petition from Verdier “was not specific enough, despite a request for more information, to determine purview, and it was submitted after the deadline.” In reference to Roy’s item about the district adhering to the handbook, Turgeon wrote that “the submission was determined not to be under school committee purview.”

Ok, here’s what’s on the agenda:

Executive Session.
Lots of contract conversations on the executive session agenda with different bargaining units, including teachers, whose contract expires at the end of June. As I wrote in my December 4 agenda preview, there is currently a third of the committee with an immediate family member working for the district (Binienda, McCullough, and Roy). On November 4 I had requested, and still have not received, executive session minutes to understand whether those members are recusing themselves. The update is that the school committee clerk emailed me on January 16 to let me know that the executive minutes I requested are still with the lawyer for redaction. According to the FAQs of Open Meeting Law “if, at the time of a request, the public body has not conducted a review of the minutes to determine whether continued nondisclosure is warranted, the body must perform such a review and release the minutes, if appropriate, no later than its next meeting or within 30 days, whichever occurs first. G.L. c. 30A, § 22(g)(2).”

Report of the Superintendent.
This meeting’s Report of the Superintendent is on Facilities and School Safety.

Course Additions for the 2026-2027 school year.
The school committee must approve all courses, and the proposed additions in this go around include 9 courses: AP Cybersecurity, Modern U.S. History through Media, AP Business & Personal Finance, Pre-AP English 1, Pre-AP English 2, Introduction to Clean Energy & Climate Science, Internship, Innovation Career Pathways Internship, and Cooperative Education Experience.

Firewalls on School Devices.
Member Roy has an item requesting “a report on what firewalls and precautions are in place to prevent students from connecting to internet sites that are outside the educational uses of Chromebooks/iPads.” It’s no surprise to parents and teachers that it doesn’t take long for some kids to figure out workarounds to these restrictions on their school devices. Just this weekend, I Facetimed with a WPS fifth grader who showed me how a student can access YouTube from their school chromebook. I wasn’t surprised he could do it, but it did surprise me how simple it was. So I reached out to about a dozen families whose kids attend all different elementary schools, and about two thirds of their kids (third through sixth graders) knew a work around to get onto Youtube on their school Chromebook.

Other items:

• A request from Vanessa Alvarez (district B) for a report on in-school fire safety visits from the Fire Department.

• Molly McCullough requested to explore the feasibility and cost of resurfacing the Burncoat High tennis courts.

• Dianna Biancheria (district C) has a request to report on the feasibility and cost of upgrading the fields at North High.

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

Happy New Year! Hope your 2026 is off to a fine start and that you had a restful winter break.

The 2026-2028 school committee term has officially begun with the January 2 inauguration, as well as a quick meeting to vote on vice chair and to pick seat numbers. While it’s the same cast as last time, the seating changes will create a new meeting dynamic. More to come once the seating arrangement is confirmed.

Vice Chair.
At the January 2 meeting, Molly McCullough (district A) was elected vice chair in a 7-2 vote (Vanessa Alvarez and Sue Mailman voted for Mailman). McCullough is the second longest serving school committee member, after Dianna Biancheria.1 This is McCullough’s second time being vice chair (she was vice chair in 2019, although the vice chair position back then was not the same as it is now.) The main job of the vice chair is working with the clerk and the superintendent to assemble the school committee agenda, and to make sure the committee meets with the Student Advisory Council.

Jermaine Johnson had served as vice chair for the previous two terms, elected unanimously in 2022, and then in a 6-3 vote in 2024 (that year Bianchera, Binienda, and Roy all voted for Binienda). It is common for the vice chair position to rotate, and so the fact that Johnson held it for four years is a testament to his leadership. But this voting shift from a unanimous vote for a vice chair in 2022, to a split off of Biancheria, Binienda and Roy in 2024, and then a split off of Mailman and Alvarez in 2026, is emblematic of a more complicated school committee—one where allegiances are shifting and, perhaps for some, political futures are on the mind.

As I was thinking about this shift, it reminded me of a post by Tracy O’Connell Novick back in January of 2024, where she offered her reflections about the role and functions of a school committee. Novick wrote:

“[This Committee] needs members to know their rules, their policies, the district strategic plan, and ensure their business meetings (for that is what they are) focus on that work, and not on personal hobbyhorses, vendettas, or political pursuits…If members get off-focus, deciding to chase individual committee district interests (not an agenda item), settle old scores, get irked and not get over it, it’s ultimately the district that will suffer. When the district suffers, it’s the kids who bear the brunt of it. The public can (and, I’d argue, should, to go back to Brandeis) remind members of their job, but ultimately, it is up to them to do it.”

In rereading this in 2026, it’s very prescient. This past term, many of the warnings Novick lists did happen. My hope in the dawn of this new term is that school committee members might reflect on Novick’s words and refocus on the work (and maybe do some team building).2

Ok, onto the agenda preview.

January 8 School Committee Meeting
The next school committee meeting is scheduled for January 8 at 5:30 p.m. There is no executive session. See the full agenda here. You can watch it via zoom or Youtube Live. Spanish translation is available on zoom. Always a good reminder that remote participation is a courtesy, and that the meeting will continue even if there are issues with the virtual broadcast. So if there’s something you really want to speak on or listen in on, in-person is always the most reliable bet.

Let’s dive in:

Current School Year Budget Changes.
The school committee votes on the yearly budget in June, before the final state budget comes out, and sometimes that means there can be mid-year changes. This year, the actual amount the city had to pay in charter school tuition and school choice tuition was higher than estimated, which leaves a $2 million gap. The city manager has allocated free cash, of which about $3.8 million will go to the general fund for the schools for the rest of the school year. This allows the district to shore up the $2 million gap without making cuts, and have an additional $1.7 million to allocate. Here is a list of how the district proposes to use the money, including a new secondary ESL curriculum, covering high school graduation costs, purchasing furniture for classrooms as well as allocating new positions (as outlined below.)

Proposed positions:

• Classroom teacher for the new elementary wellness room (the district plans to reallocate a school adjustment counselor and a paraeducator position for this).

• Sub-separate classroom teacher and BCBA positions

• Eight special education paraprofessionals for the subseparate programs

Positions that were added at the start of the school year, but weren’t part of the original budget:

• An assistant principal to Rice Square

• Audiologist

• Speech teacher

• Two special education paraprofessionals at Roosevelt Elementary

The final decision of how the money is allocated is up to the school committee.

Report of the Superintendent.
This meeting’s report is the Superintendent’s mid-cycle review. It’s halfway through the fiscal year, so Superintendent Allen will present a progress update of his goals (for specifics see my original coverage of the goals back in September here.) Superintendents are required by the state to have three goals: one district goal, one student goal, and one professional goal. (You’ll see that Allen actually has three district goals.) Evaluating a Superintendent is (arguably) one of the most important responsibilities of a school committee.

New Curriculum Approval.
Up for approval is a new ESL curriculum for middle school and high school multilingual learners, called National Geographic Impact and Lift. In the proposal, the Multilingual Education Department says, “WPS’s lack of complete, high-quality ESL curricular materials has created inconsistency in instructional practice across ESL secondary classrooms, which is greatly affecting student performance. We currently have over 1,300 long-term English Learners at the secondary level, which includes students who have been designated as ELs for more than 5 years. Adopting a DESE-designated high-quality ESL curriculum is a key step in addressing this stagnation in students exiting from English Learner status.”

Nelson Place No Confidence Vote.
Right before winter break there was an article in the Telegram about Nelson Place educators taking a no-confidence vote in principal Mary Sealey. The Telegram reported, “In Verdier’s email, she encouraged union members to attend the School Committee meeting of Jan. 8, where the results of the no confidence vote are to be shared with the committee.” Back in May of 2023 the union held a no-confidence vote against the school committee, but the last time I could find a no-confidence vote on a principal was in 2017. There were actually two no-confidence votes within about two months of each other, the first was Yuisa Perez-Chionchio at Goddard (she was replaced by Karrie Allen, who is still the principal there), and the second was Margaret Doyle at Quinsigamond School (she was temporarily replaced by Marie Morse, who is now the Deputy Superintendent). At the time, the Telegram reported that then-Superintendent Maureen Binienda “didn’t believe it was necessary for the union to broadcast its no-confidence vote.”

Other Items.

• Report from the district on school accountability.

• A report on the difference between bullying, harassment, and conflict.

• Approval of a lease of a parking lot on Chatham St. for $2,405 a month for the Fanning Building. The lease started in November.

• Approval of a fairshare grant from the state to pay for the resurfacing of the gym floor at May St. School and resurfacing of the playgrounds at Worcester Dual Language Magnet School and Nelson Place.

• Approval of a state grant for North High for a “program is designed to mitigate dropout and improve graduation rates.”

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

Welcome to the 36th issue of WPS in Brief. This month covers two school committee meetings and two subcommittee meetings. I’m also covering some things that didn’t happen in meetings per se, but are important in terms of the governance of our schools.

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Let’s get to it:

Student Discipline Data.

The report of the superintendent for the December 18 meeting was on student discipline data. Presenting were Administrative Director of Positive Youth Development Tom Toney, Director of Research and Accountability Marco Andrade, and Deputy Superintendent Marie Morse. The report gave an overview of the newer state law limiting removals and non-exclusionary practices in schools, and then highlighted data collected on disciplinary actions, as well as how Worcester compared to similar communities, like Springfield and Boston.

As seen in the above slide from the presentation, a small percentage of students are involved in disciplinary action. If you’d like to see more of a breakdown of the data or see it by school, all of it is publicly available on the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) website. Based on that public data, we can see that for the districts that border Worcester, the trend has been an average decrease in students disciplined between the 22-23 school year and the 23-24 school year, and then an average increase in students disciplined between the 23-24 school year and the 24-25 school year.

Between 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 Worcester saw student discipline offenses go up from 4.1% of the student body to 4.8%. Putting that in the context of other districts in Central Massachusetts, Worcester is in the middle of the pack.

In Shrewsbury (6,000 students) offenses went up from 21 in 2023-2024 (0.34% of the student body) to 90 in 2024-2025 (1.47%). That’s a 329% increase. In Auburn (2,500 students) they went up from 27 offenses in 2023-2024 to 50 in 2024-2025, an 85% increase. And in West Boylston (900 students) it increased 163%, with eight offenses in 2023-2024 and 21 in 2024-2025.

The specific piece that got a lot of attention in Worcester when the data initially came out was the increase in student assaults on staff, which was specifically from students in kindergarten through third grade (this is last year’s data, so it’s LAST year’s K-3 students, not this year’s).

This data validates what superintendents across Massachusetts, and the U.S., are seeing with younger elementary children having increasing outbursts and meltdowns. As a parent of a current third grader, whose toddler and preschool years were impacted by the COVID lockdown and subsequent isolation, it’s not a surprise to me. Those key developmental years were not normal for the kids who weren’t old enough to go elementary school yet, either. As an example, just 7 percent of last year’s Worcester kindergartners (born in 2019) were in center-based preschool more than 20 hours a week, and for 55 percent of them, kindergarten was their first time in any formal school. For comparison, this year’s kindergarten class (born in 2020) has increased to 15% attending center-based preschool more than 20 hours a week, and for 39% of them, kindergarten is their first time in any formal school.

At the end of the presentation, Superintendent Brian Allen emphasized steps the district is taking around climate and culture at the elementary level, including:

• Creating a data team to look at coding discipline and making it consistent

• Expanding the early childhood task force to support students before they enter Kindergarten

• Allocating additional resources for elementary schools in next year’s budget and

• Reinstituting an “elementary wellness center” to support student assessment and placement. (During the discussion school committee members referred to it as the “student safety center,” which in 2024 was just for 4-12 grade students. The safety centers were created by previous safety director Rob Pezella in response to school shootings). Allen would like to make that change for the current school year, and hopes to use recent allocations from the city to fund it, but plans to officially bring that to school committee approval in January.

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Quadrant Teams.

The December 4 Report of the Superintendent was on the Quadrant Teams (referred to as Q-teams). WPS is divided into four district quadrants, named after the comprehensive high school in each quadrant: North, South, Doherty and Burncoat. The teams were first introduced at the start of the 2023-2024 school year, so this is the third school year of implementation. Initially, the majority of people on the Q-teams were already working in the district (which meant minimal fiscal impact on implementing this model), but were separated in individual department silos. Now, Q-teams are a comprehensive group of skilled individuals from multiple departments whose goal is to provide efficient and consistent support to students and schools. The cross-department Q-team members rotate through the schools in their quadrant, and provide coaching, modeling, mentoring and guidance. The presentation ended with the future vision of strengthening data systems, sharing best practices between quadrants, and expanding the impact of climate and culture to support attendance, engagement, and restorative practices.

Change in Standing Committees and in Rules.

The school committee approved changing the two standing committees (sometimes referred to as subcommittees), into three. The three new committees will be Finance; Operations and Governance; and Teaching, Learning and Student Success. The rationale for the change is “to spread responsibility out amongst administrators and committees and to create a format where there are no tie votes” because as it stands right now, there are four people on each subcommittee, which has led to an occasional tie, leaving items stuck in committee. The proposed change is similar to how the standing committees were before 2024. The key difference this time is that Governance and Operations are together, and Finance is on its own. Also, pre-2024, there were six members of the school committee (minus the mayor, who does not serve on subcommittees), which meant everyone served on two committees of three members each. Now there are eight school committee members, which means that everyone will serve on one subcommittee, except for one school committee member who would need to serve on two subcommittees. The mayor chooses who serves on what subcommittee.

The school committee also approved changes to the school committee rules. Here are the previous rules and here were the proposed changes. The changes that got approved are:

• An email to the school committee, referred to as the “Friday Letter,” is an official way that items can be referred by the committee (the other three are to a standing committee, to a special committee, or to the administration).

• Anything that has been inactive in a standing committee for two years can now be automatically filed, with notice.

• School committee members must submit items by using a provided google form by 12 p.m., on the Wednesday a full week before the next meeting.

• Public petitions must also be submitted by noon on the Wednesday a full week before the meeting, and petitioners would have up to three minutes to speak instead of two minutes.

• If the administration is not ready to respond to a public petition “after 120 days, the Chair of the Committee shall put it on the agenda to get an update from the administration as to where it stands and to the timeline.” (This rule was added due to public comment at the FOG subcommittee meeting and from emails members received.)

• Meetings will start at 5:30 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. during the school year, and during June, July and August they would start at 4 p.m.

• The vice chair will always be seated at the desk next to the superintendent.

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WPS and WPD Operating Agreement.

The district provided a copy of the operating agreement between the schools and the police department for the 2025-2026 school year. Due to staffing restraints, the WPD pulled out of the Student Liaison Officer (SLO) model that had been in use for the previous three years. This also means that the city can no longer use those officers’ salaries (about $700k) as part of their net school spending requirement. The 2025–2026 Agreement is largely based on the 2024–2025 version, keeping many student-protection provisions intact, but it does broaden police access to school security systems in emergencies. Superintendent Allen explained, “We had provided the police access to our camera system upon request. In speaking to the chief...we are [now] actually providing them camera access instantly, so if there were to be a school incident, they automatically have access to our camera system.” Looking at the language in the new agreement, WPS agrees “to provide comprehensive access to live and recorded video, access control, and any communications integrations for purposes of a WPD response to any active assailant situation or criminal investigation at the school” and there will be quarterly tests of that system integration.

Next school committee term.

This month closes the chapter of our current school committee term, although there is no change in the committee composition for next term (the first time since 2011 that’s happened). As we move into the next term I like to remind ourselves, the public, that the school committee has certain functions and responsibilities, including finance/budget, education policy and goals, curriculum, advocacy, and collective bargaining, to name a few. These are the things we need the school committee to focus on and be good at getting done. Specifically, I think the work that will be the most critical over the next two years is:

• How to deal with federal funding cuts and stewarding Student Opportunity Act money

• Redistricting of school zones, which the district plans to implement in the 2027-2028 school year.

• Contract negotiations with teachers, as the current contract expires in 2026.

• Implementing the strategic plan, which ends in 2028, and the process of developing a new strategic plan.

• Superintendent Allen’s contract, which goes to 2028. Negotiations to extend his contract, or plans to hire a new superintendent, would likely start in early 2027.

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Upcoming Dates.

• School Committee Swearing in is January 2 p.m. at Doherty High

• School Committee Meetings are January 8 and 22, 5:30 p.m. at City Hall

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Also.

Attend your January School Site Council meeting! Budget season is here and it’s arguably the most important time to be paying attention to WPS. The updated budget calendar for the 2026-2027 school year budget can be found here. Individual school resource allocation requests must be in by January 26, 2026. This means that at the January school site council meetings all principals should be reading over their school-based budget proposal for site council review. This is a great opportunity to learn what your school is prioritizing and offer input at the school level. All school site council meetings are listed on the WPS website.

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The next school committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday, December 18 at 5:30 p.m. There is no Executive Session. See the agenda here. You can watch it via zoom or Youtube Live. Spanish translation is available on zoom.

Here’s what’s on the agenda:

Proposed Subcommittee Changes.
Tonight at the Finance, Governance and Operations standing committee meeting is a proposed change to the subcommittee structure, which if approved, will be voted on at Thursday’s school committee meeting. The rationale for the change is “To spread responsibility out amongst administrators and committees and to create a format where there are no tie votes” because as it stands right now, there are four people on each subcommittee, which has led to an occasional tie, leaving items stuck in committee.

The proposed change is essentially going back to three committees instead of two, like it was before 2024. The key difference this time is that Governance and Operations would be in one subcommittee, and Finance would be its own subcommittee (previously Finance and Operations were together). Also, pre-2024, there were six members of the school committee (minus the mayor, who does not serve on subcommittees), which meant everyone served on two committees of three members each. Now there are eight school committee members, which means that everyone would serve on one subcommittee, except one school committee member who would need to serve on two subcommittees. The mayor still chooses who serves on what subcommittee.

The change also moves all policy considerations into the Governance and Finance Committee, whereas right now, policies having to do with teaching and learning go through that standing committee.

Proposed Rule Changes.
Also tonight at the FOG standing committee is an item with a slew of proposed changes to the school committee rules, which if approved would also be up for vote at Thursday’s school committee meeting. Here are the current rules and here are the proposed changes. My quick overview:

• Adding the “Friday letter” as a way that items can be referred by the committee (the other three are to a standing committee, to a special committee, or to the administration). The “Friday letter” is a weekly email sent from the Superintendent to school committee members, and under then-Superintendent Dr. Monárrez it became more and more common for reports or data that the school committee requested at school committee meetings to be sent in a “Friday letter.” (This also meant if the public wanted the information, it had to be requested by a public records request, which I had to do almost every week for many months until the district started putting the updates online.)

• Allowing anything that has been inactive in a standing committee for two years to be automatically filed, with notice.

• School committee members must submit items by using a provided google form by 12 p.m, on the Wednesday a full week before the next meeting.

• Public petitions must also be submitted by noon on the Wednesday a full week before the meeting, and petitioners would have up to three minutes to speak instead of two minutes.

• Eliminating a line that school committee members “should notify the Superintendent or Executive Directors of any other visits to individual schools that have been coordinated with school-based leadership.”

• Meetings would start at 5:30 p.m. instead of 6 p.m. during the school year, and during June, July and August they would start at 4 p.m.

• The vice-chair will always be seated at the desk next to the superintendent.

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Report of the Superintendent.
This meeting’s Report of the Superintendent is on discipline data. Here is a press release from the district about the data, which shows the staff assaults increase that got the most attention during the FOG subcommittee meeting was from students in grades K-3.

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

December 4 School Committee Meeting.
The next school committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday, December 4. Executive session starts at 5 p.m. and the regular meeting is scheduled to start at 5:30 p.m. The actual start time depends on how long the executive session takes. See the agenda here. You can watch it via zoom or Youtube Live. Spanish translation is available on zoom.

Here’s what’s on the agenda:

Executive Session.
Lots of contract conversations on the docket with different bargaining units. Currently a third of the committee has an immediate family member working for the district (Binienda, McCullough, and Roy). At least in some instances, based on whether they are sitting outside during the executive session, it has come into question as to whether those members are recusing themselves for these conversations to avoid a conflict of interest. I have not been able to confirm that they are or not, because executive session minutes by the school committee have not been released in almost two years and a November 4 email to the school committee clerk about executive session recusals and executive session minutes has gone unanswered. It is clear from previous school committee executive session minutes that in the past, members who have had family working for the district (cousins) have recused themselves from contract negotiations that impact those family members. I have not been able to determine the last time a school committee member had an immediate family member working in the district. Will keep you posted on this.

Report of the Superintendent.
This meeting’s Report of the Superintendent is on the Quadrant Teams (referred to as Q-teams). WPS is divided into four district quadrants, named after the high school in each quadrant: North, South, Doherty and Burncoat. The teams were first introduced at the start of the 2023-2024 school year, so this is the third school year of implementation. Q-teams are a comprehensive group of skilled individuals from multiple departments whose goal is to provide efficient and consistent support to students and schools. The cross-department Q-team members rotate through the schools in their quadrant, and provide coaching, modeling, mentoring and guidance. Initially, the majority of people on the Q-teams were already working in the district (which meant minimal fiscal impact on implementing this model), but were separated in individual department silos. Key here is how the theoretical framework is playing out in action, and what tweaks can be made to improve.

WPS and WPD Operating Agreement.
The district provided a copy of the operating agreement between the schools and the police department for the 2025-2026 school year. Due to staffing restraints, the WPD pulled out of the Student Liaison Officer (SLO) model that had been in use for the previous three years. This also means that the city can no longer use those officers salaries (about $700k) as part of their net school spending requirement.

Preschool in the District.
Here’s a list of preschools in the district. I’ve always wondered why Head Start is separated out from WPS preschool. I understand it’s funded differently, and Head Start has income requirements, but integration would be ideal. If anyone knows what the barriers are to that let me know!

Bus Monitors.
The district provided a response to the request to look into bus monitors or culture and climate specialists for the buses. (Does this scream written by AI to anyone else?)

Other items:

• A request from Kathi Roy (district E) for an update on programs that “that include online harm through cyber bullying and social media.”

• Another request from Roy to “consider reviewing and improving a long range plan for preventing dropouts in the Worcester Public Schools”

• A proposed revision to the Report of the superintendent schedule, to change the December 18 report from a communications update to a discipline data report.

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

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Let’s get to it:

Election 2025.
The election results are in and there is no change in the makeup of the school committee from this term to next term. It’s the first time since 2011 that that’s happened. Maureen Binienda and Sue Mailman broke 13,000 votes each, two of the highest vote getters of all the electeds besides Mayor Joe Petty. Once again proving my oft repeated point that the school committee is not the JV team city council wishes it was.

What’s going on with teaching and learning?
Over the last five months, the teaching and learning team has been a bit lackluster at subcommittee and school committee meetings, at least as compared to the previous year. That dull performance reached a head at the November 20 school committee meeting, where the Executive Directors gave a presentation called “Vision to Action District Improvement Plan.” Of the eighty some-odd reports of superintendent I have watched over the last four and a half years, this was by far the most underwhelming.

There was a lot of strategic overview of how things connect to the superintendent’s goals, the strategic plan, and the vision of a learner, but no specific examples of what that looks like in action and how it will help bridge student gaps. Honestly, I’m not even sure how to summarize it for you, because it was such a superficial presentation. When it was over, Jermaine Johnson (district F) voiced a similar feeling, saying, “At some point I would like to kind of hear, I guess from our staff members in the field on all this that we’re talking about here, what that actually looks like in the classroom and what they’re actually doing. So I think we get a better sense of not just hearing about it, but trying to get a sense of people coming in and talking about how that relates to our students, and what it looks like in the classroom.”

Recently I’ve noticed from the administration a similar lack of preparedness with other items, as well as a lack of transparency and/or clarity. I can’t make a judgment of whether that is intentional or not, but regardless, it’s a new trend that I feel is worth pointing out. Here are some examples:

Volunteer Policy.
The district finally responded to an item from 2023 to change the district volunteer policy, but recommended no changes. A change in volunteer policy requires some hard conversations, both about what has happened in the past, as well as how to make a policy equitable to families and caregivers with criminal records. Perhaps the district wanted to avoid having that conversation, or didn’t think they’d get much pushback for not changing it. But as demonstrated by public comment at the November 20 school committee meeting, parents and community want to see a change. (See coverage on how it all unfolded from Bill Shaner here, it’s worth a read.) The school committee sent the item back to subcommittee to work on it, now going into the third year of this request.

High School Grading Policy.
After multiple conversations over many public and private meetings, the proposed high school grading policy was finally approved by the whole school committee on November 20. You may remember from my previous reporting that the district recommended a major change in secondary grading policy in a last minute subcommittee meeting, at which the district seemed unprepared. Despite it not passing in committee at the time, the district took a bold step to change the grading system in Woo Edu at the start of the school year. At the November Finance, Operations and Governance (FOG) subcommittee meeting Jermaine Johnson said, “I’m going to tell you, I really, really, really like this, and I am all for it,” but “I guess the nicest way I can say this is that I feel that our knees got cut from underneath us, as a school committee here who should be approving this policy, and that this policy and everything that has gone on should not have taken place and been rolled out or anything should have been done until we passed this…I wish it would have been done differently.

Discipline Data.
The FOG subcommittee discussed a report on two years of discipline data at its November 10 meeting. Some infractions saw significant increases from the year before. Both Maureen Binienda (at-large), who is not on the subcommittee, but spoke during public comment, and Dianna Biancheria (district C), jumped on the increases, making claims about Worcester Schools being unsafe, mostly out of concern for the teachers. If you have any experience working with data (or maybe this is just common sense), making any assumptions using a two-year window is not best practice: it’s difficult to distinguish trends from short-term fluctuations, outliers have a greater impact, and policies can be “overfitted” to a data’s specific noise. I was surprised that no one from the district provided more context (like how exactly discipline data is reported and recorded, that 37H infractions go on a students permanent record, and how the data breaks down from secondary to elementary, and in what settings). This meant that a report that seemed relatively inconsequential to me as someone who watches meetings and talks to teachers every day (I didn’t even cover it in my agenda preview), got an article AND an op-ed in the Telegram. In response, the district sent out a letter to families and there is now a scheduled Report of the Superintendent for December on discipline.

Two-year Kindergarten.
At the November 17 Teaching, Learning and Student Success (TLSS) subcommittee meeting there was a report back on “preppy K” which in the FY24 budget report was described as a pilot of a “Kindergarten preparation classroom…for students aged four years old between September 1 and December 31 to allow for a two-year kindergarten experience and better prepare younger students for future academic success without changing the kindergarten entry age in Worcester.” The pilot only lasted one year and the district wrote: “We feel the pilot’s strict age grouping removed opportunities for our younger children to learn from older role models, limiting the diversity of learning and lessening the chances of peer learning and mentoring opportunities, and that our older students were not able to develop stronger, social leadership skills by helping younger classmates.” Anyone who has spent time around children probably sees that conclusion as an obvious one, one that many a principal has already seen in the decades that Worcester has had kindergarten classrooms. The hypothesis with this “preppy-k” model was that the youngest students were supposed to get TWO years of kindergarten before moving on to first grade. The district was not transparent about that initial purpose in its report, and no one on the school committee was informed enough to ask, or to dig for the reason the pilot ended after the first year.

These specific examples give you a glimpse of what I’ve been noticing around teaching and learning as of late: teaching and learning is not bringing it’s A game to meetings. My hope is that because Superintendent Allen is well liked by all school committee members, he is in a unique position that at least the last three superintendents weren’t. He is from Worcester and has worked for the district for almost three decades, so he doesn’t face the (often unfair) scrutiny that outsiders have faced, but he is also not provincial like many Worcester insiders and past internal superintendents have been. As I wrote about in my profile of him, Allen has taken his experience as a WPS student and converted it into a career that has focused on equity, keeping students at the center of his decisions. His strength is listening and taking action. I believe he is uniquely positioned and able to make impactful change for Worcester students. But, at least on the teaching and learning side, I find myself waiting for the Superintendent to find his voice.

Here’s what else happened this month:

Career Technical Education (CTE).
There was a report at the November 17 TLSS meeting around Career Technical Education (CTE), and Worcester is seeing the benefits of changing the lottery process as enrollment numbers mirror the student body much more equally than in the past. Sue Mailman (at-large) pointed out the high interest in vocational programs, and reiterated again her desire to see Burncoat become a vocational school. (I, personally, would love to see it become a vocational arts school! Boston Arts Academy, which has CTE programs in multimedia entertainment and production, design and visual communications and fashion technology, would be a great model.)

Graduation requirements.
The proposed competency determination for high school graduation (since it’s no longer determined by the MCAS) was up for final approval. This one was a little misleading because it was under an item called “handbook revisions” in the report on FOG and isn’t explicitly called out as a new competency determination policy on the agenda. The item was held in FOG, and in reviewing the video again, it appears to have confused the committee as well, because they never voted to approve it, only to hold it. According to school committee rules (rule 19), policies must be approved by two-thirds vote of the school committee, and also must be voted on individually, so it’s also not clear to me whether the committee can actually approve new policies through the approval of the reports of standing committees. Regardless, the district needs to have a competency determination on file with the state by December 31.

School Bus Tracker.
The transportation department is continuing to work on fixing the MyStop bus tracking app, where a technical glitch with ipads has been overriding how the app collects GPS data from the buses and is creating lag time for families tracking buses. The first year of its use, in 2022-2023, a very small percentage of buses had ipads, which is why it worked so well that year. While they have been trying to resolve it for over a year, Transportation Director Mike Freeman said that the contract for an upgrade that will fix the issue should be out of the city’s legal department by the end of November. The district had originally hoped to have the app upgraded by the start of the school year.

Meeting Moment: Big Tech and Schools

As each year passes that the district is “one-to-one” (this year’s fourth graders are the first class to have had a device assigned to them starting in kindergarten), I have heard more and more teachers, students, and parents discuss their struggles with screen use, educational technology apps, chrome books and AI in the classroom. Here, Worcester parent Cat Holmes raises those frustrations, asking the district to focus on what the research says, all while nursing her three month old (class of 2042).

Bits and Bobs.

• Cameras to allow automatic ticketing for violations of people who drive through school stop signs are also in process, as the school committee and the city council approved them last year. The process is currently with the police department, which is working through the complicated process of how ticketing would work, given that this is the first time state law has allowed ticketing via cameras.

• The committee approved the Dual Language Program Design Plan.

• It’s official that the athletic field at Doherty High School will be named after Lt. Jason Menard and Menard’s parents were in the audience for the approval. It was voted on as the FOG subcommittee report, and not the specific naming item. While this is allowed through school committee rules, in the future, as a sign of respect, the committee might consider pulling out a naming to vote on individually, especially when family members are present.

• The committee approved a report on district anti-bullying initiatives.

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Upcoming Dates.

• School Committee Meetings are December 4 and 18, 6 p.m. at City Hall

• Citywide Parent Planning Advisory Council, December 3, 6 p.m. at Doherty High School

• Finance, Operations & Governance (FOG), December 15, 5 p.m. at Durkin Administration Building

• Teaching, Learning and Student Success (TLSS), December 11, 5 p.m. at Durkin Administration Building

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Also.
I am on a technology advisory committee for the district, and I’d love to hear from elementary teachers and parents: send me your thoughts on screen time, Chromebooks, ed tech apps and AI in elementary schools. What do you think is working well and what would you like to see change?

Leave a comment

As always, email me with feedback and questions at aislinn.doyle@me.com

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November 20 School Committee Meeting

The next school committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday, November 20. Executive session starts at 5 p.m. and the regular meeting is scheduled to start at 6:00 p.m. The actual start time depends on how long the executive session takes. There’s a lot of collective bargaining scheduled for executive session, so it may go longer. See the agenda here. You can watch it via zoom or Youtube Live. Spanish translation is available on zoom.

Here’s what’s on the agenda:

Reconsideration and the “Friday letter”

Mailman (at-large) has filed for reconsideration of her item requesting “a report which includes information by sport by season by high school and middle school describing which sport uses which fields and when. Also include our district process for ensuring equitable access to fields for games and practices and explain how we ensure alignment with title 9 requirements.”

The item was amended to be included in a “Friday letter” rather than a report back to a school committee meeting from administration. Mailman requested “reconsideration that it be sent to administration so that it can come back to a public meeting. If parents or residents want to weigh in it gives them an opportunity to.” The “Friday letter” is a weekly email sent from the Superintendent to school committee members, and under Dr. Monárrez it became more and more common for reports or data that school committee requested at school committee meetings to be sent in a Friday letter. (This also meant if the public wanted the information, it had to be requested by a public records request, which I had to do almost every week for many months until the district started putting the updates online.)

Reconsideration can be filed within 48 business hours of a vote and according to the school committee rules, a reason needs to be supplied by the requesting member.

Report of the Superintendent.

This meeting’s Report of the Superintendent is the district improvement plan.

High School Graduation Competency Determination.

Up for final approval is the proposed competency determination for high school graduation (since it’s no longer determined by the MCAS). This one is a little misleading because it’s under an item called “handbook revisions” in the report on FOG and isn’t explicitly called out as a new competency determination policy on the agenda.

Mastery-Based Grading Policy.

After many iterations and negotiations with the union, the Proposed Mastery-Based Grading Practices Written Policy is up for final approval, which includes changing the grading scale for a “D” to 60-69.

Doherty High School Athletic Field.

The school committee will vote on final approval of naming the Doherty High School Athletic Field after Lt. Jason Menard.

School volunteer policy changes.

The FOG committee suggested an update to the volunteer policy, with the addition of language that allows the Superintendent, or a designee, to be the final decision maker for approving or denying a volunteer, beyond a CORI check.

Revision of pickup and drop off policies.

Molly McCullough (district A) has an item requesting that the safety department work with the schools, particularly those in high traffic areas, to review pick up and drop off policies and require right turn only into and out of school driveways during specific drop off and pick up times to

improve significant congestion in those areas, with a particular focus on middle and

high schools. (I’m a big fan of this. My kids’ school site council requested a right turn only out of the school driveway from the city last year and it was denied. I’ll also add it would be helpful to do a school survey asking families why kids get dropped off or picked up at school instead of walking or taking the bus. There might be some solutions there, too).

Superintendent’s Disclosure.

Superintendent Brian Allen has filed a disclosure by Non-Elected Municipal Employee of Financial Interest and Determination by Appointing Authority form for school committee’s review.

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

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Welcome to the October issue of WPS in Brief. This month covers key topics from two school committee meetings and three standing committee meetings.

Let’s get to it:

Election 2025.
November 4 is Election Day for the city council and school committee. You can vote early at Worcester Public Library all this week or vote on Election Day (friendly reminder there’s no school that day!) Please make a plan to vote. Here is my election guide.

Doherty Memorial High School Naming Committee.
There is a naming committee meeting on October 30 at 5 p.m. at the DMHS Guidance Seminar Room E230. The agenda is to name a space at Doherty Memorial High School after Lt. Jason Menard. Based on the conversation at the July Finance, Operations, and Governance standing committee meeting, the request from his family and many members of the public is to name the new Doherty athletic field after him.

Strategic Plan Updates.
The Superintendent’s Report for the October 9 meeting was on Vision to Action...Strategic Plan Status Update. Dr. Andrew Lampi, Research and Evaluation specialist in the Office of Research and Accountability (ORA), presented on how the office came up with definitions of data points and established reporting systems with timelines. From there, ORA created a data point tracker, and a public progress monitoring dashboard, which allows you to see where the district is at with each data point by year. It’s pretty impressive, and I appreciate the transparency in making it public. Here’s a screenshot of one small section:

This strategic plan monitoring is critical for the school committee to do their job, which is to make sure that the strategic plan is followed and implemented (and all their work should point back to that: it is the road map for the district). This was not doable before 2022. Two big reasons for that are due to how it was prioritized: the software used for these dashboards was purchased in the last three years, and the staff of the Office of Research and Accountability are mostly all new and have the skills to do this work. That it was made a priority speaks to the seriousness of previous superintendent Rachel Monárrez and current superintendent Brian Allen in making sure the school committee and the district has the data needed to monitor the strategic plan goals.

Accountability Data.

For the October 23 school committee meeting Dr. Marco Andrade, Director of Research and Accountability, presented on school accountability results. The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) accountability system is used to measure schools against other schools in the state and the system has a number of indicators. For elementary and middle schools the accountability scores are based on 60% Achievement (MCAS scores), 20% student growth, 10% English language proficiency and 10% chronic absenteeism. For high schools the accountability scores are based on 40% achievement (MCAS scores), 20% student growth, 20% high school completion, 10% English language proficiency, and 10% chronic absenteeism and advanced coursework. These indicators and percentages have been stable since 2023, when the district met 41% of its targets. This year the district met 47% of its targets. You can see which indicators the district met or exceeded in the chart above.

Updated Worcester Tech and Career Education Admissions Policy.
An updated Worcester Tech/Districtwide Career Technical Education Admission Policy was approved by the committee, reflecting the changes mandated by the state. The new policy eliminates lottery tiers, but students receive an entry into the lottery for filling out an application (1 entry), if they meet attendance criteria (+1 entry), meet discipline criteria (+1 entry) or have a letter of recommendation (+1 entry). According to the policy “The weight assigned to each lottery number will correspond to the number of entries determined from the criteria listed above. (Example: a student with 4 “entries” will have a weight 4 times that of a student with 1 “entry” and thus a 4 times greater chance of their lottery number being drawn).” Also approved was a Middle School Pathway Exploration Policy as referenced in the CTE Admission policy. Both policies are due to the state by November 1.

High School Grading.
The high school grading policy continues to be debated by the school committee, this time in the Teaching, Learning, and Student Success (TLSS) subcommittee. At the TLSS meeting, Deputy Superintendent Marie Morse shared that as the district is working towards how to fulfill the competency determination requirements for graduation (now that it can’t be the MCAS), part of the state’s stipulations is each district must have a grading policy, which Worcester does not currently have. Morse emphasized that a grading policy is an important next step to “ensure that we have rigorous expectations, and students are being graded equitably across schools.” She continued, “The longer we go without structure around grading the longer this uncertainty exists within our district. And in a time when we’re certifying competency without MCAs we need to be sure we’re providing guardrails around grading.” The TLSS committee voted to send their recommendations to Finance, Operations and Governance, but with a motion to recommend maintaining 65 as the passing grade, as opposed to changing it to 60. Districts must submit their competency determination policies to the state by December 31.

Buildings.

In the quarterly building maintenance and facilities report there were dozens of projects presented, all in various stages, including new windows at Worcester East Middle (a $7 million project paid for by a state grant), a new playground at Jacob Hiatt, updates to SAIL classrooms, and the opening of the Doherty athletic field/fieldhouse. Check out the report in the backup of the agenda for specifics. Accelerated repair projects for Rice Square (roof, windows, and exterior doors) and Belmont St. (roof) were also submitted to the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) and a decision should be made on October 29.

Meeting Moment to Watch.

School committee member Alex Guardiola (district D) requested a report on how to expand JROTC in the district. He, along with Dianna Biancheria (district C) and Kathi Roy (district E) discuss the report, talk about how JROTC can help Worcester youth, and lament that JROTC is only offered at South High. Some context: a national analysis of JROTC found that, “ public high schools with larger-than-average minority populations and in schools serving economically disadvantaged populations are also overrepresented as JROTC host schools…While advocates for JROTC point to positive outcomes for high-risk youth, some critics have argued that it unfairly targets low-income and minority communities for military recruiting.” For a contrasting example, Guardiola’s alma mater, St. John’s High School in Shrewsbury, has never had a JROTC program. This clip is long, at eight minutes, but it gives a good sense of what a school committee meeting can be like.

Recommended Reads.

• If you have been a long time reader of this substack, you know I am a BIG fan of the work done by the Worcester Regional Research Bureau. And this month they released an excellent report, Fixing the Foundation, which details how inequitable the state funding model for new school buildings is. I know you probably won’t read the full report (you should!), so here’s summaries by GBH and the Commonwealth Beacon.

• Apparently, the state uses AI to grade student MCAS essays, and a teacher in Lowell (who was reading her students’ essays OVER THE SUMMER) discovered that the scores “didn’t seem to add up.” Turns out that at least 1400 essays were incorrectly graded, including Worcester students. It’s not clear how the company, Cognia, who was paid $36 million for the MCAS contract, “corrected it” and how we can be sure there aren’t more. I emailed DESE to ask if the AI company keeps student writing and/or uses it to train its AI model, but haven’t heard back. There are so many ethical issues around this I don’t even know where to start, but if you’re concerned, I encourage you to write your state representatives and let them know.

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Upcoming Dates.

• Doherty High School Naming Committee Meeting on October 30, 5 p.m. at the DMHS Guidance Seminar Room E230

• Just one school Committee meeting next month on November 20, 6 p.m.

• Finance, Operations and Governance is November 10, 5 p.m.

• Teaching, Learning and Student Support is November 13, 5 p.m.

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Also.
Worcester Dual Language Magnet School is doing a calendar raffle fundraiser with some excellent prizes. Get your tickets while you can!

Thanks for reading. See you next month when we’ll know who will be representing us on the school committee for next term.

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