Agenda Preview: July 16 School Committee Meeting
Superintendent's self-evaluation and other bits and bobs.
Please consider a paid subscription to Worcester Sucks so we can keep providing crucial local journalism like this.
The next school committee meeting is scheduled for July 16, with Executive Session at 4 p.m. and open session scheduled to start at 4:30 p.m. See the full agenda here. You can watch it via zoom or Youtube Live. Spanish translation is available on zoom. Currently, there are no standing committee meetings scheduled for July.
Here’s my preview:
Superintendent’s Evaluation.
The Superintendent will report on his 2025-2026 school year goals, which include:
You can read up on these goals in more detail in last September’s brief. Allen also wrote a self-assessment, which reflects a first year focused on turning “Vision to Action” by strengthening district systems rather than launching a wave of new initiatives. He reports significant progress toward his student learning goal, with Star reading and math scores improving to 35% of students meeting the benchmark. It’s just shy of the 36% target, but represents the largest percentage since the district began using the test. He also exceeded his professional practice goal, with 78% of schools implementing the district’s “collaborative teaming structures with fidelity.”
The bulk of the self-assessment centers on instructional leadership: curriculum renewal, implementation of high-quality instructional materials, classroom walkthroughs, support for multilingual learners, the Vision of a Learner initiative, and expanded partnerships with local colleges and universities. Allen also notes that he visited schools 120 times during his first year and emphasizes data-informed decision making and collaborative leadership throughout the report.
From my lens as a parent, Allen has been one of Worcester’s stronger Superintendents. But one thing that stood out to me was how little attention the self-evaluation gives to relationships with families. Family engagement is mentioned as part of Allen’s entry plan and the district’s strategic framework, particularly around communication, but there are few concrete examples of work with families or measures of parent engagement, communication, or trust. Family & Community Engagement is one of the four standards used to evaluate Massachusetts superintendents, so it will be interesting to see whether the school committee views this as an area of strength or one where they’d like to see more evidence.
While the Superintendent will give a presentation about his goals on Thursday, the committee will formally evaluate the Superintendent at an August or September meeting, which is a requirement of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).
Other Items.
Not a ton else on the agenda other than some procedural items and grants, but a few items worth noting:
A request for an update on the Safe Schools LGBTQIA training/programming (a response from the February 2025 LGBTQIA+ resolution fiasco
A request for an update on the WPS Homework Policy (which was implemented in June 2025).
A request for a minimum four-month lead time for curriculum, contracts, or policy changes needing approval from the School Committee. (This harkens back to when Jermaine Johnson said he felt “our knees got cut off underneath us as a committee”).
Approval of a three-year software license and services contract with Renaissance Learning, which the district uses for Star assessments and Renaissance DnA common assessments. No contract or cost is included in the agenda materials. The current student privacy agreement also does not specify what WPS student data is collected (only which fields are required or optional) and does not appear to be signed by a WPS representative. All WPS student privacy agreements with ed tech companies can be found here.
That’s it, have a great week!