Agenda Preview: June 5 School Committee Meetings
Budget, Child Find Mandate, LGBTQIA Safe Schools Training
WPS In Brief is funded by subscribers to this outlet. If you appreciate this coverage of the school district, please consider a paid subscription!
June 5 School Committee Meeting
The next school committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday, June 5. The budget hearing starts at 4pm, executive session starts at 6pm and the regular meeting is scheduled to start at 7pm. 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:
Budget Hearing. The school committee will start discussing each budget line of the general fund at 4pm. Typically they start from the top and move down, but not always. The budget hearing will last about two hours, and then they’ll pick up where they left off on June 18. There is no public comment during the budget hearing. If you want to see what’s in the proposed budget read the May Brief.
Special Education Child Find Mandate.
Maureen Binienda (at large) requested information on the child find mandate, which is part of special education law where school districts have an affirmative duty to locate, evaluate and potentially serve any student impacted by disability. The district response shows “the number of initial special education evaluation consents, students found eligible at team meetings, and the number of accepted IEPs” for the 2025-2025 school year broken down by quadrant.
LGBTQIA Safe SchoolsTraining.
The district has a response to an item by Member Molly McCullough (district A) asking to explore the Safe Schools Program (which first appeared on the agenda the meeting after the LGBTQIA Safe Schools Resolution fiasco). Above is the timeline proposed by the district.
Sever St. Buildings.
Items about “whether 51 and 61 Sever St., Worcester may be appropriate to use for school purposes” were held at the last meeting, and are on the agenda again. As a reminder, back in 2021 the city bought buildings in the Elm Park neighborhood when Becker College closed. At the time the intent was to use some of them for WPS, but the City is moving forward to selling them. At the May 28 City Council Standing Committee on Public Works the item passed with Councilors Pacillo and Mero-Carlson voting to sell, while Councilor Russell voted not to, saying “I’m not convinced that the city, whether it be the city side or the school side, has yet to find that there is no use for this property and that it is probably worth a lot more than what it would if they sold it on the open market, so I’m not going to support the item.” The item now moves to the full council on June 10.
The 133-page backup in the school committee agenda describes how 61 Sever St. “cannot be utilized for K-12 educational use” as is, and there’s an email from the Worcester building commissioner confirming that it is coded Business and Assembly, not K-12 education. This has led to some confusion for me, because the Nativity School has been the most vocal organization in terms of wanting to buy the properties (at the May 28 public works meeting the school principal said they have been in conversations with the City about the property since 2023). It’s not clear to me how the barriers for WPS wouldn’t be barriers for another school. But after discussing zoning with an architect, it appears that if an organization has enough money (we’re talking tens of millions of dollars here), changing the code of a building is possible. In the case of 61 Sever St., in order to be compliant for K-12 use the third floor of the building would need to be removed or the entire building would have to be covered in “non-combustible” materials (that means every single surface would need new sheetrock, the vaulted ceiling would have to be covered, etc.). That would be a significant cost, although the backup does not say exactly how much. It would be cheaper than building a whole new school (and finding land to build that theoretical school is a challenge in this city), but would take significant investment.
Final Approvals.
There are items coming back from subcommittees which will have final approval by the school committee. The committee will vote to approve:
The new homework policy
The new mission, vision and core values for the district.
A new school calendar for 2025-2026 school year. This includes adding a professional day/no school day for students for January 26, 2026 and changing the professional day/no school day for students from Tuesday, March 3, 2026 to Monday, March 9.1
Incoming Superintendent Brian Allen’s Contract.
In the executive session there is an item to discuss incoming Superintendent Brian Allen’s contract, and then there’s an item on the general meeting agenda to “execute” the contract.
That’s it. Happy June! If you have feedback you can always get in touch: aislinn.doyle@me.com
Just in case any school committee members read this, it would also be great if the school calendar could explicitly say there’s no school for pre-k/kindergarten on the open house day. There’s zero communication from the district about that. And as the district announced a few days ago, it would also be great to add that there will be a half day for high school/no school for pre-k on the 8th grade graduation day. (But don't forget, parents, that attendance matters! Except when it’s inconvenient for the district!)
Love your footnote!! Attendance matters only when convenient for the district and when funding is tied to it. But also, I clicked the link and think this type of informational page would be a perfect model for the pros and cons of screen-based learning and what parents can do to mitigate the negative effects on sleep, attention, behavior, and mental/physical health!