WPS in Brief: June 2024

Final 2024-2025 school year budget, drinking fountains, and more namings

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Welcome to the 18th issue of WPS in Brief. This month covers 6.5 hours of budget deliberation, two school committee meetings, and two standing committee meetings. 

Let’s dive in:

WPS 2024-2025 School Year Budget Passes 6-3.

After about six and a half hours of public deliberation over two meetings, the school committee approved the exact budget proposed by the administration with no changes (To see what that budget included read my April and May briefs.) It was a 6-3 vote, with Member Dianna Biancheria (district C), Member Maureen Binienda (at-large) and Member Kathi Roy (district E) voting against.

As I left that June 20th meeting—which was six hours long—this is how I felt:

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I think I felt that way not so much because of the topics brought up during deliberation (instructional supplies, special education, administrative salaries, building substitutes ,and climate and culture to name a few), that was no surprise. It was the tone of the deliberations that I really struggled with. 

I’m not going to pretend that cutting $22 million isn’t going to be contentious. But these budget deliberations weren’t just disagreements on how to spend money. The questions posed and motions presented, mostly from Member Biancheria and Member Binienda, had an antagonistic framing, and were often outside purview, inappropriately specific, or too convoluted to follow. If it wasn’t before, it is very clear now that Biancheria and Binienda are there to fight change—and don’t particularly care if it’s for the better. But the years of WPS that Binienda and Biancheria represent and want to go back to didn’t serve our kids. We’ve got to have some trust in the new leadership and the vision they are putting in place. Especially since more people have given input into this proposed budget than ever before. For me as a parent, it’s incredibly frustrating to see performative politics at the expense of moving the district forward.

And so, rather than give a long play by play of the six frustrating hours, I thought that perhaps the best way to understand what happened is through these two videos that exemplify how most of the deliberation went.  

First, at the June 20 meeting, towards the two hour mark, Member Biancheria (district C) disparages the role of climate and culture specialists calling them “glorified bouncers,” derogatorily asks if they’re going “to wear vests,” and belittles student calming rooms.

Biancheria’s rambling comments here highlight the discrepancies between what school safety means to some (police in schools) versus what it means to others (prioritizing restorative practices and student wellbeing). This coming from a school committee member who asked to see the school safety audit but, who, according to the district, never read it (Binienda, McCullough, Mailman and Johnson did). It begs the question of whether school safety is truly a priority or if the goal is to just be against whatever the superintendent puts forward. 

In this second video member Jermaine Johnson (district F) replies to Biancheria’s disrespectful and disparaging comments—to applause from the parents sitting in the audience. The way he lays things out here gives a general overview of the issues during this budget deliberation, and how he approached his assessment of the proposed budget.

Johnson admits that he had questions about the proposed budget—this was not something he was just going to rubber stamp. But he spoke to a variety of stakeholders about his concerns, and took what he learned to form an opinion given the context. This is the type of thoughtful deliberation that’s needed.

The Worcester Public Schools, through no fault of its own, faced one of the biggest budget deficits they have ever had. The budget cuts forced the district to take a deep dive and to make changes. That is the challenge of an underfunded school district. That’s the challenge that the Superintendent, her team, and most of the school committee members rose to meet. I am grateful for that. Unfortunately Biancheria, Binienda and Roy chose to vote against the budget, and be divisive along the way. As a parent, I find that desire to move backwards incredibly disheartening.

If you’re interested in seeing more highlights from the budget deliberations, I created a playlist of clips. 

Here’s what else happened this month:

New drinking fountains. Summer is when facilities can get a lot of projects done with students out of school. 

One of those projects is installing 91 new drinking fountains (funded with ESSER money). Here’s the list of where some of them will go: 

Roosevelt School Traffic Improvements. An initial EPA assessment found signs of soil contamination where the new parking lot for Roosevelt School would go. That triggers a phase 2 assessment by the EPA, which will happen this summer. This means that the bulk of the work to improve the traffic flow will not happen until the summer of 2025.

School Choice. Massachusetts law allows families to use inter-district school choice if the receiving district allows it, and tuition is paid from the sending district to the receiving district. For this past school year Worcester had 169 students coming from other districts, which is a significant increase over the last ten years. Here’s the breakdown of where they came from:

State law says once a student is accepted into the district through school choice they are allowed to remain until they graduate, but due to the budget cuts this year the district “is determining if any new school choice enrollments can occur next year.”

Namings.The committee approved the naming of the Chandler Elementary outdoor basketball court after developer Anthony Rossi’s father, Antonio Rossi. They also approved naming the new Doherty basketball court in honor of Officer Manny Familia, who died three years ago while trying to save teens from drowning. Member Sue Mailman (at-large) requested to hold these items so they could get input from the school site councils and the school community per the school committee policy. In an unexpected split of votes, Biancheria, Johnson, Molly McCullough (district A), Roy and Mayor Joe Petty all voted against the motion.

Cell Phone Policy Reconsideration. Member McCullough filed for reconsideration of the cell phone policy approved at the May 16 school committee meeting because with Mayor Petty absent, the 5-3 vote did not meet the two-thirds needed for amending a policy, according to school committee rules. At the June 6 meeting the vote was reconsidered and passed 6-3. Reconsideration is something school committee members can do within 48 (business) hours of a vote.

Recommended reads.

• A nice story about the the 2024 High School Valedictorians

• The Mass Budget and Policy Center came out with a report on how inflation is impacting school district budgets. It’s a dense read, but here are more digestible coverage about it from the Telegram and Masslive

• A disappointing story of a Worcester Parent who said her kids endured racism and was removed from Midland Street School

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

• School Committee Meeting is July 18, 5:30 p.m. at City Hall

• Finance, Operations and Governance is TBD.

• Teaching, Learning and Student Supports will not meet in July.

Also.

Lots of new families joining WPS this fall, please share this newsletter with them!

Have a great start to the summer! See you next month.