WPS in Brief: September 2024
Superintendent’s Goals, School Choice, Proposed New Voke Admissions Policy, MCAS, Renaming of Chandler Magnet
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Welcome to the September 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:
Superintendent’s Goals.
At the September 19th meeting the school committee approved the superintendent’s goals for the 2024-2025 school year in a 6-3 vote with Member Dianna Biancheria (district C), Member Maureen Binienda (at-large), and Member Kathi Roy (district E) voting against. The process is similar to how other school administrators are evaluated, with a key difference that the superintendent is evaluated by a collection of people (the committee), and it’s done in public meetings. This is the first time that Superintendent Monárrez is proposing goals since the five year strategic plan was approved, and she outlined how they align with that plan by matching the goals to one of the six priority areas (shown below).
Superintendents are required by the state to have three goals: one district goal, one student goal, and one professional goal. Like last year, Dr. Monárrez created two district goals, one above the requirement. The first district goal is:
Caption: screenshot of a slide form the Superintendent’s Report from the September 19th school committee meeting outlining one of the district goals.
Dr. Monárrez noted that this goal is essentially the same as last year because she didn’t think she achieved it. (I cannot tell you how rare it is to hear a leader in Worcester publicly acknowledge failure and own it). I encourage you to watch this clip from this process last year, when Committee Member Jermaine Johnson (then at-large) shares his experience having just one black teacher during his time as a student in WPS, and then reflects that his daughter has never had one. He says, “Damn, thirty something years later, my daughter is now in 9th grade and she has not sat in front of a teacher that looks like her. Thirty something years later and we’re having this conversation.”
The second district goal is:

Dr. Monárrez mentioned that the DESE rubric for superintendents does not have much in the way of facilities, but that improving school facilities continues to be a high need and a priority. One way the superintendent wants to do this is to codify the equity budget process, or thinking about “what we might need to do for the schools that need a little bit more.” And also ensuring that the district spends what the foundation budget allocates for facilities, so that “we do not use a lack of funding as an excuse to not provide facilities that our children and our staff deserve.”
The student goal is:

In terms of instruction, the Superintendent emphasized that she wants to make sure that the materials the staff have represent the students in our district; that students are also given opportunities for meaning making; and that they have ample opportunities to show what they know in more than one format and in more than one language. She added, “not every day, not every moment, there’s no way that will happen every time, but we can be more intentional about that.” The goal’s focus on the specific grades and demographics aligns with the strategic plan.
And finally the professional goal is:

In reference to her professional goal, Dr. Monárrez emphasized that for the strategic plan and Vision of a Learner to happen, the adults need to be working together in a specific way to create throughlines. Her professional goal focuses on that adult learning taking place in the district.
The Superintendent will report on these goals at the mid-year mark (usually December) and again at the end of the year (in June), when she will be evaluated by the committee.
Back to School Report.
The Superintendent’s Report from the September 5th school committee meeting covered the start of school, including a more diverse and varied school food menu, safety improvements like vestibules at some schools, and the fact that bus routes got out to families on August 1, three weeks earlier than last year. Superintendent Monárrez also touched on enrollment, specifically that kindergarten enrollment is higher than it’s been since before the pandemic. In a state where funding is tied to how many students you have, enrollment being up is great for next fiscal year, but creates challenges for this one. The superintendent said there is concern that enrollment has led to larger class sizes at about 10 schools and they were working to address that.
Inter-District School Choice.
There was a report at the September 23rd Finance, Operations and Governance subcommittee meeting (FOG) around inter-district school choice, which is a state law that allows districts to decide if they want to allow students from other districts to enroll. Worcester currently accepts school choice students, although last year far more school-choiced out of the district (512) than into it (162). Once a student is accepted into the district via school choice, the law requires that they must be allowed to stay in the district until graduation. Where it gets murky is the school committee’s own policy around this, as it’s not clear if that gives the right to stay at a particular school or just stay within the district. The distinction could matter, given that Worcester residents requesting intra-district school choice (to go to a school outside their neighborhood school) are not guaranteed the same right to stay at that school, as demonstrated by the issues at Midland Street. If, say, there are openings in kindergarten at West Tatnuck or Flagg St. (and what defines “openings” is not clear either. There does not seem to be a written policy around a class-cap for school choice. Is it 22? 25?) one could argue that families within the district should be told of those openings and be allowed to opt in before families outside of Worcester. The challenge across the board with all this, though, is that there is no transportation provided for students with inter-district school choice or intra-district school choice, so that limits access.
MCAS.
The EAW, the educators’ union, had a public petition at the September 5th school committee meeting requesting the committee to pass a resolution to replace the MCAS as a public school graduation requirement and it passed 6-2. The Telegram covered the deliberation in detail. Bill Shaner offers his take here.
Renaming Chandler Magnet.
The only item on the agenda for the September 18th Finance, Operations and Governance (FOG) Subcommittee Meeting was the proposed new name for the school currently known as Chandler Magnet. The school is getting renamed because La Familia and Chandler Magnet schools merged last fall, when the La Familia Dual Language School lost their building space after the Diocese of Worcester canceled the lease early. Last school year, the merged school community (staff, students, families) went through a voting process, and in April the proposed name of La Familia on Chandler Multicultural School went to the school committee.
At the June 13th FOG standing committee meeting, school committee members Jermaine Johnson (district F) and Molly McCullough (district A)said they heard from a few people that there was concern about losing the Chandler Magnet name given the history of the school, and they felt that there needed to be more community input. They asked the Latino Education Institute (LEI) to facilitate a community input meeting which happened in August. No one from outside the school community attended that meeting.
From there, the administration put together a survey, requesting feedback from the community about coming up with a new name or not. It is from the results from that survey, which was split 50/50 to keep the La Familia on Chandler name vs. coming up with a new name, that the subcommittee came up with three new names for the community to vote on: Nuestra Dual Language Magnet School, Worcester Dual Language Magnet School and La Chandler Familia Magnet School. In the voting survey the third name was changed to La Familia Chandler Magnet School because of concerns around grammatical accuracy, although the subcommittee did not vote on that name. It’s not clear who has the purview to make that decision outside of a public meeting. I am on the school site council for Chandler Magnet/La Familia, so if you are interested in more background and history on the names and the naming process, check out my twitter thread. A proposed name will come back to the school committee for a vote.
Proposed New Vocational (Chapter 74) Education Acceptance Policy.
At the September 26th Teaching, Learning and Student Success (TLSS) subcommittee meeting, members discussed a proposed vocational education acceptance policy for the chapter 74 programs at Worcester Tech and the comprehensive high schools (available at North, South and Doherty). The proposed policy changes include:
—Any student who is not a resident of Worcester, but is attending WPS through the state inter-district school choice program prior to 9th grade, is eligible to apply. This seems to conflict with school committee policy JFBB which states the condition “That resident students be given priority placement in any classes or programs within the District.”
—A timeline change that opens the application on the first day back from winter break in January and then closes it in February, on the final school day prior to February break. The selection process will occur by lottery on the second Wednesday of March and the results will be available immediately. This updated timeline would allow selections to happen earlier and allows for better timing for student scheduling.
—In the selection process students are tiered according to attendance and discipline. Proposed changes to the selection tiers to better align with district policy as shown below:
Again this is a proposed policy. It still needs to be voted on by the full school committee.
Last Year’s Budget.
At the September 23rd Finance, Operations and Governance Meeting (FOG), there was a review of the FY24 finances. You might remember back in February that there was a projected end of year deficit of $350,000, mostly because of McKinney Vento homeless student transportation and employee health insurance. At the end of the fiscal year (June 30) both those accounts were in the red with transportation at -$2.7 million and health insurance at -$2.3 million. You might also remember that back in October, the state cut the district’s budget by $830,000. This is mostly because the final state budget underfunded the charter school reimbursement by $688,455 (Charter schools continue to be a financial drain on our district, while the public has no say at all in their budget or governance!) To make up for the deficit, the administration used surplus from other line items, as well as $1.8 million that was transferred from the city to the district to meet the city’s compliance for the net school spending shortfall.
Facilities.
The facilities department gave an overview of the maintenance and capital projects they worked on through the summer, including bathroom, HVAC, floor and ceiling replacements, and ADA upgrades. According to the report, the district and the city continue to meet monthly to have high level discussions about “space allocation, potential consolidations, adaptive reuse, and strategic planning.” For the last year there have been mentions at school committee meetings and subcommittee meetings around changing school catchment zones and potential school consolidations. As someone who vividly remembers how angry all the adults were when redistricting happened when I was in elementary school, I just want to keep mentioning it so people are aware that this is a conversation we are going to have to have soon. An updated facilities plan is scheduled to be discussed at the January 2nd school committee meeting.
Bits and Bobs
According to the back up in the September 5th school committee meeting Member Molly McCullough’s (district A) spouse was recently hired as a climate and culture specialist at Burncoat High School, which creates a new conflict of interest for her, and was why she recused herself from that vote.
As part of the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) process for building a new Burncoat, the district must present vocational programs for the feasibility study. Further along in the process these will be refined, but putting these in the feasibility study means that Burncoat, which does not currently have vocational programs, will most likely have them in the future. A reminder that a new Burncoat most likely won’t be finished until current first graders are entering seventh grade.
The $6.5 million project to replace windows at Worcester East Middle is on track to start over the summer of 2025 and will be completed in the summer of 2026. The project is grant funded, but must stay within the 30% valuation rule or it will trigger required ADA upgrades that the district cannot afford. Challenges to staying within that valuation include hazardous materials abatement, materials cost, meeting energy codes, and the fact that the school is on the historic register. That could mean not all the windows will be replaced.
To read.
With the recent safety threats last week—which continue to be deemed not credible—I wanted to bring back a piece from last year by WPS Parent Kevin Koczwara called “I Keep Waiting for it to Happen to Us.”
Recommending a book for the first time! Just finished The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual, written by a historian and journalist duo from Massachusetts. It’s a great primer on core issues driving the culture wars in education.
Jim McGovern supports eliminating MCAS as a public high school graduation requirement.
Upcoming dates.
All school committee meetings have virtual options with Spanish translation, see the school committee site for more information.
School Committee meetings are October 10 and October 24, 6pm.
Finance, Operations and Governance is October 21, 5pm.
Teaching, Learning and Student Support is October 28, 5pm.
Also.
WPS in Brief will take a pause for October. In the 22 months I’ve been writing this blog I haven’t taken a month off, but I need to focus on some other things. I’ll be sure to include anything vital from October in my November brief. See you in November!
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