Just a friendly reminder that WPS in Brief has transitioned over to Worcester Sucks and I Love it. The agenda preview for the February 15 school committee meeting is now posted over there. Check it out!

Agenda previews won’t be sent out to the whole Worcester Sucks mailing list. If you want to receive them in your inbox you’ll need to subscribe to Worcester Sucks (if you aren’t already!), go to Manage Subscription and toggle agenda preview to green.

Thanks for reading and have a great week!

The next school committee meeting is scheduled for Thursday, February 1. Executive session starts at 5pm and the general meeting is scheduled to start at 6pm, but actual start time depends on if there’s executive session and how long it takes. The full agenda is here. You can watch it via zoom or Facebook live.

Here’s a selected preview of the agenda:

Preliminary Budget Updates. There will be a report of the Superintendent on the FY25 budget (covers July 2024- June 2025) presented by Deputy Superintendent Brian Allen. This will give us the first glimpse of a budget year that will probably require some hard decisions. Preliminary estimates show that the general fund baseline budget for the 2024-2025 school year will have a $10.7 million increase.  The estimated budget cost increase (i.e. salaries, health insurance, retirement etc.) is $32.8 million. So we’re looking at a gap of $22.1 million. Here’s the presentation.

Reconsideration on graduation ceremony participation policy.
Member Maureen Binienda (at-large) filed for “reconsideration” on a policy item that allows students to walk at graduation if they are two credits short. The item passed 8-1 at the January 18th meeting, with Binienda the lone no vote.

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 are Binienda’s reasons (provided in the agenda backup):

As part of the January 18th meeting discussion about the policy, Assistant Superintendent Dr. Marie Morse—who has worked in WPS since 1988— explained, “our group, the executive directors, myself, polled the high school principals…and the high school principals agreed.” It appears through the above email that Binienda is implying that Dr. Morse mislead the committee and believes that “the correct information needs to be shared with the committee.” It’s not exactly clear what that “correct information” is.

For more context I asked WPS if they had an idea of how many students this new policy would apply to, and spokesman Dan O’Brien told me that there were six students who participated in the summer graduation ceremony last year. That’s just six students who did not have enough credits to graduate with their class, but had enough by the end of the summer. We’re talking a small handful of students here.

When this proposed policy was first discussed at the Governance subcommittee meeting, the administration wrote that there was no consistency between the schools and there was a need for district-wide guidelines. As Laura Clancey, previous school committee member who originally brought the item, said in her comments during the subcommittee discussion: “Graduation is a staple in a lot of our student’s lives and high school graduation sometimes is the only graduation that they will receive…So I think this will make a huge impact on students.”

In her comments against the policy Binienda said, “There’s rules in life you have to follow in order to achieve things.” I get the ‘rules are rules’ argument, although it did not sway any of her colleagues. I do want to note, though, that it’s an interesting one coming from someone who has already ignored school committee rules; as was the case when she voted for herself for vice chair, despite being ineligible.

Items on Discipline.

• Member Kathi Roy (district E) requests a report on the status of the “Turn it Around Drug Program”

• Member Dianna Biancheria (district C) requests an update on the “Safety Centers” for elementary and secondary.

• Member Binienda requests a report on the “number of hearings for discipline policy violations and number of students placed in alternative settings.”

Quinsigamond Elementary Traffic. Member Roy requests the administration work with the WPD traffic division to come up with a plan to relieve congestion at Quinsigamond Elementary during drop-off and pick-up.

Worcester East Middle. There is a public petition from ex-school committee member Jermoh Kamara to redesign Worcester East Middle into an innovation STEAM school that would include project-based learning.  It was on last meeting’s agenda but was held.

See you next month over at Worcester Sucks and I Love it. Please subscribe and support our work. Have a great week!

Subscribe now

The first full meeting of the new school committee is scheduled for Thursday, January 18th. Executive session starts at 5pm and the general meeting starts at 5:30pm. The full agenda is here. You can watch it via zoom or Facebook live. Mayor Petty canceled the January 4th meeting so this agenda has everything from that agenda.  The standing committees have still not been assigned, so it’s not clear when they will meet. 

Now to the fun stuff:

National Anthem. Nelson Place student, Angelo Gray, who sang the national anthem at the city’s inauguration exercises a few weeks ago, will sing it again at this meeting. In early 2023 the school committee started inviting students to sing and I have to say, it’s a much better way to start a meeting!

Buses (aka Transportation). The student advisory committee filed an item to review rules and regulations around buses and accessibility for all students, and also asked to consider changes to the amounts of students allowed on the bus.  For large school buses the secondary student capacity is 48 students (two per seat) and the elementary student capacity is 71 (three per seat). The current policy is that students who live under two miles from their school are not eligible for a bus. This is a strict cut off for middle and high school students, but for K-6 elementary students the policy says: "The district may also offer transportation to students living closer than two miles to the school to which they are entitled to attend for reasons of safety at the superintendent's or their designee's discretion." So in practice, if elementary students live more than a mile-ish from school, they probably will be eligible for a bus.  According to Massachusetts General Law, WPS is only required to provide transportation for K-6 students. And important to note from the WPS website re: preschool students: “bus transportation is not available for these programs unless your child receives transportation as part of their special education services.” Here is the full policy. 

There were two items similar to this discussed at the December Finance and Operations standing committee, one around decreasing the 2 mile distance for secondary students and the other a public petition (by me!) to consider a policy change around bus rider limits.  Both items were filed due to staffing shortages and budgetary constraints.

Worcester East Middle. There is a public petition from ex-school committee member Jermoh Kamara to redesign Worcester East Middle into an innovation STEAM school that would include project-based learning. 

Multilingual Update. There will be a report of the Superintendent on the Multilingual Program audit. It will be presented by Assistant Superintendent, Dr. Marie Morse, and the new Director of Multilingual Education, Jessica Mandes.

Two Namings. The committee will vote on two namings: to name the auditorium at the Durkin building after long time school committee clerk Dr. Helen Friel and to name the alternative program after Dr. Michael O’Neil.

Five administrative reports from at-large member Maureen Binienda:

• asking for a list of the 2023-24 allocation requests from all principals

• a report on the rental costs for all buildings, including the bus yard

• a report on the number of weapons/drugs confiscated and the number turned into the Worcester Police for the 22-23 and 23-24 school year 

• a report of the table of organization, names, salary and certification of all included

All these items will go back to administration to report on, except for the rental costs of all buildings will go to Finance, Operations, and Governance (FOG).

Roosevelt School traffic issues. District C member Dianna Biancheria requested an update on the work to be done to improve the Roosevelt School traffic issues. The last public update was at the September Finance and Operations subcommittee. If you want to hear the facilities department walk through all the potential solutions, you can watch that section of the meeting here.

Final FY24 (the 2023-2024 school year)

Budget Adoption.  With the city finalizing the tax-rate and accepting the city budget, WPS has a finalized general fund budget for the current school year. The final budget is $830,550 less than what had been adopted in June. This is mostly due to the final state budget underfunding the charter school reimbursement for Worcester by $688,455. To make up for the deficit, the administration is recommending transferring savings from the paraprofessional salary line due to vacancies. All this was initially reported at October’s finance and operations subcommittee meeting. 

New School Capital Maintenance Fund.  Also in the budget update is an update on a new capital fund established by the city with an initial $1 million appropriation. This fund will be used to supplement the annual capital (aka building) allocation, which is currently $4 million. The city council also approved an appropriation of $718,255 in a New High School Fund. The Superintendent has said that one of her goals is that by the end of June 2026 the district will have developed and identified an “on-going revenue stream for the WPS facilities master plan.” It seems this additional money is due to the ongoing meetings between the Superintendent, the City Manager, and their administrative teams.

If you made it this far, I’m proud of you! Have a great week.

This is my first attempt at previewing the school committee agendas. If you are a subscriber who only wants monthly updates about what happened at meetings, you can stop receiving these in your inbox by toggling it off. If you have feedback get in touch: wpsinbrief@susbtack.com

Now to the fun stuff:

January 2 Meeting
The school committee is officially inaugurated at 5pm on Tuesday, January 2 at South High School, but right before the ceremony they have a meeting at 4:30. There will be an “informal” vote to elect the Vice Chair, the seating order will be selected, and the committee will vote on adopting the new rules from the December 21 meeting. Here’s the agenda and here’s the link to zoom in.

The Vice Chair is the person who, in consultation with the Superintendent, works with the clerk to put together the agenda for each general meeting, ensuring that items on the agenda are in the purview of the school committee. The Vice Chair must also make sure that the student advisory committee meets every month and in the absence of the Chair (the Mayor) the Vice Chair runs school committee meetings.

January 4 Meeting.
The committee meets again at its normally scheduled time on Thursday, January 4. Executive session starts at 5pm and the general meeting starts at 5:30pm. The full agenda is here. You can watch it via zoom or Facebook live.

-Multilingual Update. There will be a report of the Superintendent on the Multilingual Program audit. No back up yet, but I will link it here if it’s up before the meeting.

-Two Namings. The report on the Governance and Employee Issues subcommittee brings two naming opportunities to a full committee vote: to name the Auditorium at the Durkin building after long time school committee clerk Dr. Helen Friel and to name the alternative program after Dr. Michael O’Neil.

-Five items from Maureen Binienda:

• asking for a list of the 2023-24 allocation requests from all principals

• a report on the rental costs for all buildings, including the bus yard

• a report on the number of weapons/drugs confiscated and the number turned into the Worcester Police for the 22-23 and 23-24 school year

• a report of the table of organization, names, salary and certification of all included

-Roosevelt School traffic issues. Dianna Biancheria requested an update on the work to be done to improve the Roosevelt School traffic issues. The last public update was at the September Finance and Operations subcommittee. If you want to hear the facilities department walk through all the potential solutions, you can watch that section of the meeting here.

-Final FY24 Budget Adoption. With the city finalizing the tax-rate and accepting the city budget, WPS has a finalized general fund budget for the current school year. The final budget is $830,550 less than what had been adopted in June. This is mostly due to the final state budget underfunding the charter school reimbursement for Worcester by $688,455. To make up for the deficit, the administration is recommending transferring savings from the paraprofessional salary line due to vacancies. All this was initially reported at October’s finance and operations subcommittee meeting.

-New School Capital Maintenance Fund. Also in the budget update is an update on a new capital fund established by the city with an initial $1 million appropriation. This fund will be used to supplement the annual capital allocation, which is currently $4 million. The city council also approved an appropriation of $718,255 in a New High School Fund. The superintendent has been clear that one of her goals is that by the end of June 2026 the district will have developed and identified an “on-going revenue stream for the WPS facilities master plan.” It seems this additional money is due to the ongoing meetings between the Superintendent, the city manager, and their administrative teams.

And props to the new clerk, Kristi Turgeon, who is linking backup items right in the agenda!

That’s it. Have a great weekend and happy new year!

Share

Subscribe now