School Committee Agenda Preview
School Committee Agenda Preview
A preview of the agenda for the January 18th Worcester School Committee meeting.
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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.