WPS in Brief: Superintendent's Evaluation
WPS in Brief: Superintendent's Evaluation
Also a new elementary course, big staffing changes, and lots to read/listen to.
Welcome to the July issue of WPS in Brief. This month covers key topics from two school committee meetings. If you’re new here, it might be helpful to learn more about this newsletter.
Before we start, maybe throw a few dollars to teachers trying to get school supplies for the start the of the school year.
Let’s get to it:
Superintendent Evaluation.
The school committee evaluated the superintendent and she received an overall rating of “proficient,” which is defined by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) as “to be fully satisfactory..this is the rigorous expected level of performance. It is a demanding, but attainable level of performance.” The short of it is that the committee thinks that the Superintendent has done an excellent job this year in meeting the established goals, and lauded her skills in relationship building, her shift of the professional culture, and her strength in building systems to support students and teachers. In their comments, the committee highlighted her connections with the community, her strong working relationship with the committee, the lack of grievances taken up in executive session, and her priorities brought forth for this year’s budget. It was clear that the committee and the superintendent took this process seriously.
The meeting ended with the committee going into executive session to review the Superintendent’s contract. Mayor Petty commented that it was “to show our support and make sure that at the end of the day we have you [Dr. Monárrez] here for the long term.” So, I’m speculating it was to negotiate to extend her contract, which currently runs until 2025. That is a pretty big show of confidence. It felt wicked weird to watch a public meeting in Worcester where there was so much hope and positivity that wasn’t contrived. But repeat after me: Worcester can have nice things.
Meeting Moment.
In lieu of summarizing every committee member's comments, I thought Tracy O’Connell Novick’s were representative of what the others said. In her day job as a field director with Massachusetts Association of School Committee (MASC), she works with school committees across the state in the superintendent search and evaluation process, so her comments also comes from a place of expertise.
New Elementary Course.
The committee approved a new elementary world culture and language course to start for this coming school year. The course will be taught in K-6 grades and they are currently hiring teachers and training them to teach the course. Assistant Superintendent Dr. Marie Morse explained that they made the course to have something meaningful to fill the time created by the new teacher contract, where every teacher will now have five prep periods.
Staffing changes.
You can read about some big staffing changes in Tracy O’Connell Novick’s blog, but just to highlight two: WPS is hiring a new Director of Special Education and a Director of Multilingual Education. Check out all of Worcester Public Schools job postings here.
Another huge change is that the clerk of the school committee, Dr. Helen Friel, is retiring after 57 years working for WPS. The process for hiring the clerk job will be public, much like it was to hire the superintendent. There is a proposal on the table to change the position so that they report to the school committee rather than the superintendent.
Recommended Reads.
The new charter school, Worcester Cultural Academy, released it’s enrollment data. It’s about 70 students off the desired enrollment in their application. Tracy Novick did a financial breakdown of why this is a problem (that many folks predicted.) They were only able to fill two classes at the Kindergarten level, with just one class each planned for 1st-4th grade.
A Holy Cross professor was appointed to the state board of education (the same board that approved the charter school). Glad to see Worcester representation.
Listen to Sue Mailman talk about pay disparity for the school committee.
Don’t Touch My Podcast is doing a summer series with candidates running for election in Worcester. Highly recommend their interviews with at-large incumbent Sue Mailman and incumbent Jermoh Kamara who is running in district C. More school committee interviews to come, I’m sure.
Upcoming Dates.
School committee candidate forum at the Boys & Girls Club of Worcester, August 2, 6-7:30pm. Hosted by the Worcester Community Labor Coalition.
School Committee Meeting, August 17, 4pm
All school committee meetings have virtual options with Spanish translation, see the school committee site for more information.
Also.
Make sure you note the new 2023-2024 school calendar, which includes days off for election days in November and March.
Thanks for reading. If you find WPS in Brief valuable, please share it with your friends. If you’d like to support my work you can send me a tip. See you in August.