WPS School Committee Agenda Preview
Preview of the agendas for the first two school committee meetings of the new term, January 2 and January 4, 2023.
THE JANUARY 4th MEETING HAS BEEN CANCELLED. NEXT MEETING IS ON THE 18th.
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!