Sadly, we believe that the
Worcester School Committee needs a significant shakeup. In our three decades in Worcester we have
never before been as disappointed as we are now with the incumbent members of
the School Committee. It has become
increasingly apparent in the last year that, despite the sincere efforts of
many excellent and well-intended educators, our public school system is failing
many of our students; we can and must do better; but most of the current School
Committee members have opted for business as usual with a little bit of lip
service to improvement.
Tuesday’s preliminary election
will remove only one of the 13 candidates; you get to vote for up to 6.
Of the five incumbent members of
the school committee seeking re-election, we feel strongly that only Jack
Foley deserves our support. The field
of challengers this year includes some candidates with a wealth of experience
and many with perspectives that need to be heard. Among them, our strongest recommendations are
for Cara Berg Powers and Tracy O’Connell Novick. (Full disclosure: we have both volunteered a lot on Cara’s
campaign.) It appears that Laura Clancey
is the one challenger who is most in line with the incumbents and that the
business-as-usual establishment is backing her. We feel she would not be a good
addition to the body. Among the other five,
it is not clear who are the strongest voices, and all would be an improvement
over the incumbents.
Why Cara Berg Powers? She knows the Worcester schools both as an
alumna and as a parent. Cara has worked
closely with urban youth for over a decade, she has made it her business over
several years to thoroughly understand education policy, and she has in-depth
knowledge and ideas about how to meet complex needs of a diverse student body. Her
viewpoint is to treat all children as if they are your own. She has knocked on thousands of doors all
spring and summer and has listened to hundreds of parents and other concerned community
members; she has specific plans to make sure these voices continue to be heard.
Why Tracy O’Connell Novick? She combines an exhaustive knowledge of
education policy and funding streams with a fierce dedication to equity for all
students. She knows what is possible and
what kind of educational opportunities we can be expected to provide for our
students. We can count on her to use her
deep understanding to hold the school department and its leadership accountable.
Two major issues have exemplified
the need for change on the School Committee.
1)
Sex education. Comprehensive, age appropriate, evidence-based
sex education saves lives, empowers young people to take charge of choices that
profoundly affect their futures, and has been shown to reduce teen sexual
activity. By state law, any such program
includes a parental opt out provision. It
is unconscionable that in Worcester we have none of it in our public schools,
while the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases has been rising
dramatically since 2015 and Worcester’s teen pregnancy rate is significantly
above the state average. The Worcester
Impact on Sexual Health (WISH) Task Force was convened in 2017 to find an
appropriate curriculum for Worcester schools.
Composed of a broad base of community groups and
health organizations, WISH engaged in an exhaustive and community-based
process, eventually recommending three viable curricula. One of these was deemed to be a political hot
potato because it was associated with Planned Parenthood. The curriculum that was ultimately
recommended was scuttled by School Committee members. Chaired by Brian O’Connell with additional
members John Monfredo and Molly McCullough, the subcommittee that was supposed
to hold a public hearing on the curriculum abruptly cancelled the meeting when
the hearing was to take place. O’Connell
and Monfredo went public with criticisms of the curriculum, convincing
Superintendent Binienda to pull it.
McCullough did nothing to blow the whistle. In contrast, Jack Foley criticized the
cancellation of the hearing. You can
read more details of how this all happened here
and here. This is beyond lack of leadership. It is moving us in a regressive, dangerous
direction. At a public forum earlier
this week, we heard Senator Harriette Chandler speak passionately on this
issue: that it is unconscionable to put
political pressures before the lives of children. We agree with Senator Chandler, and that is one
major reason we recommend replacing these incumbents.
2)
Racial disparities in educational
opportunities and discipline. These
issues are by no means unique to Worcester, but we need better leadership to
address them. We have been involved in
the local struggle around this perhaps more closely than many of you, so we
will share our experience and perspective.
There are several links to go into the weeds.
Both anecdotal reports of students’ lived experience
and data collected over the last several years shows that public schools around
the country, including the Worcester Public School system, have not lived up to
their obligation to many of their students. Worcester’s school population
is about 70% students of color. There are marked disparities between
white students and students from communities of color in both educational
achievement and the way they are disciplined. In 2017-2018, Worcester’s
students were predominantly Latino (42.9%). English Language learners (ELs, students where
English is not the predominant language in their homes) comprised a third
(32.8%) of our student population. Our
ELs have the highest dropout rate at 5%, followed by Latino students, of whom
3.4% dropped out of school. Latino
students have the highest chronic absenteeism (19.9%) and disciplinary
exclusion (11.5%) rates. These numbers
come from Massachusetts’ Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
(DESE). All of this suggests that
Worcester Public Schools are failing our students of color, particularly our
Latino students and English Language learners.
The Worcester Coalition for Education Equity (WCEE) was
formed to address these issues, calling for several steps to remedy the problems.
They hoped that school department leadership and its elected oversight body –
the School Committee – would receive feedback and constructive suggestions for
improvement with open minds and an eagerness to address the issues. What
they encountered instead from the School Department was defensiveness,
withholding of key data, and disregard for the expertise of community
stakeholders from different racial/ethnic groups.
When WCEE issued
a statement outlining the problems, offering a range of constructive action
steps, and calling for the School Committee not to renew Superintendent
Binienda’s expiring contract, several School Committee members responded with
defensiveness and outrage. Dianna
Biancheria told
Hank Stolz that WCEE was “pointing fingers” and “throwing a log on the fire;”
saying that she didn’t know who the statement came from even though it came out with
23 signatories on it several days before this conversation. (Hank
also spoke with Isabel Gonzalez-Webster, who
laid out how WCEE came to its recommendations, so you can hear why WCEE felt
the need for action.)
What followed got convoluted with a lot of people
getting upset about accusations of racism, even though WCEE tried to keep the
focus on structural racism and what could be done about it. Mayor Petty tried to defuse the situation by
issuing this
statement accepting many of the recommendations of WCEE. The School Committee, clearly unwilling to
outright vote against renewal of Superintendent Binienda’s contract, could have
taken action steps to actualize Mayor Petty’s statement. They could have given her a one-year contract
with specific benchmarks to meet the conditions outlined, with further renewal
contingent on meeting them. But that
wasn’t what happened. Instead they
extended her contract for three years, with a substantial raise, with no
conditions written into it. The vote was
5-2 (the Mayor gets a vote) with Petty, O’Connell, Monfredo, McCullough, and
Biancheria voting in favor, and Jack Foley and Dante Comparetto voting against. (Dante Comparetto is not seeking
re-election.) Members of several
communities of color felt that this had been a slap in the face. We agree and believe that the School
Committee members who voted in the affirmative should not be re-elected.
If you want to learn more about the candidates’ views,
you can browse the Worcester
Education Collaborative’s online candidate forum .
To clarify our recommendations, you can vote for up to
six candidates in the preliminary for Worcester School Committee on Tuesday,
September 10. Polls are open from 7 AM
to 8 PM.
We would enthusiastically urge a vote FOR:
Cara Berg Powers
Jack Foley (incumbent)
Tracy O’Connell Novick
We sadly but strongly urge you to vote AGAINST:
Dianna Biancheria (incumbent)
Laura Clancey
Molly McCullough (incumbent)
John Monfredo (incumbent)
Brian O’Connell (incumbent)
Finally, we believe that all of the remaining
challengers in this race would bring an improvement over the incumbents we have recommended against.
We realize that these are complicated issues and
everyone has their own thoughts, feelings, and perceptions about them. We are very willing to discuss them further –
feel free to contact us.
Sincerely,
Margot Barnet and David Coyne
