Good morning. We hope your week went well and this week is even better! Last week the School Department issued a memo prohibiting political work on your school time and in your school facility at any time. We’re checking out the memo, but in the meantime, here’s what you CAN do regardless of the memo:
- WE CAN wear our buttons and stickers anytime.
- WE CAN put a bumper sticker on our car or a sign in our car windows.
- WE CAN leaflet on the school sidewalk provided we are doing this on our own non-school time.
- WE CAN — and will — have our walk-in before school on October 6. Please remember to sign up your school.
- WE CAN do what we wish as private citizens outside of school facilities and on our own time.
Please help our public schools. Wear a button, place a sign, send a postcard, make a phone call. Tell 10 friends and relatives to vote No on 2. See the section below for more ideas and opportunities. Thank you. See our latest ad! And check out this awesome new Q2 video.
Yesterday afternoon the state released 2016 Assessment and Accountability Results.
The state moved Excel High School, part of the former South Boston Complex, and Brighton High School, one of our few remaining comprehensive district high schools, into Turnaround status. The Mattahunt Elementary, currently in Turnaround status, has been designated a Turnaround under review school and its status is being reviewed. More will be known about the Mattahunt in the next week or so. (Read more.)
District officials got a heads up late last week and they, along with union officials, were present at all three schools yesterday to explain what the newly-designated status will mean to both Excel High School and Brighton High School, while explaining the outcome of the review the Mattahunt faces.
The BTU will be running workshops, along with the school district’s OHC office, over the next month designed to answer questions, work with potentially displaced teachers/staff on resume writing and interviewing techniques, and so on. More information will be forthcoming.
The moving of schools from one status to another is inherently subjective, often trivial, and leaves much up to the discretion of DESE.
Here’s something else to ponder: Boston Latin School and their Roger Clap were each downgraded from Level I to Level II because 13 students at BLS and 2 at the Clap opted out of the PARCC exam. (Read more in the Globe.) Opting out of the PARCC is a legal activity, and although students cannot be punished, their schools can be. As a result of these opt-outs – as insignificant as they were – both schools failed to meet the 95% threshold’s required for Level I. We can draw a few conclusions: DESE’s methodology is subjective, the drop in level for each school is meaningless, and perhaps we shouldn’t pay much attention to these level designations anyway. (See the DESE press release.)