On Friday,  February 3 the School Department handed out excess notices to the entire staff at Brighton High School, Excel High School (South Boston) and Mattahunt Elementary.

The Mattahunt school was closed by a vote of the Boston School Committee in the fall to avoid a state takeover. It’s a strategy that “worked” insofar as it was intended: It kept the Mattahunt school out of the clutches of the state. We place the word “worked” in quotes for good reason. The strategy may have worked, but a far better strategy would have been to involve the community and the staff to fight back against the state’s overreaching attempt to take over the school.

The Mattahunt School will be newly created. Read the full proposal.

The decision to hand out excess notices to all, not some, of the staff at Brighton and Excel is a decision that the School Department had control over. The department could have opted to withhold some of the excess notices, but it chose not to. Both schools were given notice a short while ago that they’d be entering turnaround status in September 2017. Both school communities immediately sprang into action, creating a Local Stakeholder Group (LSG) and planning for a future. Their reward: All staff were excessed, even though the law does not require it. Here’s what the law says:

(d) Notwithstanding any general or special law to the contrary, in creating the turnaround plan required in subsection (b), the superintendent may, after considering the recommendations of the group of stakeholders…. (7) following consultation with applicable local unions, require the principal and all administrators, teachers and staff to reapply for their positions in the school, with full discretion vested in the superintendent regarding his consideration of and decisions on rehiring based on the reapplications.

Long story short: The wholesale excessing of staff did not have to happen.

For a look at the thoughtful plans created by each school’s Local Stakeholder Group, see Brighton’s plan and Excel’s plan.

Read local coverage of the decision to excess staff at Brighton and Excel.