Good day. We have a few things to note:Given the cancellation of school on Monday and Tuesday, we will have to schedule school on at least one previously-unscheduled school day to comply with the state mandate as well as the June 30end-date. We have opened up a conversation with the School Department as to how to schedule as many days as we might need, given the hardships, past and future, of winter.
The choices are obvious and range from the “okay-I-can-deal-with-it” to the “no-way-I-want-to-do-it.” The possible contingent choices mentioned from our end are June 17, March 17, Saturdays, and the last two half days of school. The school department has some of the same aforementioned ideas as well as other ones. Any change in the current schedule is subject to negotiations.
We will keep you posted before we begin any serious discussions with the school department, which will also have its own priorities for make-up days. To those members who have scheduled something for the April vacation, please — please — do not panic or worry. We understand very well that people have made non-refundable plans.
Of the remaining 20 or so schools that want to participate this year, the School Department, given budget restraints, decided to allow schools to participate only if they could share, in groups of three, buses that could be used for each of the three typical bus runs: 7:30,8:30 and 9:30. Otherwise, the addition of schools would require the placement of “new” bus routes, which come at a hefty cost, in the millions of dollars.
This wasn’t our decision to make, and we’d have preferred that more schools that volunteered could have been allowed to participate — but we understand it.
The alternative, which we didn’t like at all, was to bring in schools that didn’t volunteer. The dilemma for us was the following: In order for us to allow all schools that want to volunteer to participate in Phase 1, we would have had to require schools that didn’t want to volunteer to participate.
The final decision on which schools will enter the Phase 1 of ELT this September will be made shortly. We will still need to confirm the following:
- The school faculty has either voted for or shown consensus. Building Reps will have to affirm in writing.
- There is a School Site Council that is active and running. School Site Councils that exist on paper but not in practice are not active. To be active, a school site council must actually meet. School Site Council BTU members are in the process of being notified of this obligation as well as their council’s responsibilities for implementation. School Site Council members, we thank you for your help in this regard. (In notifying BTU School Site Council members, we will be using names and email addresses provided by the BPS.)
Potential School Closings, too, were in the news last week. Here’s the Globe report.
“Interim Superintendent John McDonough is proposing to close a “handful” of schools under a preliminary budget proposal for the next school year that he presented to the School Committee on Wednesday night.
“The $1 billion spending plan also calls for other cuts, such as streamlining menu offerings in school cafeterias and possibly ending bus service for most seventh-graders. The latter measure was approved by the School Committee last year but was put on hold in light of growing opposition from parents and elected officials…”
Math Rocks
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| Registration is Open |
will be held at the BTU on Thursday, April 2. This is a citywide mathematics competition for all schools that house either grades 4-5 and/or 6-8. See school registration information here. All BPS schools are eligible to participate. Please email Richard Stutman with questions.