WORCESTER—As has happened more than once in recent months, Mayor Joseph M. Petty questioned Worcester School Committee member Maureen Binienda’s motivation in addressing information provided by Superintendent Rachel H. Monárrez in her report on Student Academic Achievement at Thursday night’s meeting.
The flash point between Petty, who chairs the committee, and Binienda, who is Monárrez’s predecessor as superintendent, came after Binienda said she found some aspects of the Monárrez team’s presentation “confusing.”
The gist of a slide show offered by Monarrez, Marie Morse, Andrew Lampi and Marco Andrade was that Worcester Public Schools students’ performance indicators “flatlined like the rest of the country” during COVID. But since the introduction of MCAS 2.0, “over the last three years” Worcester’s numbers have stabilized and in some cases exceeded statewide averages in math and science — for example.
WPS met 46% of its targets in SY 24, compared to 41% in 2023, they said.
Asserting that establishing a “strong climate for learning is a must,” Morse said such components as a spark plan, coaches academy, Chapter 74 extensions, guidebooks, Vision of a Learner, Q teams, curriculum management and data dashboards—and other teaching and learning initiators, are raising “glimmers of possibilities and acceleration.”
Vision of a Learner “is not just a nice thing that looks good,” she said.
Also, WPS has “some of the finest coaches you can find anywhere.”
She noted too that “partially meeting” expectations should not be viewed as a negative; and that MCAS “is only one piece of the information. MCAS is not all or nothing.”
Monarrez acknowledged that “we are by no means where we want to be as a district. We mirror the state. For us, it’s about our 25,000 students. We have gaps, we know it. Chasing the accountability system is not going to get us anywhere.”
Binienda then ran through a list of 20 schools “I’m concerned about, No. 1 being North High.” In instance after instance, she cited drops in scores that have placed a number of these schools in need of intervention.
At one point, Petty said, “are you calling every school out?”
“No, just the ones I’m concerned about,” Binienda said.
Although Binienda made clear that she wasn’t blaming the schools’ teaching staff, she said she had to ask “what is really happening in these schools and what are we going to do about it?”
Staff development and training is missing, she said, as is support for staff, and some programs have been eliminated.
In her response, Monárrez said better teaching materials are being utilized and will make a difference. Morse added that “we have a comprehensive plan for each of these schools.”
Switching chairs with member and vice chairman Jermaine Johnson, Petty said he “didn’t stop it” — an apparent reference to Binienda’s comments — “because it would have made it worse. You can point fingers,” he said, but he was not happy about it.
Dianna Biancheria weighed in by saying that she looks at “what works and what doesn’t.” She said possibly the 20 schools that Binienda mentioned that are falling short of target could learn from the 24 schools that are doing better. She also pressed Morse about “what are our challenges” and Morse said Tier 1 “is top notch” in that regard.
Johnson when it was his turn asserted that “we’re forgetting context, we are all recovering” from the pandemic, “this isn’t about five or ten years ago, but now.”
Petty rose again to say “I don’t want people to think we don’t provide support to our teachers. That’s all we’ve been talking about for two years!”
Earlier in the meeting, the committee endorsed Molly McCullough’s recommendation that the Chandler Elementary Magnet School be renamed Worcester Dual Language Magnet School. Susan Mailman cast the dissenting vote, backing instead the administration’s suggestion of Noestra — as indicative that “Spanish is by far our largest language.”
Rod Lee is a career journalist, a veteran of the media scene in Central Massachusetts and the author of seven books including the recently published “Gil Cristopher,” a novel about the difficulties associated with aging. He can be contacted at rodlee1963@gmail.com
