Brick School task force volunteers sought

As part of the vote to keep the Brick School open for the 2007-08 school year, the School Committee decided to form a task force to study the school’s long-term financial viability.  In doing so, the Committee is looking for people who may be interested in serving on that group.

In addition to financial vibility, the task force will study handicapped-accessibility, alternative uses for the building, grant funding,

The task force will include those who want to keep the school open and those who want to close it for financial and other reasons.

Volunteers interested in serving should submit their applications by delivery to the Superintendent’s office or via e-mail to the School Committee (click here for e-mail) by July 7, with selections to be announced at the July 10 meeting.

Goodbye textbooks?

What if Napster stocked textbooks? In this video (click here), engineering professor Richard Baraniuk talks about his vision for Connexions, an open-source system that lets teachers share digital texts and course materials, modify them and give them to their students — all free, thanks to Creative Commons licensing.

Baraniuk has a giant vision: to create a free global online education system that puts the power of creation and collaboration in the hands of teachers worldwide. He’s realizing that vision with Connexions, a website that allows teachers to quickly “create, rip, mix and burn” coursework — without fear of copyright violations.

Connexions’ open-source system cuts out the textbook, allowing teachers to share course materials, modify existing work and disseminate it to their students — all for free, thanks to Creative Commons licensing. Baraniuk envisions Connexions as a repository where the most up-to-date material can be shared and reviewed (it’s far more efficient than waiting for a textbook to be printed); it could become a powerful force in leveling the education playing field. Currently encompassing hundreds of online courses and used by a million people worldwide, Baraniuk’s virtual educational system is revolutionizing the way people teach and learn.

Stoneham cuts high school athletics

Budget woes continue to haunt Massachusetts communities.  In Stoneham, a failed override attempt has led to the complete elimination of high school athletics and music programs at elementary and middle school levels.  To view the Boston Globe report, click here.

All 54 coaching positions, the athletic director’s job, and elementary and middle school arts and music programs were eliminated last week by the Stoneham School Committee.  Winthrop made the same move in 2004, but boosters restored the program through donations, user fees, and gate receipts.

Like many communities, Stoneham has already endured a series of town and school cuts in recent years, as health insurance, utilities, special education bills and other mandated costs have risen faster than the tax increases allowed under the Proposition 2 1/2 limit. In each of the last two years, the Board of Selectmen imposed a $160-per-household trash collection fee to raise revenue. But the trash fee proved unpopular, and officials pledged to eliminate it if voters passed the $3 million override.  That override failed Tuesday by 237 votes. Statewide, an estimated 33 communities have rejected overrides in the spring.

Stoneham officials have explained the situation on BlueMassGroup.com which can be viewed by clicking here.

Day of financial reckoning

Today’s Boston Globe contained a very disconcerting op-ed piece entitled The Days of Financial Reckoning. It talked about communities throughout Massachusetts struggling to make ends meet in the face of higher costs. As the piece reported, taxpayers in municipalities throughout Massachusetts have faced higher property taxes and increased fees combined with diminished public services and deferred investments in infrastructure. As the authors noted, “Faced with this zero-sum game, the politics of local government has turned increasingly sour.”

This certainly rings true in Franklin. We were forced to pass a $2.7 million override, and at the same time had to diminish public services. We need to continue working together with state and local officials to ease the tax burden, reverse this trend, and save our vital services.

The authors did indicate, however, that there is reason to hope that this gloomy picture may improve. The authors cite a report entitled Communities at Risk which analyzed nearly all of the Massachusetts communities and how they are struggling. You can view the report by clicking here. They also cite proposals by Governor Deval Patrick to help municipal governments find other revenue options aside from property taxes.

Also to be considered in this discussion is the idea that some communities have been forced to resort to not only fees, but private fundraising for public education. In Franklin, we recently saw that only with donations from Garelick Farms and the Brick School Association of 100% of the costs could we keep our one room school house open for another year. The School Committee will be studying the effects of private funding for public resources over the next several months and developing policy on the issue.

Over in Northbridge, a group of parents is organizing to borrow $110,000 to donate to the schools to keep programs running. For more details and the Globe report on this effort, you can click here.  “It’s a risky precedent that we’re setting here when we move from a public education system to an adopt-a-classroom education system for the private sector,” Franklin School Committee’s Ed Cafasso said at our last meeting.

In accepting the funds for the Brick School, the School Committee stipulated that a task force be set up to study the future of the Brick School and the Policy Subcommittee will study the effect of targeted contributions.  In doing so, they were reminded by Superintendent Wayne Ogden that these “are not the only targeted gifts. We already accept targeted gifts for other purposes. So, this is not about the Brick School Association, per se. It’s about a whole practice of how we receive monies from outside sources to run things.”  Indeed, these methods of using private money point to an alarming trend and deserve serious and detailed review.

School Committee policies on-line

Several years ago, the School Committee talked of the prospect of getting its 3 inch thick policy manual online so that citizens in the community could have easy access to this information. At the beginning, technological limitations prevented an easy transition from paper to Web. With the easing of technology restrictions, budget constraints got in the way. Quotes from professional agencies came in too high and made the project cost prohibitive.

Enter Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School in Franklin, Massachusetts. School Committee member Cora Armenio happens work there under a federal grant that resides at the school. She checked with the powers that be at Tri-County, advised them of our plight, and received an offer from the Computer Information Services (CIS) class there to take on the task.

On Wednesday, June 4, 2007, the students at the school presented the fruits of their labor. For two months, Kim Zogalis’ ninth-grade CIS class at Tri-County converted Microsoft Word documents into Web-ready versions, created links to state laws and worked with computer programming languages such as JavaScript to make the “e-Manual” searchable.  You can view the on-line manual by clicking here.

The project was a win-win for the School Committee and the Tri-County school. The students gained real-world experience and community service credits, while the Town of Franklin saved thousands of dollars and gained unfettered access to the policies and procedures in effect in the Franklin schools.

Heartfelt thanks go out to the students and staff at Tri-County. We appreciate the opportunity to have engaged in this partnership, and hope to have the opportunity to work with them again.

The Milford Daily News did a story on the e-Manual project which can be viewed by clicking here.

Charter School LEP/SPED enrollment data

MA charter schools enroll a statistically significant smaller percentage of special needs and LEP students than their sending districts according to a study just released jointly by the MA Association of School Superintendents and Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

As noted in the Executive Summary of the report, Massachusetts has one of the most liberal charter school policies in the United States. As public schools, Massachusetts charter schools are obligated by law to indiscriminately educate all students, regardless of race, religion, nationality, and learning level. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, charter schools appear to disproportionately enroll certain types of students, as compared with the school districts the charter school serves. In particular, Special Education (SPED) and Limited English Proficient (LEP) students are underrepresented in the charter school system.

Utilizing Massachusetts Department of Education (DOE) data for school years 2004-2005, 2005-2006, and 2006-2007, a statistical analysis was performed to test the null hypothesis that charter schools enroll a proportional number of SPED and LEP students compared to their students’ sending district(s).

The results showed a strong bias within charter schools against the enrollment of SPED, and especially LEP students. The percentage of charter schools where the null hypothesis was rejected varied from 22% – 25% for SPED and from 82% – 88% for LEP over the three year period analyzed. From the perspective of SPED, the schools where the null hypothesis was rejected were serving 33% of the overall population in 2004 and almost 45% in 2006.

While it is certainly possible that this degree of under-representation was achieved through chance, the analysis shows that this is statistically unlikely. The results raise questions about whether SPED and LEP students have equal opportunities to enroll in charter schools. This study does not address why some charter schools do not have proportionate numbers of SPED and LEP students. However, this study does acknowledge that disproportionate SPED and LEP charter school populations have implications in key areas including school district finances and student achievement pursuits. Furthermore, the potential social and ethical implications are explored.

Click here to see a copy of the complete report.