There’s been a fascinating discussion among Yahoo group members of Somerville-4-Schools. It started with a new parent complaining about back-to-school communications being lacking in some respects, but lead to some encouraging words from parent Melissa McWhinney (see below), and finally this great endorsement of the School Council’s efforts at Somerville High by Joe Beckmann:
Melissa’s letter is the best testament to a school system in change, quite massively, toward the best possible public system in the nation. She leaves only a few ends I may be able to complementarily tighten up.
First, every school in the state has a School Improvement Council. Those Councils are a result of Ed Reform in 1993 (Link to PDF document), which also spawned the MCAS, and in most circumstances statewide have become rubber stamps for superficial and marginal changes. That’s not the case in the High School, and that could/should be the model, since those Councils have unique statutory power used only rarely. They must approve each school’s annual “School Improvement Plan.” That Plan could include things like a welcome package, as well as serious curriculum, staffing, space, and scheduling changes, parent outreach, and strategic fund raising. In fact, the Council approval is both critical to the school, the school system and, ultimately, the city, since the School Committee cannot approve a budge! t until ALL the Councils approve their schools’ plans and budgets. In other words, each School Council has a veto on the school system as a whole, and thereby on the city budget as well. That is the law, and that has been universally ignored - except at the High School where the approval was substantive, creative, engaging, and not in the least trivial. Yet it is up to you - as parents or, like me, as an interested volunteer - to get on the council and give it your voice. I can say with confidence that the High School Council has been the best, the most inclusive, and the most effective community group I’ve ever seen in Somerville, in Cambridge, in Boston, and in Chicago where I’ve seen hundreds of such groups.
Second, the Councils are an excellent vehicle for additional participation, if you’ve time and networks to contribute. In other words, they are useful for your opinion catching, but they are even more useful if you can bring other resources to the school and work those resources through the Council. At the High School, for two examples, I’ve seen some brilliant ideas by teachers and counselors that I could help promote in cities like Boston, Chelsea, Malden, and New York. One such idea is the High School’s re-direct program where kids having adjustment issues get early and direct help with counselors, teachers, and older teens in a tutoring/mentoring classroom. That’s a normal good idea, but, given that it is done within existing budgets, it’s a brilliant idea that most schools would dismiss as “too expensive.”
For a second example, the Council has created action committees, and I’m involved in bringing the best collegiate/university resources to the school in whatever form they can contribute to its improvement. In fact, that now includes two initiatives from MIT - one from the Media Lab where a nationally funded program offers professional development in the most sophisticated of media literacy initiatives, complemented by media production capacity adapted from a very successful Boston partner, Home, Inc. and the other from a group of MIT graduates and undergraduates who hope to design and produce materials for a new pre-engineering initiative independently invented by th! e SHS faculty over the next year. I’ve also identified a brilliant alternative testing resource at Tufts that is already well advanced in creating measures of creativity, practicality and wisdom, that are statistically valid and powerfully inclusive of very exciting skills identified early and reinforced with skill and care. (Their definition of wisdom - “anticipating consequences on behalf of others” - is indicative of the care and insight that program involves.)
These are extremely powerful innovations. They reflect careful planning and remarkably creative minds at many different levels, focused on improving schools at their core. Along with an approach to vocational education that is already nationally recognized, and central to the “touch and feel” of secondary education in any setting, an attendance policy that is both humane and very sensitive to problems and resources of families’ and kids’ responsibilities, and an alignment of guidance, houses, and support systems that is unique in my experience of 40 years in secondary/postsecondary planning and education, this is a seriously innovative school and school system. Given the diversity of this community, the innovations proven effective here could substantially transform all of American public education in a relatively short time - given the internet, kids’ capacity to document those innovations, and teachers’ enthusiasm and excitement in developi! ng those innovations.
While Boston writhes with expensive and redundant “innovations,” Somerville does them with grace and impact; while Cambridge costs $18,000 per kid for a system layered with redundant staffing and overwrought politics, Somerville proves schools have remarkable capacity for change by building on their own strength and talent; and while New York and Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia face receiverships and more and more external, intrusive, and ineffective bullying from the BU’s of their cities, Somerville can pick and choose among the most brilliant educators in the nation, the most creative students, and the most effective ideas.
I was brought up in Winnetka, where the Winnetka Plan was the core of substantial K-12 educational reform in the 1930’s and 1940’s, nationally. The town, frankly, made Weston and Newton seem a little like Brockton and Fall River, when it comes to ed reform. Somerville is a much, much more effective model and demonstration city, where the innovations come from within, build on experience that weaves immigrants, refugees, working class and modern entrepreneurs into a real community that shares a common interest in how children learn, and deep and sustaining innovation has a rich and welcoming home.
You’d be very silly to invest too much in too much private alternatives. A host of the collegiate partners we are bringing to SHS are escaping from just those sites to work with the range of kids Somerville offers, and prove their ideas in real-world school settings.
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Joe Beckmann
On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 9:30 PM, Melissa McWhinney wrote:
Dear all:I realize that this doesn’t help parents of children just entering the school system, but we just got a rather comprehensive package of information from the high school for our student. It includes a letter from Headmaster Tony Ciccariello, schedules for the first day and thereafter, information about how to change a student’s schedule, starting dates for school sports (some of which are in August), dates for PTA meeting for the entire year (!), nomination forms for the School Improvement Council, and an emergency contact sheet. Certainly parents of child about to enter the school system should be getting such as package as well. This is much more than we used to get from schools — we would be lucky to find out about important information a week in advance. (We used to joke that the schools thought that every home had a non-working parent.)
Also, for those whose children are about to embark on the adventure of public school, I will tell you that I was convinced that Sophie (now 17 and very self-assured, but at the time rather timid) would be beaten up in an alley behind the school on her first day of first grade. Nothing like that happened then, and nothing like that has happened since. But I certainly remember the trepidation, and I feel for you. It’s only the beginning of letting go. But I also feel sure that your children will be fine.
Sophie’s experience, and Ruth’s, has been mostly positive. (Brown School, then Kennedy, where Ruth is going into 8th grade, and the high school for Sophie — she’s a senior.) We know kids in private schools, and their experiences, also, have been mostly positive, but a lot more expensive too. The non-positive pieces have not been awful, mostly disappointments here and there with curriculum or quality of teaching. And that happens too in private schools and in suburban schools (including Newton and Lexington, with which we’re quite familiar, not only from our family’s and friends’ experiences in the past, but from friends currently attending.) Our children remain happy and engaged, which is much more than I can say about my husband’s and my experience in our very good suburban school districts. (Newton, and Cheltenham, PA, at the time one of the top 10 schools districts in the nation.! ) Neither of us really star ted learning until we hit graduate school.
I also have to say that we made a choice to stay in Somerville and in the public schools. I’m a lawyer; I could have made a ton of money, and bought our way into a fabulous school system or a private school. But I think I’ve served my children in a different, and better way, by putting them in the public schools and investing myself in them, alongside my kids. My kids see how to make change, and how to work through problems, and how to make the world better. They would not have had those life skills had we bought into a school system where everything is smooth and nicely packaged. And unless you’re really, really well-off, and one parent can afford to stay home with younger kids while paying a Newton or Lexington or Brookline mortgage, your kids will miss out on your being around because you’re off working to pay for school! So factor that in as well.
I am convinced that our schools are in the midst of a change for the better. Somerville schools used to be very closed to parents and other “outsiders”, and school staff used to present themselves as the “experts”, into whose hands you delivered your children each day. Now the walls have come down. Talk to your School Committee person; talk to the Mayor; talk to the principals; talk to Superintendent Pierantozzi. Tell them what you want. Help them get it.
I’m not going to offer to organize this, but I would love to see an adjunct advisory group to the school committee, made up of parents who work on these large issues of communication. The school administration staff are overwhelmed, I’m sure, like all of us who work in the non-profit world, and I’m sure they would welcome some help in thinking about these things and doing them. It’s been done school-by-school, but it needs to be done citywide. Surely by next September, each school could put together a welcome packet for parents.
My children are strong and smart and savvy about people and will be successful in their lives, I’m sure. Part of that is because we’re good and very involved parents, but a large part of that is because of the schools. Sophie was admitted to a rather exclusive private high school, and we chose Somerville High School instead. My only regrets are the ones that all parents feel about every choice they make for their child, but I certainly don’t feel that we’ve made a bad choice in sending her to the public school, just a different one. And there’s one thing you couldn’t buy in a private school, which is the people Sophie is friends with at the high school — they cover nearly every nation and economic class, and talent, and interest. So Sophie, thanks to public education, is extremely well-equipped to move through the world for the rest of her life, feeling comfortable with who she is and not b! eing afraid of anyone because of who they are. That’s priceless.
Plus she can have her own life in Somerville as she has grown into it. Her friends from Lexington are jealous that (1) she doesn’t have to beg her parents for the car in order to see friends — she walks or takes the bus, and (2) she and her friends gather in Davis Square and hang out. It’s a great step toward independence. There’s no place to do that in Lexington or Newton. It may not mean much to the parents of kindergarteners, but it means a lot to her, and to me, because there’s only limited trouble she can get into in Davis Square, as opposed to the trouble kids get into if they can only be together in cars or kids’ houses, in the suburbs. (Which reminds me that our closest Lexington friend, about to go into 11th grade at the high school there, reports that there’s a huge drinking problem at Lexington high school. That’s why Lexington no longer allows kids to drive to the prom — they drive to the high s! chool and are bussed to the prom and back, after which they get into cars and . . ..)
I could write a dissertation about our experience with the schools, but I really don’t want to, so instead you get my ramblings which practically amount to a badly-organized and poorly thought-out dissertation. However, I would be happy to talk anyone about our experience, so feel free to get in touch if you’d like. 617-776-4783 at home, 617-623-1392 x. 108 at work.
Best,
Melissa McWhinney
Posted in Schools and Youth
