but haven’t you heard..it aint that simple:>)

Our School Committee is to old…we need some young blood on it that lives in the urban core of the city..

Nearly everything you’ve suggested:

A)breaks state law
B)breaks federal law
C)breaks federal regulation regarding distribution of federal funds
D)breaks a signed contract

(or endangers my daughter by requiring that she walk up a road with no sidewalk, no shoulders, and blind curves. I’m concerned she’d get hit by a car, Brendan, not get shot!)

Now I’m not saying that you can’t change A-D. All of them are changable things. However, you aren’t going to change any of them by June 20, when the new city budget is due. The city has to deal with the reality on the ground, as it is, right now.

If you’d like to work on changing any of those things, be my guest. You’ll have to do more than complain here, though. You’re going to have to talk to real people who really can change things. And that’s a lot more work than trying to take my daughter’s bus away, or bashing my union membership.

I would support more money for the schools if it went to positive education of the kid’s in the city..I am no longah interested in spending more money on kids who do not want to be educated, kid’s that cause issues that create issues for other kid’s who want to be educated..or for the increasingly large population of folks in Worcester having kid’s and are not making or required to make any contribution to the education of their kid’s..the above problems associated with the WPS is mentioned all the time but no one is dealing with it..I just watched a School Committee meeting and a parent made the comment “save the middle class in Worcester”….well when are we going to?? Lots of talk but no action..we have an increasingly high rate of free loaders moving into Worcester-WHY…we welcome this..lots of coffee shop talk about this but no one wants to tackle the issue..

You really want to walk your five year old up Mower Street every morning? Or are you adopting the Germaine “drive your kid to school” model?

No, I want busses for kindergarden and special needs as the state requires and everyone else gets to walk. Tracy, we’re neighbors, if you’re afraid of your kids walking through our neighborhood your world view is beyond broken. All of us who grew up in this neighborhood walked to West Tatnuck growing up, for me that included crossing 122 with no crossing guard. What’s changed? Besides crime and child abductions being lower, that is. School bussing is ridiculous in a city that runs parallel public transportation. Ridiculous to the tune of about 4 million (8 or so with special needs and kindergarden). So no I’m not with Germaine, I think he could use a nice walk as well.

Having taught in high school (and the numbers are higher in high school: the average is 25, rather than 22), yeah, numbers matter. Maybe somebody would have realized what you were doing back there by the blower if you’d had fewer kids in the classroom. I know that didn’t happen in my classroom in the suburbs, where I never had 25 in an English class.

No, fortunately adults only catch on to kids tricks by chance. But regardless, all our AP classes at the junior and senior level should be outsourced to the colleges and we should have greater consolidation within the schools where appropriate. How many green elementary school teachers can we buy for the cost of a veteran HS teacher? We spend too much effort on retention in HS, we should be cutting more loose, I was one of them who should have been cut loose. You can’t force education on people, especially when the educators are insufferable bores without the necessary tools.

Yeah, they’ve cut down on energy costs. They’ve converted a bunch (I’m sure I have the number somewhere in my stack of papers…) of schools to run on natural gas from oil. The big energy sink is South High, which was built during the brilliant “let’s heat with electricity” phase of school building. As that’s an expensive fix, that one hasn’t been dealt with.

The price of natural gas is not going down either. We’ve had a nearly a decade to be taking the edge off with wind and solar, at manageable costs. Where have all the ‘concerned’ parents and union leaders been on that front?

No idea on meals, but remember that there are all sorts of federal regulations around school lunches.

The feds regulate calorie count and income levels which is why everything is corn and high fructose corn syrup. That’s awesome, get the poor kids in the city familiar with the citywide bread and circus early.

No, you can’t guarantee every union member is carrying his or her own weight (and that’s the same as number #1, so don’t count six!). But you can’t anywhere. And the hands of the administration are tied with regard to tenure. If you like to take that on, be my guest, but don’t take it out on the administration.

You can’t think of a way to hold teachers accountable for their performance? But you, as a teacher, find it possible to hold students accountable for theirs? Fascinating! You really did spend to long in a collective bargaining unit. How does tenure out weigh my rights as a taxpayer? I and everyone like me, who expect a return on our investments still count six. If the administration can’t keep their house clean I feel no compulsion to pay their rent.

As for taking tests, as it happens, I entirely agree with you. There’s WAY too much emphasis on the MCAS. But it was bound to happen: it’s an urban school, they’ve been told this is the only thing they’re being judged on, so they are throwing all their resources at it. The suburbs don’t have to, as their kids are mostly white, mostly middle class, largely have college educated parents, and are, all around, textbook “going to do okay on standardized test” material. That’s not the population of the Worcester Public Schools.
And if you want to fight standardized testing, then talk to Citizens for Public Schools. Your battle there isn’t with Worcester school funding, either.

Worcester is 77% white with 14% of the population below the poverty line. But the larger point is, why as a taxpayer (forget that I’m a parent as well) would I be compelled to pay for a system even it’s supporters admit is broken? Something has to give Tracy, there are not enough fingers left to stick in the dam. The city is again bleeding the young parents who would have a vested interest in the system, we need to fix that system before we can expect rational (non-dues paying) people to support that system.

I am tired as a taxpayer of spending money on losers that do not wish to take advantage of the opportunity presented to them.

Again, the testicular fortitude to ask why Worcester is losing all of it’s bright minds and attracting losers should be at the top of the list..or else every year anonymous cats like above will be telling us yet again about our woes with kids of losers and how we need yet more money for losers.

Lets only hope that some day Worcester will develope a Pol of the Kevin White, Buddy Cianci, Bertie Ahern mold who will turn Worcester into a real city and not a junkyard for losers..sorry rah rahers!!

Paulie

You really want to walk your five year old up Mower Street every morning? Or are you adopting the Germaine “drive your kid to school” model?

Having taught in high school (and the numbers are higher in high school: the average is 25, rather than 22), yeah, numbers matter. Maybe somebody would have realized what you were doing back there by the blower if you’d had fewer kids in the classroom. I know that didn’t happen in my classroom in the suburbs, where I never had 25 in an English class.

Yeah, they’ve cut down on energy costs. They’ve converted a bunch (I’m sure I have the number somewhere in my stack of papers…) of schools to run on natural gas from oil. The big energy sink is South High, which was built during the brilliant “let’s heat with electricity” phase of school building. As that’s an expensive fix, that one hasn’t been dealt with.

No idea on meals, but remember that there are all sorts of federal regulations around school lunches.

No, you can’t guarantee every union member is carrying his or her own weight (and that’s the same as number #1, so don’t count six!). But you can’t anywhere. And the hands of the administration are tied with regard to tenure. If you like to take that on, be my guest, but don’t take it out on the administration.

As for taking tests, as it happens, I entirely agree with you. There’s WAY too much emphasis on the MCAS. But it was bound to happen: it’s an urban school, they’ve been told this is the only thing they’re being judged on, so they are throwing all their resources at it. The suburbs don’t have to, as their kids are mostly white, mostly middle class, largely have college educated parents, and are, all around, textbook “going to do okay on standardized test” material. That’s not the population of the Worcester Public Schools.

And if you want to fight standardized testing, then talk to Citizens for Public Schools. Your battle there isn’t with Worcester school funding, either.