School Committee Won't Support State Grant Application

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On an evening that marked the first of the FY11 Budget working sessions, the School Committee heard details about a national grant the state is applying for, and ultimately opted not to support the state's application.  The Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) is in the process of applying for a Race to the Top Fund application; according to their website the fund "provides competitive grants to encourage and reward States that are creating the conditions for education innovation and reform."  Wednesday, the DESE sent a notification to districts that they would hold a forum about their application Thursday morning and invited representatives from each district.  States can compete for $250 in funds to be dispersed over a four-year period.  In the plan drawn up by the DESE, half of those funds would go to existing Title 1 districts like Hopkinton, which could hypothetically see $11,500 per year if the state is awarded the grant.  The other half of the funds would go into a state-based competitive grant process; Dr. Phelan reported that it is the general feeling from other districts' administrators that urban and underperforming districts would likely be the priority for those grants.

Phelan explained that the main reason the districts were invited to a forum is that the state gets "points" for the number of individual school districts it can get to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) about the proposal.  "The reason we attended the session was to hear about the state's proposal and to look at the conditions that were attached to our signature on this Memorandum of Understanding."  The MOU must be signed by each district's superintendent, school committee chair, and teachers' union head.

The MOU stipulated methods by which the districts would improve teacher and principal effectiveness based on performance.  One criterion in the MOU which generated the most discussion involved teacher evaluations.  Currently, state law dictates that teachers with professional status (teachers who have worked in a district for more than three years) must be evaluated at minimum once every two years, whereas pre-professional status teachers must be evaluated every year.  According to Alyson Geary--the acting high school principal, in attendance to discuss that school's budget during the working session--these evaluations can take up to 5 hours to complete.  The MOU would have all teachers have annual evaluations.  In addition, the MOU charges that administrators link that evaluation process to student achievement data, and to link principal and teacher compensation to that data as well.  "There are huge collective bargaining implications when it comes to that," Phelan explained.  In addition, should the state receive the award, each district in the MOU would have 90 days to compile a Scope of Work plan, detailing how they would meet the obligations of the grant over the four-year period.

On the state's end, they would promise to turn around the lowest-achieving schools in the state, an estimated 40 to 50 communities that would have to agree to one of four turnaround models provided by the state.  The MOU also included some items that Hopkinton currently does or has been working to do, including a statewide pre-K - 12 teaching system and curriculum library similar to the one being produced in Hopkinton.

Phelan's biggest concern about the application is the schedule.  "The timeline for the state to submit this grant has been very ambitious," he said, explaining that the district was notified on December 11 about the state's work on the application, and that they did not receive many details until recently.  Tim Kearnan, the head of the Hopkinton Teachers' Association, explained that the first real information received information about this came at 4:00pm on December 23.  The most difficult part in deciding whether or not a district should sign this MOU, Phelan said, "has been that the information hasn't flowed as quickly...to all of the local education school districts."

"There are, quite frankly, a number  of elements of this proposal right now that present a good deal of concern" to Dr. Phelan and Dr. Columbo, as well as school committee chair Nancy Burdick and Tim Kearnan, who also attended the forum.  The state's deadline for the application is January 13; when informed that many school committees did not meet between the Thursday morning forum and the deadline, the state requested that school committee chairs consider signing the MOU in good faith, and if the their boards turn it down they can retract their signatures.  Burdick was not able to attend the Thursday night school committee meeting, but indicated that she did not recommend the committee agree to signing the MOU.  "We wish that the timeline was a little bit longer," Phelan explained. "I personally wish that we'd been informed a little bit sooner.  They're asking us to digest a lot of information without an opportunity really to fully vet it."  Kearnan agreed, saying "I think a lot of us walked in there with a lot of questions, and rather than leaving feeling better we left with more questions."  He also stated that he and many other districts felt that "It was clear to us that a district like Hopkinton was not the priority of this initiative."

The DESE did mention that they'd held three meetings with the urban school districts' school committees and superintendents, but this was the first meeting that other districts had been invited to attend.

Richard duMont--who, in the absence of both Burdick and vice-chair Rebecca Robak, ran the meeting--agreed with Phelan's assertion that the funds Hopkinton would receive would be a relatively small amount considering the MOU commitments, noting that just the cost for the employee time to perform additional evaluations would likely be equal to the amount of money the district stands to receive.  Phelan also noted that the district has had to eliminate three administrative support positions over the past few years, which could make the process more time-consuming.

Given the ambiguities of the plan and the costs to shoulder the commitments, the school committee decided not to sign the Memorandum of Understanding.

Phelan did note that the DESE shouldn't shoulder all the blame, as they were working on a very short timeline themselves, and that many of the community representatives were appreciative that the DESE did hold a forum to provide information.  "But when you're presenting a proposal of this magnitude," he said, "you need to give people an opportunity to digest it, to vet it, to discuss it with all of its [school committee, union, and administration] members.  I haven't even had a change to discuss this with any of the members of my administrative team."