HOLYOKE — The School Committee started creating a game plan to end state control of city schools after the State Commissioner of Education sent it a letter pushing off an official decision on its call to end the receivership.
It was a letter committee members described as frustrating, vague and disrespectful.
The committee held a retreat Sunday to discuss efforts to move forward, two days after Commissioner Jeffrey Riley rejected a call for a return to local control in a four-paragraph letter sent to city officials at 5:08 p.m. Friday.
“The Department would like to further confer with the Receiver and the School Committee about how to sustain and build upon the district’s progress as we make plans for returning the district to local control. To allow for those conversations to proceed, at this time I am deferring a formal determination on your petition,” Riley said in the letter.
Members said they were frustrated there was no specific guidance on how they could recapture local control. Since there was not even a formal rejection there is no way to even appeal the decision, said committee Vice Chairwoman Erin Brunelle.
The School Committee will send a formal letter to Riley outlining concerns about his response and inviting him to meet with them monthly to discuss their progress.
“I was profoundly disappointed, not so much with the decision but the lack of action points associated with it,” said Ellie Wilson, a committee member. “There is nothing explicit in our plan that we can point to and say check we met it.”
Committee member John Whelihan agreed, calling the letter vague. It contained no recommendations on how to gain local control. The only specific mention was a focus on improving absenteeism, which he argued is a statewide issue.
“Continuing concerted investments in the district’s teaching and learning systems and continuing prioritization of student attendance will be key to sustaining this progress,” Riley said in the letter.
Mayor Joshua Garcia, who also serves as School Committee chairman, said the school system seems to be stuck in a system that offers no exit.
“The state took over the district saying we are not performing and now we are under the state’s control and we are not performing … and that’s on them,” Garcia said.
The state receivership has not resulted in noticeable gains in student performance on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment Systems exams, and the state seems to have no answers and is not willing to discuss it, Garcia said. Garcia added he received no response in the past when he requested a meeting with Riley in Boston.
Despite its frustration with having no response and no clear answer to regaining local control, the School Committee agreed it is not completely ready to take over the helm of the district immediately.
“When I look and exiting receivership, I’m asking for a transition,” said committee member Mildred Lefebvre. “It doesn’t mean a full exit.”
Instead she said she would like to see the state start by giving the committee a specific area which they could take charge of while the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education continues to offer assistance.
“We don’t need saviors. We know what are the barriers that create receivership,” Lefebvre said. “Everyone is making decisions for all of us but us.”
Members said they have at least continued to work as representatives to voters after being placed in receivership, even though the receivership took much of their power away and essentially made the School Committee an advisory board.
Brunelle proposed the group meet twice a month instead of the current practice of meeting monthly. She also proposed restructuring subcommittees where a lot of the nuts-and-bolts work takes place.
The committee is expected to formally vote on the proposals at its next meeting on Feb. 12, although members agreed that they like the preliminary plan of meeting on the second and fourth Mondays of the month.
The committee has to set strategic, realistic and measurable goals show it can take over, said committee member Yadilette Rivera-Colón.
The committee debated about either creating a task force about reversing state receivership — which would include parents, educators, business leaders and other members of the community — or a subcommittee of just School Committee members.
Several discussed include developing a subcommittee to just look at focusing on William J. Dean Technical High School, which was merged into the Holyoke High School campus when the state took over, a move members agree was a mistake.
Some of the other developments during the half-day retreat included.
- A discussion about the fact that all three communities placed in receivership, which also includes Southbridge, all have student bodies with very high populations of Latino students.
- Rivera-Colón said the state’s Spanish translation of Riley’s letter was done poorly which is insulting to the city’s large number of Latino families.
- The City Council is planning to hold a meeting to discuss the letter and the overall state receivership plan.
