Ep. 71, Last Night @ School Committee: 10/12 Meeting Recap

Last Night At School Committee

Last night’s meeting was Mary Skipper’s second as superintendent, and it began with a solemn acknowledgement of recent incidents of violence in the BPS community. Superintendent Skipper continued her report with an update on transportation, in which she discussed continued disruptions for families due to uncovered routes and insufficient bus monitors. The Superintendent next presented data on student absenteeism, which has increased over the last three years, and School Committee members pressed for further detail on this data.

There were two reports presented to the School Committee last night, the first of which was a report on the past year’s MCAS results. The results showed that, while BPS is trending slightly better than the state and other urban districts, achievement gaps persist among certain student groups. There was no discussion about trends at the school level, nor did the School Committee hear from teachers or school leaders to understand what is working. The last report of the night was a presentation of a strategic plan for the Office of Multilingual and Multicultural Education. The report outlined an ambitious goal of providing multilingual education to every student for whom English is not their primary language, but it lacked clarity on strategies or action steps for achieving this vision.

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