Super Duper

The PTO mom confesses that she has not been paying as much attention to her blog as she ought to. There are things like a JOB and the demands of CHILDREN and HOLIDAY preparation and whatnot that have taken precedence.

I have, however, been paying attention to the search for a replacement for Superintendent Nicholson. The search committee did a fantastic job of reducing the field to four candidates and the School Committee pared that down to a final three. You can read a bit about the finalists here.

Here's my take:
Mr. DeMeo has been the principal of WHS for 4 years, which doesn't seem like a very long time to me. His background with high school age students and with vocational technical education are both, I would think, very strong reasons to keep him where he is, as Waltham is looking to expand the Career Technology Institute and to build a new high school. His strong suit is, of course, that he is a Waltham native and has been working in the district for many years. A criticism of recent Waltham Superintendents is that they have come up short in their knowledge of Waltham. Personally, I don't think that that is as much of a factor as native Walthamians think it is: all school districts are full of local politics and crazy parents and second-guessed School Committees and changing standards dictated by the state. If I were Queen for a Day, I would keep Mr. DeMeo right where he is so that we have grounded leadership to get the science labs at the high school accredited and to break ground on a new high school and to increase the offerings of the Career Technology Institute, all of which are in line with what the School Committee has been working toward.

Ms. Price is the current principal at Newton North HS and is liked by her students, their parents, and her staff.  She came to Newton North after the new high school was built and her teaching experience is also entirely with high school aged kids. She brought chocolate chip cookies to her interview, which makes me like her even more, and she wrote a lovely letter to the Newton North community to inform them that she was interviewing for superintendent positions. Ms. Price has a doctorate from Harvard's GSE Urban Superintendent Program, which means she probably learned a thing or two about managing a large urban school district. She is also a finalist for the Winchester Superintendent position. Ms. Price lives in West Newton, which is a heck of a lot closer to Waltham than, say, Methuen.

Mr. Echelson lives in Cambridge, also closer to Waltham than Methuen, though not as close as actually being in Waltham. He works for the Boston Public Schools as a Network Superintendent for area F, which includes Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury. As such, he is the only candidate under consideration who has administrative experience at the superintendent level; he has additional experience as an intern to the superintendent of the Seattle schools. He also has the same doctorate from Harvard GSE that Ms. Price has and he has experience in helping to create programs that better serve students in Special Education and in moving programs to spaces where capacity issues (both over- and under-crowding) are addressed. His teaching and administrative background are primarily at the K-8 level, singling him out from the other two candidates and our current superintendent. Since I have kids who are in grades 2 and 5, I don't care about any other grades than those and so of course his elementary experience is a plus for me.

So, as Queen, I have Mr. DeMeo continuing to do a good job at WHS and working to get things sorted out there. Then what do I do? That's a hard call, however, as Queen, I need to make decisions that are completely non-binding and to which no one ever has to adhere. So, I appoint Mr. Echelson as the new Superintendent of the WPS and I stay in close touch with Ms. Price. Because the Queen always wants good people in her court.

Sour Grapes

Sometimes it happens: worlds collide.  So, when I blogged, ostensibly about Mean Girls and how cliques should be left in high school where they belong over here, it ended up being more about the Fitzgerald PTO than I had intended, so I'll follow up here, as the PTO Mom.

@WalthamMom commented on the post at The Raving Review to let me know what Fitzgerald parents REALLY think about the parents who volunteer at the school.  "Tongues are wagging," she wrote.  And said that it's "telling" that the "leader of the pack" (and I think that she meant me) doesn't know that there's a clique.  And then: other parents refer to me and "my girls" as the "Mamma Mafia."

That's rich.  I probably should spend my time and energy working out a way to extort the good residents of the Fitzgerald community and to see about getting anyone who doesn't agree with me whacked.  Kind of like this mom.  Or this lovely couple. Now THAT's a Mafia!  Clearly, I'm not measuring up to expectations.

In the next paragraph, @WalthamMom admonished me, saying it's "ALL ABOUT THE KIDS."  Right.  Because I put so much effort into things like Field Day, and the Halloween Party, and Holiday Shopping, and Talent Show, and the Musical, and the 501c3 status, and Movie Nights, and all the rest for my damn self.

Are @WalthamMom and her friends entitled to their own opinions?  Of course they are.  It was great to find out now, though, after volunteering at the Fitz for six years (and this year taking on the 5th Grade end-of-year activities) that there are people who feel this way.  And some of these parents consider themselves 'friendly' enough with me to connect with me on Facebook.  Of course, @WalthamMom feels strongly enough to comment and to call me names (and then to pay me a compliment at the end of her comment), and not strongly enough to use her real name or to respond to my questions to her when I ask how, exactly, I've excluded any parents.

I left cliques and purposeful exclusion behind long ago because I know how hurtful they can be and because they don't accomplish anything.  I look forward to letting my kids know that, once they make it through the mean years of Middle and High School, that they won't have to worry about cliques anymore, either.  It's very disheartening to learn that that's not true.  Thanks, @WalthamMom and your posse, for that lesson.

Making the Jump

I attended the School Committee Special Meeting last week and then watched the Regular Meeting at home on the teevee while drinking wine and folding laundry.  Why wine and laundry?  The wine is to calm me down and the laundry folding makes me feel that I have actually accomplished something.  Also, why not?

My notes from the Special Meeting reflect that there are lots of options and not a lot of agreement on which options to take or even which are a priority.  The mayor stated that the High School is the number one priority because we are in danger of losing accreditation.  Later, during the regular meeting, we were assured that the capacity issues at the elementary school level are the number one priority.  Sigh.

With regards to the High School, the School Committee is waiting to hear if WPS will get money from a SOI Statement of Interest submitted to the MA School Building Authority.  This is the third time that a SOI has been submitted for the High School, and, after we were assured that the second SOI was the Bomb and would not be denied, we are now awaiting news on the third submission.  Apparently, WPS has been invited to the MSBA for an interview, which hasn't happened before, so that's a good sign.  And we are all about good signs and positive attitudes and keeping our collective chins up.  Sigh.

There are options for the site of a new High School.  These include the existing site and build a new building right next to the old one.  Another is, of course, the Fernald site, where there are 50 acres available, excluding the wetlands.  There was a motion to study the benefits of each.  A study, you say?  Yes, that's right.  A study.

Moving onto the elementary schools, the mayor recommended that the Fitch be removed from consideration, even though there has been no final report on the cost to rehab the building.  Hmmm.  Might some developer be interested in the Art Deco facade for another use?  The Committee Members asked to wait until final price tag for rehab of Fitch is in before tabling its use as a school building.

The mayor's recommendation was to build an addition onto the MacArthur, because that school has the best site for an addition and also has the lowest population.  Mr. Frassica stated that there is also room to build at Stanley.  There was a spirited discussion of what constitutes the actual South Side of Waltham -- whether the division is the river or some other line.  Then there was a motion for a feasibility study of building and addition at the MacArthur vs. the Stanley.  Ah.  A feasibility study!

At that point, something rather remarkable happened.  Mr. Tarallo, long a favorite of the PTO Mom, actually used math and existing real data to figure the way out of the muddle.  In summary, if each of the elementary schools was built to house 550 students, then we need to look at more equal distribution of the kids.  Further, doing the math, insure that 24 appropriately-sized regular ed classrooms exist at each school and then look for space for special education.  All I could do was think back to the glaringly bad decision to move the Language Based Resource Room students to the Fitz two years ago.  Had an assessment like this been performed, those students would now be enjoying actual classroom space, instead of shared space.  And the ELL students at the Fitz might even have a classroom instead of the large closet with a window that serves as their classroom now.  Coulda shoulda woulda.

Sigh.

There was discussion again of *reclaiming* the computer labs as classroom space.  The $40,000 laptop carts, it turns out, hold 30 laptop computers and include the price of the laptops.  So, folks, that's a quarter million if we get one cart per elementary school.  I had in my notes that Ms. Donnelly moved to go forward with this dollar request, however, I can't be sure that that actually happened or if I just wanted to think that it had.

Oh!  And the pre-K program!  My older son is a graduate of the program at the Northeast.  I loved the opportunity to have him in a pre-school where the kids with IEP were matched with kids who didn't have an IEP: what a wonderful, diverse learning culture.  How wonderful it would be to expand the pre-school to everyone in Waltham, without a waiting list or a lottery to get in.  The pre-K options discussed include: housing the program at the *new* high school and including vocational experience for students looking to work in early childhood ed; housing the entire pre-K at the (expanded) MacArthur and avoiding redistricting; housing the pre-K program at South Junior High, where there is space available. I don't have in my notes which is the best option.  Sigh.

I have to say that this year's meetings are nowhere nearly as fun to watch as last year's, since the committee members appear to be earnestly trying to make the best decisions using the best processes and the best information that they have.  All of the members are professional and no one calls anyone else names.  That makes it a little harder to pay attention, but it's worth it.

In summary:

• I've been hearing crazy rumors being bandied about regarding redistricting: if you're worried about redistricting, you need to watch the School Committee meetings or read the minutes.  Once you've done that, you can start spreading rumors.  The *R* word is on the table, however, so is everything else.
• There's a search for a new Superintendent.  Anything that doesn't get done BY JUNE 30TH will likely result in plan changes when the new Super takes over.
• There is a mayoral election in 2015.  I don't believe that Mayor McCarthy has made an official announcement, however, there are indications that she is running for reelection.  City Councillor and State Representative Tom Stanley has announced that he will run.  So, anything that doesn't get done by election season, beginning in September, may change if there is a change in mayor and during the campaigns.
• Regarding the Fitzgerald: this is a school performing at Level 1.  It was a Commendation School last year.  The Fitz has accomplished this EVEN THOUGH there have been five principals in six years and WHILE the Fitz welcomed the LBRR program from the Whittemore, pushing the student population over 500.  The educators and staff at the Fitz are accomplishing great things with limited resources and in a space that is overflowing.  What does this mean to you?  How's your property value looking?  The Fitz is a system under stress and the stress needs to be relieved.
• Whatever happens is gonna cost a lot of money.

NIMBYism

If the number of citizens who turned out to hear about the process for the search for a new Superintendent of Waltham Public Schools is any indication of concern about the person who is hired, then we citizens are a pretty unconcerned bunch.  It's probably easier to let the search committee get on with it and then, when the new Super is in place, and has to contend with underperforming elementary schools, capacity issues, a High School that may lose accreditation, complain that the Superintendent is clearly not the right person for the job.

Sigh.

On the other hand, if the number of citizens who are concerned about scheduled work by National Grid in the neighborhood near the intersection of Trapelo and Waverley Oaks Roads is an indication of how invested people are in complaining about the traffic, then the level of concern rivals that of Ebola hysteria.

The good people who live on Upton and Shirley and surrounding streets came out to hear from National Grid about the plans to abandon the gas main under the Beaver Street Culvert (which I wrote about here) and redirect the gas flow to mains near their homes.  I, of course, attended the meeting because I am OBSESSED with the Beaver Street Clusterflub.  In fact, I arrived a few minutes before the meeting began and met Mr. Steve Casazza, the City Engineer.  He is, it turns out, a decent guy and quite intelligent and well-prepared and soft-spoken.  So, I started out feeling like an asshat for throwing him under the bus (or into the culvert.)  It's so hard to be angry with people when you actually meet them.  For me, anyway.  Read on to see how that's not the case for everyone.

In addition to Mr. Casazza, Waltham Police Chief MacPherson was there, along with Mike Chiasson, Public Works Director; Mike Garvin, the Traffic Engineer; Susan Scarcella from National Grid; and Ward 4 Councillor, John McLaughlin.  So, anybody who knew anything about anything to do with gas and roads and traffic and whatnot was there.  There were detailed maps!  There was a detailed plan for the replacement of the culvert!  I was beside myself: my obsession was being fueled!

I learned that the existing culvert had been placed in 1920!  Aging infrastructure!  The new culvert will only take a "long weekend" to put in after the gas main is abandoned! The plant life will be replaced to prevent erosion! I was on the edge of my seat.

The questions at the beginning of the meeting were thoughtful and were being asked to get more information.  How long was this going to take? Two months.  What roads would be affected? Upton, Brookfield, Shirley. What would be done to divert traffic? Signage and communication to the office park and businesses on Waverley Oaks Road. Would National Grid repair the road after their work was done? Yes.

Then, somewhere, it started to spin out of control.  I was reminded of a book that a long-ago boyfriend had given me: 
Yes, the madness of Crowds.  Mob Mentality.  Here it was.

Why are the roads bumpy? Why is there construction on Trapelo Road? Why do people ignore the signs and cut through Upton Road? Are the pipes going to my house new pipes or old pipes? Are the pipes going to explode? What day will you be at my house? What is Ms. Scarcella's cell phone number so that I can call it whenever the traffic is bad or I smell gas? Why am I being inconvenienced? What happens if it snows?

And THEN! The absolute BEST question of the night: What about the rare species of fish that lives in Beaver Brook? Would the presence of this fish cause environmentalists to stop the construction?

The competent and intelligent and professional group of presenters was stumped.  I was stumped.  I've walked and run and cross-country skied and ridden bikes all along the course of Beaver Brook for 13 years.  I have never seen a fish, especially not a rare one.  I remember when my (now deceased) dog, Sydney, found a frog and played with it in the creek, but never a fish.  Happily, there was a member of the Conservation Committee on hand.

The loud, red-faced guy who was concerned about the rare fish and was backed up by two women in the audience was met with a refute from Jerry, the Conservation Committee Member, equally loud and red-faced, who told the loud guy (and everyone else) to come to a meeting next Thursday at Government Center.  One of the supportive women read from a paper about the involvement of the DCR.  Jerry insisted that the Cons Com has authority of all of the water in Waltham!  Not the DCR!  It's HIS water!

I thought that it may come to fisticuffs.  My money would have been on Jerry.

Then, the other woman who had been encouraging the loud guy, had questions of her own.  Of course, she had arrived 45 minutes late, and most of her questions had been answered before.  Ms. Scarcella offered to review all of the information with the woman at the end of the meeting.  None of this deterred her from asking questions.  And what was Ms. Scarcella going to DO about it?  Ms. Scarcella must be responsible for many projects, so how would she be able to stand on Upton Road to personally escort the woman from her driveway?  Ms. Scarcella responded "What is your specific concern? I am very responsive and I get the job done."  I wanted to applaud.  Instead, I Tweeted about it.  It was awesome.

It was now nearly 8:30.  The Mayor arrived and apologized for being late.  I wish that I had had the fortitude to stay and hear her response to the rare fish issue and the personal escorts from the driveways, however, I had to leave.  I went home, my obsession fueled.

Feeling Guilty

Last night, for the first time in three years or more, I did not attend our PTO meeting at the Fitzgerald.  As the immediate past-president, I felt a little like I did when I left my kids at a party for the first time: my dear friends on the Board -- people I recruited! -- would have to make it through a meeting without me.

I know that they did just fine because, after the meeting, they sent some text-abuse from John Brewer's, our traditional post-PTO gathering spot.

I didn't go last night because I have some work-related stuff going on that has been giving me agita and because ALICE was on the agenda.  Again.  And I am still all ALICEd-out from last year.

In case you don't remember, ALICE is the response system to an armed intruder that Waltham is implementing.  I wrote about it in the Patch last year.  So, this was a follow-up meeting to the implementation.  After the Citywide PTO meeting last year, the Safety Resource Officers (Hooray! SRO's!) came to a PTO meeting at EVERY school in Waltham and parents participated in a mock drill.  Even some of our crossing guards attended the meeting at the Fitz.  We sat in a Kindergarten classroom in those little chairs and then acted out what we would do if an armed intruder came to the door.

Thinking about it right now, I think that I may throw up.

I also remember that several Waltham gun owners posted comments -- thoughtful comments -- on the Patch, and gave an overview of what is necessary to get a licensed firearm in the Commonwealth.  It was enlightening: it's hard to get an actual licensed gun here.

The problem is that it's too easy to get an unlicensed gun.  The Waltham PD recently had a gun buy-back program and 50 guns were turned in.  Also, two guys showed up holding a sign that said "Will buy guns and ammo."  They were sent on their way, and yet, I am guessing that they can buy guns and ammo at other venues.  And then re-sell them to gangbangers and drug dealers who can use them to kill teenagers in a Waltham neighborhood.

Anyway, I'm getting off track.  After the ALICE meetings last year, a parent said to me, "We prepare our kids for a fire at the school with a fire drill, even though the school will probably never catch on fire.  So we should prepare them for this, too."  And that's good logic, if a bit flawed.  Because it seems much more likely that someone will show up with a gun at school than that the school will burst into flames. (gas main explosions notwithstanding.)

Sending kids to school shouldn't require an act of faith.

Of Sinkholes and Railroad Tracks

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you know that I have been maniacally obsessed with the clusterflub that is the Beaver Street culvert at Beaver Brook.  It started with annoyance at the traffic delays and detours and general disruption associated with the 'discovery' of the sinkhole.  Then, it turned to anger when the City Engineer was quoted in the News Tribune as saying that he "had known about" the roadway for sometime, and hadn't realized it was "that bad."

Of course, it's hard to tell that the roadway is in disrepair because it's not clear when walking or driving by and seeing the disused pedestrian bridge tossed on top of a few concrete barricades all of which is overgrown with brush.  And it's difficult to determine that it's "that bad" when taxpayers and pedestrians have been calling city councillors to get the road repaired for at least the 13 years I have lived here.  I mean, really, what evidence is there that the roadway is "that bad"?

Oh, but wait!  Apparently, there was a request from the City Engineer in October of 2013 for $150,000 to repair the road.   I say 'apparently' because I cannot find the minutes from the October 2013 meeting (or minutes from any meetings in 2013 after June.)  So, something must have tipped him off.  Of course, even when the money was appropriated by City Council, there was no request for proposal initiated until July of this year.  You may recall, then, that there was something called "winter" that occurred and probably didn't do anything to help the condition of the road.

So, fast forward to September 2014 and the EMERGENCY and the ROAD CLOSURES and the TRAFFIC!  And the CONFUSION!  If the City of Waltham owns the road and the state (MDC) owns the brook and the brook is part of a designated wetlands under federal oversight, then we all must wring our hands because. Confusion.

And there's more!  There's a natural gas pipeline that runs under the culvert.  The pipeline runs on both sides of the road and is, apparently, 'live' on only one side.  I still don't know which side, however, I am guessing that if there is a sinkhole, the whole roadway will fall into Beaver Brook, taking infrastructure from both sides of the roadway with it.  Near the gas pipeline, there is a propane filling station AND a gas station.  Can anyone say 'combustion'?

And still more!  Since the infrastructure holding up the roadway has failed, things like tree roots and crumbled concrete and the adjacent railroad tracks have all done their part to keep things moving along Beaver Street.  And this weekend, the MBTA replaced the commuter rail tracks!  So, if the old tracks were, in part, helping to keep the roadway out of the creek and off of the gas lines, then WHAT IS HOLDING THE ROAD UP NOW?  Ah yes, tree roots.  I feel much better.

I have pointed out in other media that Beaver Street is about two miles long and connects the eastern part of the city to the center and western part of the city and is home to Bentley University, an office park, the American Legion, two Historical Mansions, a private high school, a Girl Scout camp, and many homes.  Fitzgerald Elementary School, with its 516 students, backs up to the office park and is adjacent to the creek.  I've been told that there are 'weekly inspections' by the state and that no less an authority than MassDOT has confirmed that the roadway is safe 'enough' to have traffic in one direction along the center of the roadway.  And that the natural gas line won't explode.  Because that never happens.

So what's the timeline for the repair? It is scheduled to begin in approximately SIX MONTHS, if there is an accepted plan in place by then.

I'm sure we'll be just fine until then.

Going Nowhere Fast?

At the Special Meeting of the School Committee, held on 9/16, the entire meeting was dedicated, yet again, to the results of the architecture consultants, SMMA and the results of the parent questionnaire, which I ranted about here.  I live-tweeted the meeting (@lizhmccarthy) for those of you on the Twitter.  Here are some observations from that meeting, as well as the regular meeting held on 9/17.

At the beginning of the special meeting, Mayor McCarthy asked the Committee Members if they had anything to say before the business part of the meeting began.  The first huggable moment of the Special Meeting came when John Frassica asked, "OK, so now what are we going to DO?"  Implying that there may actually be action taken.  I gave him a "huzzah!" from my home, where I was tweeting and folding laundry.

The Superintendent read the results of the parent questionnaire. I certainly hope that SC members had paper copy, because there were so many numbers being bandied about that I couldn't tweet fast enough to keep up.  Those numbers, which aren't included in the official minutes, were important enough to ask the principals to compile and yet unimportant enough to have a visual.  Sigh.  It also appeared that there was about a 25% completion rate of the questionnaires, which is actually higher than the voter turn-out for the Primary Election, which does not make it good.  Big sigh.  Do parents really NOT CARE about this?  Gah!

SMMA then showed more numbers, including the information that there were 251 fewer students enrolled in elementary schools this year compared to last.  Which leaves me wondering why the Fitzgerald has 516 students and is home to both LBRR and ELL programs.  Well?

The minutes are clear on the decisions that the SC Members made.  And I commend them for making actual decisions.  Another huggable moment came when Teddy Tarallo suggested that, if Pre-K is moved out of the elementary schools and to its own building, that would open the possibility of offering universal pre-K.  Woot!  And a second 'alternative' high school!  Yay!

After the dust settles, here is what we are left with:

• Lots and lots of feasibility and usage studies at the Fernald and at the Fitch and Lawrence Schools
• The land at the Fernald is part designated wetland, part hazardous asbestos site, and part power plant toxicity site
• Modular buildings at the Stanley, Fitzgerald, and MacArthur; partitioned classrooms elsewhere
• Redistricting
• A Superintendent who is leaving at the end of this year
• A Mayor who is running for re-election next year

All of which leaves me feeling more than a little uneasy.  How about you?

Thanks for finding me here!

If you made the jump from the Waltham Patch, thanks for coming over here.  I'll have more content soon, I promise.  Blogs on the Patch became too hard to manage, so I switched.  There is lots to post about recent School Committee goings on, however, I've been too busy sitting in traffic on Beaver Street and writing about it here.

One heart-warming story from the halls of the Fitzgerald: I was at the school during the school day last week and came in as the fourth graders and kindergarteners ended recess and started lunch.  The fourth graders have each been paired with a kindergarten 'buddy' and they walk in from recess HOLDING HANDS.  It was one of the most adorable things that I have seen and melted my cynical old heart: the proud fourth graders, the elementary school equivalent of college Juniors, with the tiny hands of the newbie kindergarteners, who clearly put their trust in the older kids.  Collective "Awwwww."