The state said the chronically poor academic results at Dean Technical High School require private takeover.
Dean Technical High School in Holyoke.HOLYOKE –
Superintendent of Schools David L. Dupont said state Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester needs to be fair to the city school system and stop issuing demoralizing threats after Chester said lack of significant improvement could force state takeover of the system.
“What I worry most about these insensitive comments from the commissioner is how they could affect our personnel, especially those who are working hard every day in our classrooms with so many students who experience a variety of challenges in their everyday lives,” Dupont said in a press release Thursday.
In the Boston Globe on Wednesday, Chester said the Holyoke and Fall River school systems had shown lack of urgency in making improvements in areas from academics to high school graduation rates and the poor progress means the state could be forced to step in.
Chester’s comments followed a meeting of the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education in Malden on Tuesday.
Officials here say Holyoke has issues the state is failing to heed amid the criticism. The high school graduation rate is 52.5 percent, compared to the statewide rate of 82.1 percent.
Also, most students struggle simply to learn because English is not the first language for 51 percent of the enrollment of 5,900, they said. Nearly 90 percent of students here are Hispanic.
At Dean Technical High School, a main target of the state, the percentage of students for whom English is not the first language is 72 percent. Statewide, the rate is 15.6 percent.
State officials next month will present a 55-page report about Holyoke, on which Chester based his comments, to the School Committee here, said Jonathan W. Considine, spokesman for the state education department.
The report says Holyoke is failing in virtually all aspects of a system-wide turnround plan ordered when state intervention began in 2003:
• lack of system-wide student data management, which limits the ability to assess students and support teachers.
• the system has only partially established alignment of curriculums for all schools, and lack of a core of standards limits student access to high-quality learning.
• staff aren’t help accountable for delivery of instruction.
• the system fails to do consistent assessment and monitoring of student performance.
• absence of a comprehensive professional development program for teachers and other staff.
• the system lacks a program to stabilize its highly mobile student enrollment, which deprives students of high-quality education. The system has a mobility rate of 28 percent, meaning that percentage of students transfers in or out of the system during a school year, nearly three times higher than the statewide mobility rate of 10 percent.
The report and Chester’s comments left school officials here angry and confused about conflicting state deadlines. The state a year ago designated 35 schools statewide as Level 4, or chronically underperforming. They included Dean and Morgan School here.
Holyoke Public Schools Level 4 District Review
The state gave the city three years to turn around Dean and Morgan – to show significant academic improvement – or face state take over. Officials and staff here developed turn-around plans for Dean and Morgan.
But while the state in the fall approved the plan for Morgan, Dean’s was rejected as failing to go far enough.
Instead, the state ordered that the city hire a private company to manage Dean.
Chester’s warning this week comes as the city on March 14 issued a request for proposals from private companies to bid to manage Dean.
Now, Dupont and others are asking why state officials gave the city three years to turn around two schools in the spring of 2010, and the city is following state orders to hire a private firm to run Dean, but now, Chester warns of a systemwide take over.
“Commissioner Chester has a duty to be fair to our students and staff without waving a big stick at a school system that might struggle in making the rate of progress that the state expects, but cares about its students and works very hard in serving them,” Dupont said.
Considine said Friday the state doesn’t want to take over any school system but must be certain that improvements are ongoing and long-lasting.
As for Holyoke officials’ assertions about unclear state timelines, Considine said he would need to research that.
Meanwhile, the private company the city will hire to run Dean will have full authority to hire, supervise and fire the principal, teachers and other staff regardless of seniority.
The company also will have full control over the Dean budget.
The company must be in place to begin running Dean for the 2011-2012 school year. The cost was unclear.
The state has ordered the management takeover at Dean because student test scores, attendance and truancy were so persistently bad, officials have said.
Dean’s high school graduation rate was only 37 percent.
The company hired to run Dean will have its own pressures. It must meet goals with timelines related to the graduation rate, student performance on MCAS tests, attendance, suspensions, drop outs and disciplinary referrals.
Kathryn Dunn, president of 650-member Holyoke Teachers Association, said Dean teachers and staff worry about their jobs and futures at the school.
“It’s just very unsettling for everybody,” Dunn said.
The city has a $2.9 milllion federal grant for the work at Dean.
Dean, at 1045 Main St., has more than 650 students and 160 teachers and other staff. Students can take 11 shop classes, including auto body repair, welding, cosmetology and culinary arts.
On the 2010 Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment Systems (MCAS) test, only 28 percent of Dean students were at the proficient or advanced levels in English language arts and 31 percent in math.
In the 2009-2010 school year, Dean attendance was 79.6 percent, meaning students missed an average of seven weeks of school a year.
Dean’s high school graduation rate was only 37 percent.
William R. Collamore, School Committee vice chairman, said it was sad that a private company must run Dean. But he said Dupont and other officials will be working with the company.
“I think cooperation is going to be the best thing, working with our superintendent on the hiring and firing, and I hope that this company that is going to be approved will understand that,” Collamore said.
Holyoke Request for Proposals to Manage Dean Technical High School