Massachusetts deputy commissioner of education Karla Brooks Baehr will discuss a report that faulted Holyoke schools in virtually every area.
HOLYOKE – School Committee member Yvonne Garcia said the system is “failing” its students; committee member Devin M. Sheehan said such comments were “reprehensible.”
The exchange during Monday’s School Committee session highlighted the strong feelings set to accompany a meeting with a high-level state official scheduled here on Monday.
Deputy Commissioner Karla Brooks Baehr, of the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, will discuss a state report that said Holyoke is failing in virtually all aspects of a system-wide turnaround plan ordered when state intervention began in 2003.
The report released last month dealt with the system’s ability to assess student performance, staff accountability, professional development for staff and a failure to stabilize the high rate of student transience.
Garcia referred to the state report in urging consideration of a program known as innovation schools. The state program allows a city or town to convert an existing school or a establish a new one with increased autonomy and flexibility in areas such as curriculum, budget, schedule and staffing, according to the state Executive Office of Education.
Too much of the instruction here is built around helping students to pass tests instead of instilling in them practical information, Garcia said. She told a story of a student who was unable to determine what 1/16 of an inch was on a ruler.
“Our schools are failing. We’re failing the kids,” Garcia said.
Sheehan scolded Garcia and said the School Committee should be the system’s biggest cheerleader.
Devin Sheehan“I am disgusted by those comments. It is reprehensible,” Sheehan said.
Superintendent David L. Dupont and others officials have objected to the state report because they said it fails to consider obstacles the city faces.
For example, officials said, most students struggle simply to learn because English is not the first language for 51 percent of the enrollment of 5,900.
Statewide, the rate is 15.6 percent, they said. Nearly 90 percent of students here are Hispanic.
“I can’t agree that we’re failing our kids. We have too many hard-working people” for such an assessment, Dupont said.
Also, officials here believe the city has received conflicting deadlines from state officials by which improvements in student academic achievement and other areas must be made.
For example, the state in spring 2010 gave Holyoke three years to turn around Dean Technical High School and Morgan School. Those two are among 35 schools statewide labeled Level 4, because they are chronically underperforming.
But state Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester angered officials with comments in the Boston Globe on March 23 saying that lack of urgency in making improvements could force the state to take over the school system in a year.