City Officials Debate School Policy

A joint meeting of Cambridge's city council and school board turned unexpectedly intense last night when city councillors reviewed the Agenda for Change, a project aimed at improving the educational and physical well-being of the area's children.

Members of the Agenda's implementation committee began the meeting by updating the council on the project's progress but spent much of the rest of the evening fielding criticism from Councillors Kenneth E. Reeves '72 and Katherine Triantafillou.

Reeves questioned the project's chances for success, citing what he described as its "bureaucratic" nature and criticizing it for "trying to reinvent the wheel."

"I'm sick of it," Reeves said, "We can't connect the few kids we have with the resources that exist because there's too many steps in between."

Currently, three city departments--the Public Health Commission, the Department of Human Service Programs and the Public School Department--as well as the Cambridge Community Foundation have been working on the project since a formal meeting of community leaders convened on September 10, 1997.

Participants in the program have pinpointed six goals and are now turning to community leaders for feedback.

"We want healthy children, successful schools and a strong community," said Bobbie D'Alessandro, Cambridge school superintendent, who has been working on the project.

The Agenda now seeks to provide primary health care to children and families, to ensure school readiness through participation in pre-schools, to achieve literacy for all children by grade three, to improve physical fitness, to reduce substance abuse and to prevent violence against children.

The group's goals grew out of work done by Cambridge's kid's Council. Founded in 1991, the Kids' Council began working with the Healthy Children's Task Force in 1993 to identify indicators that could be used to assess the educational and physical well-being of Cambridge children.

Reeves argued that the Kid's Council has been "subverted" by the Agenda and replaced with a bureaucracy where "structurally speaking, nobody is responsible for nothing."

Triantafillou--who said she had "nothing but praise" for the Agenda's goals--criticized the efforts made by those working on the Agenda to keep the city council up-to-date on their progress.

"The initiative began in September of 1997. I never got a memo," Triantafillou said. "It's [March] 1998, and this is a major policy decision that we haven't been notified about."

Despite the criticisms raised, those involved with the project said that they were confident that progress will be made.

"We just need to make sure we're on the same page," said Mary Wong, executive director for the Kids' Council.

"Basing their goals on the work the Kids' Council has done is a good thing. We just need to make sure that we're progressing the same way," she said.

D'Alessandro agreed, saying the criticisms raised will be worked out.

"Everyone is just frustrated," she said after the meeting. "It's a whole new way of working and a whole new way of understanding things. Deep down, we all care about the kids."