School Committee Juggles Many Projects

The Cambridge School Committee's list of unfinished business catalogs 108 items "awaiting report" from the superintendent.

Item 43 requests a "plan for replacing worn out musical equipment." Item 83 asks for recommendations on "revisions to the controlled choice plan," the city's desegregation plan.

Several of the items have been awaiting action since September 1998--though about 40 percent were requests generated this term alone.

No wonder that committee members themselves have begun to comment on the list's length, partially because there is very pressing business: updates on the restructuring of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS) and the controversial merger of two elementary schools.

Earlier this year, the committee approved these two major changes, both of which will take effect next fall. Now, they are charged with overseeing their implementation.

Last week, members received their first update on the progress of the CRLS restructuring. And soon they will deal with an issue that has already produced impassioned debate: where to locate the new elementary school.

School Committee Business

With so many apples of their plate, it is little wonder that committee members want to dispatch other business as efficiently as possible.

"We need to change the way we do business," says committee member Joseph G. Grassi.

Committee members say they hope to revise the procedure for how members obtain information from the school district's central office.

Superintendent of Schools Bobbie J. D'Alessandro says she receives between 20 to 40 requests for information each month from the school committee.

"I try to get two or three a week done," she says. "We look at it and we grind it out."

The requests vary in scope and importance--everything from how much fertilizer is used on the lawn of the Graham and Parks school to a report on minority achievement for the last decade, she says.

As communications are streamlined between her office and the school committee, D'Alessandro says she wants to "try to limit the number of requests" to maybe one per committee member per meeting and to review the lists' items and figure out "which are still appropriate."

"I'm praying they get swiped," she says of the outdated requests.

D'Alessandro says she wants to spend less time dealing with small-scale management issues and more time on long-term planning for broad issues like special education.

"I spend a lot of my time doing problem solving and putting out fires," she says.

This Saturday, committee members will attend a workshop on efficiency issues like this one, and D'Alessandro says she has staffers working on procedures to ensure quicker response to members' requests.

CRLS's So Smooth

At least one such request this term has had special priority: when they approved CRLS reform in early February, committee members had asked to be kept regularly informed of the restructuring's progress.

At a meeting last week, CRLS Principal Paula M. Evans gave members their first update on the reform, including a new effort to improve public relations.

Parents and some committee members have criticized Evans in the past for not communicating regularly with the community.

Among the public relations efforts, Evans says, has been a one-page letter sent home to parents last month and a well-attended session last week for parents of incoming ninth graders.

She says the letter shows "this is what we hope the redesign will mean to your child--not an educational explanation."

Committee members pressed Evans about the CRLS course catalog. Students had filled in course selection cards the previous week, but the night before the school committee meeting, city councilors had said publicly they worried the courses would be obsolete once the school is restructured next year.

Evans responded the reform will mean only a few changes to the catalog.

Over the summer, some teachers will be trained in advising and in new literacy programs Evans is initiating.

In addition, about 75 percent of the high school's classrooms will be moved over the summer, according to David Stephen, a former CRLS teacher who is working on the physical restructuring of the building.

As part of the redesign, CRLS' five existing houses, which vary in size and teaching style, will become evenly-sized schools that use similar curriculum.

That means that in order to even out staffing and arrange the new schools, teachers will change classrooms and their personal cabinets and files will be moved with them. Stephen said there would be "too many constraints" on creating the schools if staff were not moved around.

Committee members questioned Evans for about two hours and say now they still have lingering questions about logistics next fall and about improving vocational education at CRLS.

But, though she says some issues are "unsettled," committee member Alice L. Turkel says she is pleased with the restructuring progress.

"People are basically on board and I think that's going to be fine," she says.

Grassi says the committee needs to "monitor" the restructuring, as well as the elementary school merger.

"But we don't need to manage them," he says.

Roger O'Sullivan, president of the Cambridge Teachers Association, said the school district will have to bargain terms of the restructuring, in particular the packing up and moving of classrooms.

Beyond the bargaining, he says he worries about the facility being ready for students and staff in late August, despite reassurances from CRLS and district officials.

"Is it just going to be ready-the scheduling, the faculty assigned to rooms, the fixing up of the place, the moving issue?" he asks.

Where To Put the School

At the elementary school level, parents, teachers and administrators have been tackling another major change with unresolved questions: the merger of the Fletcher and Maynard schools.

Though the merger was approved more than a month ago, the location of the merged school has yet to be determined.

Until recently, officials were waiting for the results of an architectural study of the two existing buildings before deciding which one should serve as the school's permanent home.

The study found the Maynard building to be "more appropriate," says Lenora M. Jennings, the district's student achievement director.

But she says the building is "not up to standard" and eventually could require as much as $12 million in renovations to add classrooms and enlarge existing ones.

Jennings is working on details of the merger with the steering committee, a small group of parents, teachers and community members.

The steering committee met Monday to discuss the location but did not agree on recommendations to forward to D'Alessandro, who will present a final plan to the school committee.

"It was a tough meeting," Jennings says.

She says steering committee members want reassurance from the district "that students aren't going to be moved into the building in September and be forgotten about."

"They want a written guarantee," she says. "That's kind of sad."

The steering committee will meet again Monday at the Fletcher school. The event had been planned as a major community dinner for Area Four, the Cambridge neighborhood that houses the Fletcher and Maynard. But Jennings says the dinner was canceled when the steering committee failed to agree on a recommendation on the new school's facility.

According to Jennings, other work of the steering committee--such as coordinating teacher training programs for new literacy and technology initiatives--has progressed more smoothly.

The steering committee communicates regularly with parents via a newsletter called "Merger Matters."

Talks are ongoing with the teachers union about changes related to the merger.

The Contract

Last week, the school committee unanimously ratified a 3-year contract for Cambridge teachers. On Mar. 29, the union membership had ratified the contract by just one vote.

Now that it has been approved by both sides, the contract, which will apply retroactively to this past year, will be valid until 2002.

When a tentative agreement on the contract was reached in late February, O'Sullivan praised Anthony D. Galluccio, who had been elected mayor in the middle of the talks, as the "driving force" in the final marathon negotiating sessions.

O'Sullivan said then that the contract was a "fair and equitable" settlement.

Now, however, he says the vote to ratify the contract was a "referendum on education in Cambridge" that showed teachers feel "dispirited, estranged and undervalued."

O'Sullivan says he does not think the 250-to-249 vote, which was counted four times, reflected dissatisfaction with the performance of the union's bargaining team, which included himself.

He says union members objected in particular to the salary increase in the contract's first year--just two percent--compared to three percent the second year and four percent the third year.

He says teachers also felt provisions to include special education students in regular education classrooms did not do enough to spread out those students evenly among schools.

During the main contract talks, teachers had complained they were not being kept up-to-date on the negotiations.

"Communication is a huge problem, and it's something we would have to do better on," O'Sullivan says.

He says he plans to ask the membership to create a new position: vice-president for communication, who would work both within the union and with the media and the public.

Claire Rodley's Retirement

After 25 years with the Cambridge School Committee, committee secretary Claire E. Rodley will retire later this month.

"I have a long institutional history, and sometimes that's helpful," says Rodley, who has held the post for 15 years.

Rodley keeps the school committee's records and prepares agendas and other documents for the public. She also records minutes for all of the committee's meetings, which often end late at night.

"We have more meetings than most towns," she says, smiling.

She says she has worked on keeping historical information, like a database listing school committee members since 1846 and cataloguing school committee orders since 1983.

By the time she retires, she says she hopes to have sent off a "Citizen's Guide to the School Committee" to be printed.

It's a project that's been lingering, she says. The guide will explain how the committee does business and list the members and subcommittees and will be distributed to parents through the schools.

With the CRLS restructuring and elementary school merger, this term has been a hectic one for the committee, but Rodley says she's seen other busy times-like the building of three elementary schools in one term and the implementation of the city's desegregation plan.

"It comes in cycles," she says.

Committee members and city officials threw a party for Rodley in February and last week gave her a recognition chair as a gift.

"I'll miss the people," she says. "But I won't miss the long hours."