School Committee Stalled

The Cambridge School Committee, in an unusually short meeting yesterday, revisited budgetary issues and questions about achievement data before convening into executive session to address the superintendent’s contract extension.

With particularly low turnout, many agenda items were tabled for discussion at a later date. But the budget was voted on and passed 7-0 to the City Council.

Cantabrigian Laurence Atkins implored the school committee and Superintendent Thomas D. Fowler-Finn, as he has done in previous meetings, to present the public with the “Student Data Report.”

He recognized that there had been some progress on the issue, in the form of a motion on the agenda to “develop a reporting system of data to assess student achievement in the Cambridge Public Schools in alignment with our goals.”

But he asked that the data be provided as soon as possible, even in an unfinished form, given the likelihood of a “long process” of organizing it.

“We’re almost near the termination of the school year, and there’s still work that you have to do,” he said. “It would be generous if you took all the information you get and put it on the school Web site.”

He emphasized the level of community interest in this data.

Information from these reports has been used to create comprehensive assessments of certain aspects of the school system—such as achievement gaps—by various organizations like the NAACP.

Committee member Marc C. McGovern has noted that the data in question now takes a different form than in the past.

“The student data report no longer exists,” he said in an interview before the meeting. “We haven’t used it in years. We use the benchmark reports. Those are different.”

Subsequent meetings of the school committee will determine how this “benchmark report” will be organized and presented this year.

Another public comment came from Cambridge City Councillor Craig A. Kelley, who has two children in the school district. “My wife and I would not want to have them any place else,” he said, lauding the “immense amount of good news about our public school system.”

But he noted that the budget proposal currently on the table does not reflect this improvement in “a way that’s comprehensive.”

He also repeated a request he has expressed at a previous meeting, to see the findings of the Parent Attitudes Survey addressed in the budget.

“The number one reason parents say they see a day they could leave the public school system is academic rigor,” he said. “Those are things we should let the budget show.”

The 2008-2009 budget represents a 2.36 percent increase over last year’s budget, with a large proportion of additional funds allocate to personnel-related costs.

Committee member Alfred B. Fantini concluded the meeting with a genial motion to appreciate and thank Kelley for his “persistence.”

“I think his concerns about the budget are legitimate,” Fantini said.

“I’ve been known to say certain other things at these meetings regarding these councillors,” he added, drawing some chuckles.

In the past, Fantini has criticized Kelley for analyzing the school system in a “biased” way.

Mayor E. Denise Simmons, tongue-in-cheek, told Fantini yesterday after his turnaround comments that she was putting him “on the record” for thanking Kelley.

—Staff writer Vidya B. Viswanathan can be reached at viswanat@fas.harvard.edu.