Young Unveils Middle School Timeline

Newly elected Cambridge Public Schools Superintendent, Jeffrey M. Young, unveiled a proposed timeline for remedying the “middle school issue” at last night’s school committee meeting—a move aimed at finalizing a set of concrete action plans for the initiative by April 2010.

After a five-month process of collecting data and engaging members of the community, Young plans to present the committee with a set of recommendations at a meeting in February.

For decades, the committee has expressed a concern about the quality of education 6th-8th grade students receive in the city’s K-8 schools. Critics say that the system, which lacks a traditional 6-8 “middle school” environment, does not meet the needs of students in early adolescence.

In 2007, the committee formed the Blue Ribbon Commission on Middle School Education and the next year,  they released a report outlining the challenges facing the district’s 11 primary schools.

When Young was elected, he agreed to provide concrete recommendations regarding “the middle school issue” within the first a hundred days of his tenure.
But earlier this month, Young announced his decision to delay the deadline. 

The committee, which adopted the new proposed timeline, will now spend 11 meetings over the next six months reviewing the issue.

The shift in the timeline also means that the final vote will occur in April 2010, after a new school committee is elected in Nov. 2009.

While school committee members thought that the new deadline was an appropriate move for a new superintendent who may need time to familiarize himself with the situation, several cautioned against further delaying action on the issue.

School Committee member Luc D. Schuster, who has announced that he will not be running for reelection in November, said that he was “very concerned” about the school committee’s “continued inclination to postpone this decision.”

“This was a big issue when I campaigned in 2005 and it was a major issue when I campaigned in 2007,” he said. “Now, it’s 2009.”

—Staff writer Sofia E. Groopman can be reached at segroopm@fas.harvard.edu.