jackiedoherty.org

When I was in Barcelona last year, I marvelled at the amount of public art that enlivens that city; there are new and exciting pieces around every corner which refresh the eye and stimulate the mind.  Thanks to the wonderful Revolving Museum, Lowell is on it’s way to becoming a ‘mini-Barcelona’ – well, without the ocean and the fabulous, fresh seafood, the Gaudi buildings and Picasso and Dali museums  - okay, maybe it’s a stretch, but still, public art is a great thing, for tourists and residents, that we should celebrate! Tomorrow afternoon, at 4:00 pm,  come on downtown for the latest installation by the museum’s Teen Artist Group (TAG).  For sixteen months, the young artists have been working on panels reflecting concern for the environment that will be placed side-by-side between Enterprise Bank and Sovereign Bank on Merrimack Street. The completed mural, entitled “We Are One…Love Our Mother Earth,” is the fourth Merrimack street mural installed by TAG.  At the opening ceremony, you can meet the artists and learn about their thoughts, concerns and hopes for the future.  In addition, Gunther Wellenstein from Lowell’s Recycling Department will be on hand to share green solutions for everyone. 

During the superintendent interviews, candidate Paul Schlictman made a point that I have seldom heard mentioned:  “Twenty-five percent of Lowell students are ’suburban’, that is they are on a par with or doing better than students in the wealthier suburbs.”   As an example of this, our Latin Lyceum kids rank as high as or higher than students from wealthy suburban schools, and we have students from Lowell High that go on to Harvard, Yale, MIT and other highly-selective institutions.  So, as we on the CPC have been saying for years – the problem is not that the schools are not doing their job.  It is that the problems the kids bring with them to school are often too overwhelming to be conquered in a 6-hour day.  Yesterday’s Sunday Globe, Ideas section, had a provocative article on the status of Ed Reform as it applies to high-poverty schools.  Paul Reville, incoming secretary of education, is quoted in the article as saying that the original goal of the legislation was ‘to eradicate the correlation between socioeconomic status and educational attainment.”  He adds: “We’d have to say we’ve failed on that.”

There are success stories though, and the article goes on to describe several schools that have succeeded in narrowing the achievement gap; all have used similar methods, the most important being extending the school day. Other methods for boosting student achievement include: “extensive tutoring, giving schools wide latitude over teacher hiring, and setting high expectations for all students, regardless of the hurdles put in place by their tough backgrounds.”  

Are we doing enough in Lowell?  Well, extended day never got off the ground here, despite available funding from the state to make it happen.  In addition, and most discouragingly, we continue to cut the budget year after year.  Where we have applied resources, such as reading interventions and math ability groupings, we have seen results.  The question is, can we do more, and can we possibly continue to see improvements in this fiscal climate?

Every Memorial Day I am reminded of my Uncle Joe, my mother’s oldest brother. He’s been dead for more than a decade now but whenever I think of the sacrifices our soldiers make and how most are changed forever–even the ones lucky enough to make it home–I think of my Uncle Joe. He talked often about his experiences as a medic in World War II, and as a young girl, I learned that war changes people in ways that are irretrievable, that stay with them into old age. (This Sunday’s Boston Globe has an essay by George Masters that addresses this poignantly.) For now, I want to share one particular moment from my uncle’s war. An immigrant, who came to this country when he was eight years old, Uncle Joe had struggled with belonging in Boston, often running away from my grandmother, his stepfather, and his siblings in the North End, trying to find his way back home to the beaches of Sicily where he was born. My grandmother would find him at the docks, drag him home, and make him go to school yet again, to learn English, to get an education. It wasn’t until the war when he was a young soldier marching the streets of London, and the Brits, who were so grateful for our presence, would shout to him “Hey Yank! Nice to see ya Yank!” that he felt like an American for the first time in his life. 

Yesterday’s Globe reported that “nearly 300 people were sentenced this week to five months in prison for working at a meatpacking plant with false documents.” The immigrants, who are here illegally from Guatemala, were arrested at the Iowa plant on May 12 and taken to the grounds of the National Cattle Congress. In a span of four days, 297 people were convinced to plead guilty to avoid higher penalties and sentenced to five months in jail—how’s that for due process? They will be deported immediately after completing their jail terms. Later in the article, it states, “No charges have been brought against managers or owners…” This whole episode makes me sick to my stomach. If this crime of working to pack animal carcasses without proper papers is so atrocious, why aren’t the owners being sent to prison for hiring them? And what will happen to the company? Will it shut down or just ship in a new group of presumably low-paid workers to exploit? But the real kicker is, if they’re being deported anyway, why make them sit in prison for five months first? So they can be fed and housed on the taxpayers’ dime? The whole thing makes no sense (a combination of mean and stupid). It stinks, I imagine, as bad as a meatpacking plant…

So much for “having a stake in our neighbor’s success” and other inspiring phrases used by Governor Deval Patrick during speeches while campaigning and since getting elected. If Thursday’s Globe article regarding the governor’s unwillingness to use his authority to push the in-state tuition agenda is accurate (also discussed here on Blue Mass Group), it shows a disappointing lack of courage and a betrayal of promises he made. No wonder people have checked out, don’t bother to vote, and consider politics a slimy profession. (Even as an elected member of the Lowell School Committee, I confess to being uncomfortable with the term politician and prefer to think of myself as an activist.) Look, I know it’s not easy. As an elected person, you’re always faced with the pressures of being popular and trying to make everyone happy, but true leadership demands that you put those concerns aside and do what’s right. And sometimes, just like parenting, doing the right thing may be unpleasant. In-state tuition rates for youngsters who meet residency requirements but don’t have documentation is fair and economically smart—especially for the Commonwealth, a state whose greatest asset is its educated workforce (it’s certainly not the weather or the cost of living) and whose population, other than its immigrants, has been steadily decreasing. So where is the governor who campaigned on change, together we can, economic stimulus, and education reform and equity? History has shown that real leadership, the kind that creates lasting, positive social change from ending slavery to advancing suffragette and civil rights movements, requires courage, action, and at the very least, being true to your word—all qualities lacking in Governor Patrick’s recent decision.

School committee member Dave Conway made a motion last night to create a Council for Creative Solutions, which would be charged with analyzing and determining the feasibility of cost-saving ideas submitted by school department employees, with a potential for such employees to receive bonuses for successful submissions.  I’m not sure if Mr. Conway reads The New Yorker or not, but in the May 12^th issue James Surowiecki describes the phenomenal success of Toyota, which has recently surpassed GM in car sales, and ascribes their long term profitability to a similar program of employee-driven change.  Here’s how they do it:

Toyota implements a million new ideas a year, and most of them come from ordinary workers.  Most of these ideas are small – making parts on a shelf easier to reach, say – and not all of them work.  But cumulatively, every day, Toyota knows a little more, and does things a little better, than it did the day before. 

Toyota’s changes and innovations result from a relentless focus on incremental improvements in process, rather than product.  Their methods are no secret, and many companies have tried to copy them, but the prevailing cultural mentality of expecting innovation to be dramatic and exciting, which Surowieki likens to crash-dieting as opposed to sensible eating, causes them to abandon such mundane efforts early on.  In addition, as Surowieki points out, most companies (and, I would argue, school districts) are still organized in a very top-down manner, and have a hard time handing responsibility to front-line workers. 

It does sometimes seem that school districts are always ready to put money into a new theory or program, scrapping previous efforts and jumping on the latest bandwagon, like dieters who go from one faddish eating plan to another.   The wearied teachers and staff follow along because they must, but their ownership of such top-down, theory-driven plans is often lacking.  Small, grassroots initiatives may have a better chance of succeeding and may also invigorate an openness to change throughout the system.  I hope the motion passes successfully through subcommittee and is positioned to be simple and effective (do we really need another council?), and that employees and school leaders will enter into the spirit of this, not just to save money but to improve the way we do the job in our schools.  It could pay off for everyone in the long run.
 

Today’s Boston Globe had an interesting column by Adrian Walker in support of Election Day Registration. I agree with Walker: “The real issue here isn’t lack of money, or fraud. It’s inertia. There just isn’t any sense of urgency about voting issues. The way people register and vote now has worked just fine for the people who already hold office. Why change it now?” In an earlier post, I discussed reasons why Massachusetts should join many other states, including neighbors New Hampshire and Maine, and allow people to register AND vote on election day. According to this New England Cable News interview between Chet Curtis and Avi Green, executive director of MassVOTE, a non-partisan voters rights organization; Massachusetts ranks 21^st in voter turnout. (Green does a decent job of addressing opposing concerns during the interview.)

As our own recent local elections have shown, we in the Merrimack Valley are not strangers to voter apathy. What is strange, however, is the apparent silence from the Lowell Sun on this issue. Despite its regular lament on poor voter turnout, which is often accompanied by a suggestion for an appointed school committee as if that would induce more folks to vote (a pet peeve of mine), the local paper has not written one editorial on Election Day Registration. Meanwhile, the bill languishes while the clock is ticking to pass this legislation in time for the upcoming presidential election. I heard our own State Senator Steve Panagiatakos is working out a compromise to make it happen—thanks Steve! But from where I sit, S2514 should pass: We’re looking at voter increases of about 250,000 more young people, minorities, and perhaps even those who had given up on the system. The fact is, without voters, we don’t have a democracy, and this bill will help bring voters back. Then again, we could just go to appointed school committees (selectmen, councilors, whatever) and forget the whole election thing…

LiL has also written on this issue with 30 comments responding to this post.

The school committee will hold budget hearings tonight at 5:30 pm and tomorrow morning, 9:00 am, in city council chambers.  It is vital that parents and concerned citizens be on hand to see where the inevitable cuts will be made.  Chapter 70 funds (the money that the State allocates for education) for Lowell are being increased by less than 1% over the current budget.  Dr. Baehr’s budget of $136,961,454 calls for 61.5 positions to be eliminated and one school, the Varnum Elementary, to be closed.  Everyone knows we are in tough fiscal times, but these cuts will surely be detrimental to the progress our schools have made and everyone should be aware of what we stand to lose. I’ve been going to budget hearings and speaking out at city council meetings in support of school funding since 2003, and while we have seen our school system improve dramatically under Dr. Baehr’s leadership, it has been in the teeth of constant funding shortfalls.  I still regret the programs and services lost in 2003 that were never replaced – things like preschool transportation, enrichment classes at the middle schools, and science teachers at the elementary schools.  In fact, the Lowell Public schools have eliminated 300 teaching, support and administrative positions since 2002!  So, let’s be informed about the budget process, let’s be aware of what is being lost and ask ourselves as a community what we are willing to pay for.

Did you know that May is National Bike Month? In Massachusetts we also have “Bay State Bike Week” (May 12-18) which tries to get folks to rethink their daily transportation choices and opt for two wheels instead of four.  In can be a challenge to bike in city traffic, but if you follow the rules and clearly signal your intentions, it can be safe and rewarding. Of course, a dedicated bike path would be a boon!

It feels like more than 10 years since I first heard about the proposed Bruce Freeman Rail Trail, a multi-use trail for bikers, walkers and skaters that is slated to run from Lowell to Framingham. I was excited, but excitement waned as the years went by, and I really didn’t believe recent reports from friends that work on Phase I (Lowell to Westford) of the trail had finally begun.  I had pretty much decided that I would be too old to ride a bike by the time the trail was finished, but last week, while biking to the Chelmsford library, I saw for myself — the old railroad tracks were gone and the brush cut back to create a swath through the woods – this was on Golden Cove Road where the trail crosses on its way to Chelmsford Center. Checking the website, I saw that the groundbreaking was last October. I totally missed that, and am feeling like a slug for never joining the volunteers and activists who have perservered to make this a reality.  But it’s not too late to get on board, I just sent a donation (you can join for $10, or $25 for a family membership).  The May meeting is on trail beautification and will be held on May 14, 6:30 pm, at the Byam School in Chelmsford, and will include a guided bird walk. 

I love this quote from yesterday’s Sun editorial: “We know many elected officials won’t have the courage to buck the vote-getting unions, so the state should lend a hand by requiring unions to relinquish these pricey perks.” (my bold) Obviously this editor is unaware or considers irrelevant the hours and hours (sometimes until 3 in the morning) for more than a year of months on end that the school committee met in negotiations (finally with a state mediator) trying to forge an agreement with the school unions regarding benefits and salary adjustments. When your priority is what’s best for our children, NOT having an agreement or having teachers “work-to-rule” isn’t in the equation. Having unhappy or pressured staff—even the most dedicated are pressured to conform to their union’s call for solidarity—distracts everyone from focusing on the education of our children.

So a RESOUNDING YES to this editor for calling on the state to require unions to relinquish pricey perks because the reality is God doesn’t have enough money to buy these perks out of union contracts—even to grandfather-in current employees and cap future buyback requires more resources than is remotely possible in the near future. Consider this: after about 18 months of meetings, the Lowell School Committee negotiated contracts that included a 2.5% salary increase the first year, 3% subsequently—not exorbitant certainly. Yet, that’s about $3 million more we’ll need for next year’s budget, and it doesn’t include the increases in health care (we spend about $15 million on health benefits and it’s expected to go up at least 10 percent), utilities, heat etc. Just as we have seen our gas, food, and living expenses increase in our personal lives, so have school-department costs. As someone trying to be a fair employer and provide the best education for our children amid rising costs and shrinking resources, lack of courage, as this editor so casually claims, is not the primary problem.