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The Citywide Parent Council will thank Superintendent Karla Brooks Baehr for her service to the Lowell Public Schools by donating books in her name to individual school libraries across the city. Dr. Baehr, whose tenure as our school chief ends on June 30, will be presented with a list of the donations at a farewell gathering held in the Mayor’s Reception Room on June 18 from 5:30-7 p.m.—just prior to her last school committee meeting. The public is invited to attend the reception and participate in the book-giving—a “twofer” in Baehr-speak as it is a great way to honor her commitment to improving public education in Lowell while also expanding our school libraries. And it’s so easy to participate: simply go to Barnes & Noble at 151 Merrimack Street, purchase a book, and choose a school library, or EVEN EASIER, call Barnes & Noble at 978-458-3939 and purchase the book by telephone with a credit card. B&N will record your donation for the presentation to Dr. Baehr and deliver your book to the school library you selected. The downtown store is also offering a 20 percent discount on books purchased for this program and can recommend children’s favorites.

It was a morning to celebrate giving and thank key volunteers who provide services to our community. It was also an opportunity to welcome Joshua Kraft, president of the New England Patriots Foundation, and learn about his family’s twin priorities: winning football games and supporting community work. Kraft was a speaker at today’s Greater Lowell Community Foundation Philanthropy Day Conference, which was the best I’ve attended. The speeches were short, the anecdotes poignant, and perhaps best of all for me, the connections to Lowell High School were palpable. Many of the speakers, award founders and recipients, and major players in local philanthropy are former LHS students and faculty—a tribute to our public schools and our future. In fact, the Youth Service Group Award went to Lowell High’s National Honor Society, one of the oldest, largest, and most diverse in the country. The LHS Honor Society started in 1927 with a Jewish student president under the guidance of a female faculty advisor—just seven years after women got the right to vote. (The second student president was an African American.) The current Honor Society president is senior Tim Bergeron, who also received the Coach’s Award for Track last night and was named LHS Idol a few months ago—a talented athlete, performer, honor student, community volunteer, and genuinely nice boy. Eddie Mercado, another youth leader honored at the breakfast, received the Rising Star Volunteer Award for his work at UTEC and his role in the creation of the Governor’s Statewide Youth Council. Mercado’s $1,000 award will go toward UTEC’s continued work with youth in the city. Although not quite as young but certainly as inspiring, Stephen Conant received the Banker’s Volunteer Award for Lifetime Achievement. Conant, a 1972 LHS graduate and successful businessman, has been committed to protecting Lowell’s natural resources for more than a decade. The annual event provided a glimpse of key people making a positive difference, and it offered an update on the foundation’s $128,000 in awards to 50 different groups this year—both significant in their impact on our communities.

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?

I’ve been congratulating myself on my gardening success this spring – my lilac was loaded with scented purple plumes, the struggling azalea is clothed in scarlet flowers, my non-performing smoke tree has the beginnings of frothy buds that I hope will soon be ’smoke’ and most exciting of all, my peonies, normally putting forth from zero to one or two blooms per plant, are covered with round buds about to burst.  My kindly neighbor, a landscaper, once shared with me some advice he had received when starting out in the business, “It’s not rocket science,” he was told, “when laying sod, just make sure to put the green side up.”  So, rather than hoping for dramatic success and magazine-perfect beds, I’ve been trying to follow this common-sense approach and take small steps to improve my yard – put lime on the lilacs in the fall, feed everything early in the spring, fertilize the lawn at regular intervals, and I’ve been thinking that that guy was right. You just have to do what needs to be done; when it needs to be done.  However, my bubble was burst when talking to a friend who claimed that her peonies were also doing better than ever; maybe it’s not me, but some combination of forces – rain, sun, the fates – that has given my yard a boost this year.  Anyone else having unusual success in the garden?