To School Committee:

In the next contract, they should probably establish multiple classifications of paraprofessionals so that those providing services directly to students are paid a little bit more. To your earlier point about the JRC and it being another “new program” that the supposedly ignorant School Committee just loves to set up with no useful purpose, the JRC was a partial and inadequate response to the “Hibbard problem.” CLOSING HIBBARD IS ONE OF THE BIGGEST REASONS WHY THE SECONDARY SCHOOLS SEEM SO DYSFUNCTIONAL. I put that in caps because it’s that important. When you put the most behaviorally challenged students back into an educational environment to which they are both poorly suited and do not desire to be placed, you are creating a recipe for dysfunction. The behavior problems and disruptions that they cause, in concert with another possibly 50-300 young people who can, depending on the school environment, “go either way” in terms of either thriving/surviving high school or “fall through the cracks” and underachieve, fall into drugs/alcohol/gangs, places an enormous strain on the administrators, office personnel, and teachers. It takes the focus off of the work they should be doing to more directly promote teaching and learning and to develop and support specialized programming so that Pittsfield’s schools are places that students and parents would CHOOSE to be a part of. In addition, their presence can prove menacing to the other students and, more importantly, the PARENTS of the students who are trying to do the right thing at school. I would contend that it is this intense fear of sending their children to school to get a decent education in classrooms and hallways alongside this subgroup of severely troubled kids from “the wrong side of the tracks” their children that is driving parents of students in the more affluent areas of the city, particularly in southeast Pittsfield, to “choice-out” their kids at such a high rate. As a rule, kids that are severely disruptive should not be spending large parts of their day in the regular classroom. That is the biggest issue at the middle school level. At the high school level, remember that there are quite a few advanced-level classes at both high schools. Therefore, many of the academically advanced students (not necessarily the smartest, but definitely the most academically skilled and disproportionately represented in the choice-out population) hardly ever find themselves in classrooms next to the really disruptive or troubled kids. In addition, if you have strong vocational and ATHLETIC programs (Garivaltis was spot on about that problem) then you can redirect the energy of a lot of the disruptive kids towards more productive pursuits. However, at least some of these have to be offered virtually year-round to help keep these kids out of trouble in the summer. The athletic programming works best when it’s offered within the school building, has competitive elements (intramural are better than nothing but interscholastic competition is even better), and when the coaches are also teachers or full-time employees within the school buildings. That means when they fill teaching positions, they should really be looking to see that some of the people they hire can also coach one or more sports. That is how hiring is done across much of the country and, in schools where many of the students don’t come from homes and neighborhoods don’t most often gravitate to academic pursuits and lack many family members, neighbors, and peers that do as well, this is the best way to help the kids stay connected to and “see a reason” to come and give a modicum of effort in school.

Because there was no Hibbard, I’m almost certain that the School Department was grasping for ways to deal with the hard-core behavior problems. Hence, had to create this JRC and have to have other places where they can house and work to educate students who are particularly disruptive to the regular classroom learning, particularly at the middle and high school levels.

By the way, for anyone that didn’t think that Pittsfield had those “gang-banging kids” thirty years ago, think again. The difference now is, because (1) they comprise a higher percentage of the school population, (2) they could be tucked away largely out of sight in the SPED, vocational, and standard (lowest of three ability levels) classes or at least moves largely out of the foreground and into a position as a sideshow for their generally more affluent and, at least by all appearances, more well-adjusted peers, (3) they now make up a much higher percentage of the city’s student population in the days before widespread school choice and the charter school up in Adams and drive down the test scores at the secondary schools, and (4) we have only in the last appx. ten years adopted this obsession with test scores, scores which, almost exclusively, represent the basis for school ranking and designation of state intervention status (i.e. Level 3, Level 5), it makes the schools appear to much less effective in educating kids than they were in years and decades prior. The truth is that, all things being equal, it is more challenging and resource-intensive for school systems to help groups of economically-disadvantaged children meet a grade-level standard of competency in literacy, math, or science than it is to help a group of more affluent children. The whole “a child’s parents are their first teachers” thing doesn’t work as often with a given poor child because economically-disadvantaged children are less likely to have two parents, less likely to have (a) parent(s) who completed college or even high school, less likely to have (a) parent(s) who don’t abuse drugs or alcohol, less likely to have (a) parent(s) who don’t abuse each other or their children, and less likely to have any parent or stable caregiver. In addition, they are less likely to have eaten adequate amounts and healthy types of food and drink on a given day (e.g. the day of the MCAS exams) and less likely to have access to decent medical, dental, or vision care (still an issue even in MA). So, if the school system doesn’t provide staff, services, and programs to help offset these problems, all of which are likely to have a negative impact on student learning and allow of which our students in Pittsfield are statistically more likely to be experiencing than, for example, students in Lenox, then it is likely that a lower percentage of Pittsfield students will meet the grade-level academic standards. Remember also that poor kids generally enter school with these challenges, arriving at school, for example, with less advanced vocabularies than their more economically-advantaged peers. Hence, their disadvantages start long before they walk through the schoolhouse door and compound as they fall further and further behind as the wheels of time grind on. The state Chapter 70 formula inadequately subsidizes the city to help it pay for these things, and so it falls on the cities and towns to either pay or not provides these supports. If you don’t provide the supports, the kids won’t meet the state standards and perform on the tests.

In addition, why would an educator or administrator ever think about working in Pittsfield if they could make an equivalent or higher salary working in a district where their students are disproportionately more likely to severely disrupt the classes and schools, not score well on the state tests? Why would they work in a school district where they could risk their career because of perceived “classroom/school management weaknesses” stemming from the fact that they are best at teaching math, chemistry, language arts, or helping support the people who are doing that work whatever their subject is instead of babysitting, law enforcement, or otherwise begging/convincing unrepentantly uncooperative students to attempt to learn? And, if they were interested in doing the work or educating at-risk students, why would they choose to do it in Pittsfield, especially if they are young. After all, Pittsfield is some distance from an interstate highway, large mall, major city, major airport. It snows and gets cold here. The public perception among many is that it’s dying and will never reawaken (it doesn’t have to be that way, though). Its citizens seem to want to define it always but what it was and can’t be again (a manufacturing town dominated by one company with lots of middle and upper middle-classjobs available to anybody that’s willing to put in an honest day’s work even if they didn’t like school or finish much of it) instead of what it can be (something different than that with probably fewer of those jobs but other strengths that mean that the property values don’t have to stagnate, the streets can be safe, there will be more recreational opportunities, and the schools and city can be better and promote themselves so they don’t have such a poor reputation). Those who have choices in where to work are less likely to choose to work in such a community, so that’s why it’s definitely harder to attract and retain great educators in Pittsfield. In the short term, the best tool with which to do that is money, because word gets around and, when you send layoff notices to 10% of your staff each year because you don’t know if you’ll have the money to pay them, word gets around and the best educators avoid those districts or leave them as soon as they can. Often, you’ll find that your best school districts have administrators that rise through the ranks, meaning that those districts “grown their own” talent. Here our best talent often leaves. For example, just off the top of my head, why did we have two highly educated professionals, both of them leaders in the school district, leave in the early 2000s for Lenox. Those are just two people from a long list of people who left for more money and more supportive districts and communities. Could the better salaries and more well-funded school system had anything to do with it?

Except in cases of economically-disadvantaged families/communities that are unusually supportive of education or anomalous groups of poor students who, through some confluence of of factors are better able to succeed in school, it takes more MONEY to educate poor kids than it does the general population. Pittsfield has a higher percentage of poor kids than do other districts in Berkshire County and most other cities and towns in the Commonwealth. Therefore, it stands to reason that it will take disproportionately MORE MONEY PER PUPIL TO EDUCATE POOR KIDS IN PITTSFIELD than it will to educate a equal number of kids who are more economically well-off in the aggregate. IF YOU WANT THE SCHOOLS TO LOOK BETTER BY RAISING TEST SCORES AND USE THOSE MEASURES TO REDUCE THE AMOUNT OF CHOICE-OUT STUDENTS, IT WILL COST MORE MONEY. Don’t complain about the school budget going up and then the scores going down or not being as high as you’d like them to be. To be clear, there is also a problem with people at Mercer and the School Department not understanding and responding to what is now a competitive landscape for education. They don’t seem to comprehend that they’re going to have to compete for most of the most academically and athletically skilled students, that it’s “not fair” but that public education has changed, and the General Court and this Governor are probably not going to bail them out with a major restructuring of and/or increase to the Chapter 70 formula. There are signifcant improvements that need to be made in the School Department, particularly in terms of specialty academic and athletic programming and how those offerings are explained to the community. But what kinds of kids need an “attendance coodinator”? The group of kids needing that service is going to be disproportionately lower-income than the student population at large. What kinds of kids are going to use a “career counselor”? Once again, that group (NOT every single kid) using that service right out of high school is generally going to be of a lower income than the student population at large.

I am sorry for those pensioners and older people who never really thought that Pittsfield could get “so bad” and that they would have to live in a city with “those people” from Albany and New York and Springfield and Hartford. Pittsfield has changed and I recognize how upsetting that is to many people. It is deeply upsetting even to my own parents. Living here will be different than when “the GE” was around. However, Pittsfield does NOT have to have lousy schools, and an understaffed police department. The system is pretty decent as it is but our roughest schools are beginning to rival those in inner-city Boston or Holyoke or and there’s probably not as many of the “pretty good” students as there used to be (i.e. I’d venture to guess that the middle 60-80% of Pittsfield students don’t perform as well on SAT or MCAS compared to their peers in the middle of other school systems around the state compared to 20-30 years ago). Pittsfield does NOT have to transform into a place like Lawrence or Brockton or New Bedford where the whole place looks sketchy. There is enough civic capital here that we can prevent that. It can be a good place to live and, for a certain niche of people looking for a small, historic city with charm but a little bit of diversity and grit as well, an OUTSTANDING place to live. But to raise the test scores and convince some of the choice-out kids to come back and give the potential choice-out kids reasons to stay, WE HAVE TO FUND THE SCHOOLS! I promise you, there really isn’t a whole lot of room to cut if you want to accomplish those two goals.