Community Festival!

Parent involvement and community support are crucial to the success of our students and our public school system. Even people without children in the public schools should feel a sense of ownership in the system, because the quality of education received by the children in the city has a direct impact on overall quality of life in the city. Students who are better educated, who graduate from high school, who are engaged with the community become better citizens, many of whom will stay in Lowell or come back to Lowell after graduating from college. The school system should not consider itself, nor be perceived by the community, as an island, but as an integral part of the fabric of the community.

On Wednesday, March 22, the public is invited to attend a Community Festival sponsored by the Lowell Public Schools that will give parents, students, teachers, business leaders, community groups and all Lowell residents a chance to interact with and learn about the public schools. The event will be at Lowell High School from 6:00-8:30 pm. All the Lowell public schools as well as many community groups will have a table and there will be entertainment and exhibits by Lowell students. The entertainment will take place at Lowell High’s Little Theatre and the Auditorium at the Freshman Academy and will include Cambodian dancers, Irish step dancers and the fabulous Lowell High modern dancers, as well as musical performances by elementary school chorus groups, a recorder ensemble, the middle school band and the UMASS Lowell Strings Project. There will be free food, door prizes, a scavenger hunt, read-alouds and raffles. Transportation on Lowell school buses has been arranged, with buses stopping at various schools around the city.

This will be a fun and informative evening; please try to attend and show your support for our schools. For more information, call 978-937-7674.

The Column strikes again

Regarding the School Committee/Union gag order which was used by the Lowell Sun as an opportunity to discredit the school committee in Sunday's Column, consider for a moment what it might mean if the process were opened up to public scrutiny. Our incredibly biased local media would be ranting about every step of the process adding to the combative nature of the negotiations and twisting the facts to suit their own anti-teacher/anti-union agendas.

Our teachers are finally being adequately compensated and the Lowell Sun can’t stand it. They sneer that Lowell teachers are now among the 10% highest paid teachers in the State; yet if you live anywhere around Greater Boston and Greater Lowell, the salaries naturally reflect the higher cost-of-living of this part of the State. The Sun apparently thinks it’s a bad thing that our teacher salaries are now comparative to those in the surrounding towns, wealthy suburbs like Acton and Westford, but our district has to compete with these towns for candidates and I would guess that Lowell teachers have a much harder job.

As for student achievement, here are some facts: from 2000 to 2005, the percentage of Lowell school children with limited English who took the MCAS doubled to 23%, the proportion of Special Needs children who took the MCAS increased to 16.5% and the proportion of children below the poverty line who took the MCAS grew by 10% to equal 67.2% of all test-takers in Lowell. These numbers represent significant challenges faced by our district and our teachers. During this same period, the state reduced local aide to school districts, in fact, no state in the nation cut more than Massachusetts in per pupil funding between 2002 and 2004. The modest increases to aide in the last two years have not even covered fixed cost increases, in fact, after inflation, we are looking at a net decrease in local aide of $200 million, and the City of Lowell has been extremely reluctant to fill the gap. Despite constant efforts to fight the Sun’s disinformation campaign against the schools, they persist in throwing around bad or misleading data. If the labor negotiations were open to their reporters, then I’m afraid the only winner would be the Sun’s circulation department. Sure, they would sell more papers, but the losers would once again be the school children of Lowell.

If it's Spring, it must be time for the annual budget dance. First move goes to the city manager who declares one of his periodic hiring freezes. These are becoming like orange terror alerts, the response being 'ho-hum'; however, like clockwork comes the actions of Councillor Caulfield using the manager's freeze to criticize the school department for not doing the same. So, are the schools supposed to leave teaching positions empty? This is the time of year when most of the school department hiring has to be done, otherwise we'll have empty spots at the front of the classroom in September. It's a typical example of city hall tactics - discredit the schools before the budget process even begins.