Last night was a short School Committee meeting, with only one report on transformation schools. The meeting began with the Superintendent’s report, in which she touched on two issues. First, Superintendent Skipper discussed an error in the exam schools admissions process that led to the miscalculation of student GPAs, affecting eligibility for dozens of students. The exam schools admissions process has been a major focus area for the Committee over the past three years, despite representing just a small minority of BPS students, and the Superintendent noted last night that both the district and its external auditor did not catch this critical error until it was ultimately flagged by an impacted parent. Second, Superintendent Skipper discussed ongoing issues with the Henderson School including errors in recent school job postings – a topic that was also brought up during public comment.
Following votes to approve several new union contracts, the only report of the night was an update on transformation schools. Transformation schools – a label given to the lowest-performing schools in the district based on state rankings – include about a quarter of BPS schools. The report highlighted several areas of concern at these schools, including chronic absenteeism rates of over 40% and high numbers of staff vacancies (Madison Park alone has 60 vacant positions). District-wide, BPS high school students last year missed an average of 31.5 days – more than six weeks – leading to concerns from Committee members about what’s driving increases in absenteeism and what steps district leaders are taking to address it.
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