Communication of Worcester’s School Safety Plan Questioned by School Committee

Friday, August 21, 2015

Patrick Sargent, GoLocalWorcester Contributor

Superintendent Dr. Melinda Boone presented her School Opening Readiness highlights at Thursday’s Worcester School Committee meeting.

The presentation focused on updates on four areas: facilities, human resources, school safety and enhancements to school programs.

The area getting the most attention was school safety.

According to Dr. Boone, a request for proposal (RFP) on a school safety audit has been publicly posted for bidding.

As announced on Wednesday, secondary schools in Worcester will adopt a school resource officer model.

Dr. Boone said, “What we have found is, both in terms of my experiences with the school resource officer model as well as our high school principals recommending that we begin to think about the presence of the officers in our schools, not just purely in the community policing model, but in the school resource officer model, which is a nationally recognized opportunity around building relationships and supporting both the training and development of citizenship as well as the support of safety and security in our schools.”

When Will the Principals See the Safety Plan?

Dianna Biancheria

Committee member Dianna Biancheria said she hoped that principals and assistant principals would have more of a say in school safety measures and asked Dr. Boone directly when the principals and assistant principals would be issued the safety plan.

As GoLocalWorcester reported on Thursday afternoon, as of late Thursday morning, the Superintendent’s office had yet to send the safety plan to the elementary and secondary school administration.

Dr. Boone responded that Chief Academic Officer Dr. Marco Rodrigues “generally” addressed the school officer model with the principals at a meeting on Wednesday.

"My conversations with principals and assistant principals stated from quadrant managers that they should attend the school committee meeting to find out what was occurring. I’m a little surprised as to how principals who are in the front line are looking at what is occurring in their schools,” said Biancheria.

Dr. Rodrigues addressed Biancheria’s concerns and said that he told the principals that Dr. Boone would reveal the safety plan at the school committee meeting and that the principals were later made aware of the plan following the press release from the Mayor’s office late Wednesday afternoon.

Sources told GoLocal that many of the principals and assistant principals were both upset and confused that they weren’t told what the safety plan is with only a week before school starts.

Mayor and School Committee Address School Safety

John Foley

In regards to school safety, Mayor Joe Petty said, “Our schools are safe. Our community is a safe place to live, to work, to raise a family or run a business. It’s a point to send that message. It’s a safe community. Do we have our challenges? Yes. Are we dealing with those challenges? Yes.”

“This isn’t a school problem. This is a community problem. We are working very hard to address it. We will continue to address it,” Petty added.

The general response from the school committee members was approval of the Superintendent’s and Mayor’s decision to implement the school resource officer model.

School Committee member John Foley said, “I know we have growing concerns about youth violence in our community. It’s a problem facing every neighborhood throughout our city and we are dealing with that, and we have to deal with that. I do see this...as a chance to get out in front of this - to proactively put a police presence and a resource in every school to make sure it doesn’t carry over from the neighborhood and community into our schools.”

Biancheria applauded the leadership of Mayor Petty, City Manager Ed Augustus and Worcester Police Chief Gary Gemme, but had some concerns that were not raised by the Superintendent’s safety plan - including how the city would handle police responses to elementary schools.

“We have a number of occasions in which our police department has to go to an elementary school,” Biancheria said. “We like to think that at that age there aren’t issues that the police need to be involved in, but there are. We need to start to look at how we are going to deal with that.”

“Right now, we can only hope that the first day of school, and the rest of the days of school continue to be safe for all of our students and all of our staff,” said Biancheria.

WPS Still Looking to Fill Teaching Positions

Changes to school facilities included window replacements, interior painting, classroom renovations and more than 20 other school projects that were completed by facility staff over the summer.

WPS is still recruiting teaching and support staff and the human resources department is currently still seeking to fill some teaching positions before school starts on Wednesday.

“There’s still a few staffing positions that we are working on,” said Dr. Boone. “We will continue to recruit. (Members of the HR department) are working really hard to make sure we have highly qualified teachers in our classrooms the first day of school.”