WORCESTER – A Worcester School Committee meeting on Thursday, June 20, that ran nearly six hours, ended with the committee approving a $485 million budget for the 2025 fiscal year. School committee members approved the budget by a 6-3 vote, with members Maureen Binienda, Dianna Biancheria, and Kathleen Roy in opposition.
The fiscal year started July 1, 2024, and ends June 30, 2025.
The approved Worcester Public Schools (WPS) budget cuts several positions from the previous year to close a $22 million funding gap for the upcoming fiscal year. Those cuts include the positions of 86 classroom teachers, 70 student support professionals, five psychologists, and 22 administrative roles.
The cuts in classroom teacher positions include 31 voluntary resignations and 12 retirements. Layoffs affect no teacher with over three years of experience, according to the administration of the Superintendent of Worcester Public Schools, Dr. Rachel Monárrez.
This is the fourth part of a series on the Worcester School Committee meeting on June 20, when the committee passed the WPS fiscal year 2025 budget.
See our first story in this series, Worcester School Committee’s “Keep Failing” Caucus, for more on the cause of the deficit and the results of policies of the past that Binienda and Biancheria repeatedly advocated for in the June 20 meeting.
The second piece in this series, Administrative Cost Increases at Worcester Schools: 0.61%, reviews claims of an explosion of administrative spending by Monárrez’s administration, and presents data from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), which tracks administrative costs for every school system in the state, which contradicts those claims.
The third piece in this series, The 18 Minute Fight for More for Students at Newer Schools, covers an attempt to eliminate the position of a current WPS employee whose position is funded from revenue that WPS generates, not the general budget. It also includes demands that the individual school, not the district, should control the revenue generated from rental of school facilities.
This piece will cover the WPS Office of Climate and Culture, what the office and those that serve within it do, and the language used on June 20 in attempts to cut positions from the office.
The Office of Climate and Culture
According to the WPS website, the Office of Climate and Culture includes “coaches who work directly with educators and school leaders to implement research-based approaches to enhance positive youth behavior and wellness in school,” including supporting classroom management. The department also includes “School Adjustment Counselors who manage student-focused behavioral work,” and provides “support for students who are experiencing homelessness, are home schooled, or are in a hospital setting.”
The primary responsibilities in the job description for these coaches, called climate and culture specialists, includes:
- Monitor assigned portions of campus and/or parking lot before and during school hours;
- Maintain a highly visible presence to maintain order and encourage positive conduct;
- Identify potential issues and work to maintain control in a respectful culturally responsive manner;
- Enforce school regulations including, but not limited to, smoking, truancy, tardiness, and vandalism;
- Utilize Crisis Prevention Intervention techniques when necessary to contain persons involved in fights or physical altercations.
In the schools where Monárrez’s administration implemented this model, climate and culture specialists work in teams of four to five. Classified as paraeducators, their compensation aligns with other paraeducators.
This office represents the new WPS approach to security and student behavior management. School Safety Director Robert Pezzella led the previous security approach until his retirement last year. Pezzella had previously served as then-Mayor Ray Mariano’s chief aide before taking the position in 1997. Mariano has been a long-time supporter of Binienda, as covered in the first two pieces in this series.
The Office of Climate and Culture seeks a proactive approach to security and student behavior management. While part of the responsibilities of the role are reactive, such as to fights or other security related matters, these individuals work within the student population daily.
The relationships they build with students can enable more effective intervention on a range of issues, including learning about conflict between students before it culminates in a violent confrontation. In scenarios where a student needs to be removed from a classroom for behavior issues, relationships can help de-escalate and minimize the disruption of the learning environment.
WPS implemented the climate and culture program during the 2023 – 2024 school year. According to the administration, school principals and other staff provided feedback that strongly supported the program. Monárrez’s budget proposal sought to expand the program.
The 2024 – 2025 WPS budget includes 15 new climate and culture specialist positions, bringing the total to 34. This increase will enable the program to extend into middle schools. The total budgeted cost for these 34 positions, $1,169,362, equates to an average of $34,393 for each position.
Evaluation Day
A school committee meeting on Thursday, August 15, included the annual evaluation of the superintendent by school committee members. The evaluation includes ratings from each committee member in multiple areas.
While there were some deviations, the result frequently showed six members voting in the top 50 percent of possible scores, while three members frequently ranked the superintendent’s performance in the bottom 50 percent. The ratings of individual school committee members are not yet available, but the results were entirely predictable.
During the meeting, Mayor Joe Petty, who also serves as chairperson of the school committee, said the full evaluation of each member should be available within the next two weeks. This Week in Worcester will cover the evaluations when they become available.
Biancheria made the following comments during the discussion of the evaluation of the superintendent.
The core point of Biancheria’s statement may be difficult to argue with for many city residents. Committee members should ask hard questions in pursuit of exercising their responsibilities and oversight of the operations of Worcester Public Schools. It is unclear who Biancheria is referring to, but if anyone believes the expectation of committee members is to declare everything is perfect, they are misguided.
During a school committee meeting on September 2, 2021, Biancheria addressed her decision to vote with the majority in a 10 to 1 vote, to decline to renew the contract of then-Superintendent Binienda. The message here may also be difficult for many to dispute.
Respecting the outgoing superintendent, who served Worcester Public Schools in various roles for 43 years, is appropriate.
Bouncers who Roam the Halls
During the June 20 budget meeting, Binienda moved to cut all 15 new positions, saying:
“So I’m very concerned on this page is the culture and climate specialists again. People just roam the hallways. My motion is that we cut the 21 new positions for climate and culture specialists.”
Biancheria moved to cut seven of the new positions.
“So I’m just wondering, when we look at this dollar amount of 1 million, 169 and they’re all non teaching positions again, let me repeat that. Non teaching positions. I get we need to have some security in our schools. And students need to be in a classroom.
I also understand that these folks in these positions are going to be looking at school rules, regulations, procedures and altercations. So we are looking at having glorified bouncers in our schools and yet still answer the door. And that’s what a bouncer does at a nightclub.”
Members of the school committee, in an open meeting, diminishing the role of current employees of Worcester Public Schools, may appear less than respectful to fair-minded people.
If Binienda or Biancheria’s motions were successful, who should intervene in altercations within schools? Neither offered their alternative, but Mariano, in the same Telegram and Gazette column (paywall) where he provided wildly inaccurate statistics on police responses to schools (covered in the first piece of this series), said school administrators should be patrolling the halls.
The Telegram has never issued a correction on the wildly inaccurate statistics that Mariano presented.
In other words, Mariano thinks someone else should just do more. Binienda and Biancheria expressed a similar sentiment on another position, covered in the third piece of this series.
More Policies of the Past
Biancheria’s comments continued.
“We have no security guys. We don’t have a plan with the police any longer. Those were eliminated. The security guard was eliminated. They were disbanded, actually. So now we have $1.1 million for our schools. So I’ve been told a number of times that our schools are safe, but now we’re putting in 4 to 5 people to roam the halls. But we’re not going to have anyone in a uniform.
We’re not going to have anyone that is associated with our police department in our school, and we’re not going to have any security guards in our schools. But we’re going to have five people. Are they going to wear a vest? What is their dress code? I don’t need an answer for that tonight. I’m just throwing that out there.”
The claim that schools do not have a plan with the police department is false. The school resource officer program, which placed a police officer in each school, was eliminated at the end of 2021. The school liaison program replaced it, which assigns designated officers to schools along the route they patrol, to maximize response time. Then-Chief of Police Steven Sargent supported the change.
While police officers perform many duties, the primary responsibility of the police is to respond to reports of crime, investigate, and arrest those who commit crimes. While police departments in Worcester and elsewhere implement strategies that are proactive in nature, the core responsibility of the police is reactive.
Research shows that police in schools have led to concerning results.
Data from the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) shows that across the country, arrest rates of students at schools with on-site police were more than double that of schools without police. The GAO also found that school-based arrest rates for Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, Black, and American Indian/Alaska native students were two to three times higher than White students. It also found that disabled students have more than double the rate of arrests and referrals than those without disabilities.
An unknown portion of those arrested likely also came into contact with another uniform wearing professional. Corrections officers.
Maybe the presence of those in uniform do not create best climate for education, or the best culture for learning. It is unclear how the presence of a professional in uniform enhances education.
Also unclear is how a single police officer or security person can achieve a better response time to an incident than five individuals within the school. An officer inside a facility responding to an incident at a location at the other end of a large school facility, travelling on foot, could take several minutes to arrive.
With five climate and culture specialists in a school building, the distance to travel to an incident, and thus the time to respond, will reduce.
Lamenting the Lack of Long-Term Suspensions
Biancheria continued:
“But what they’re not saying is when they’re taken out of the classroom, when they’re not, they’re misbehaving or there is an issue they put into a room that everybody bought supplies for. So they have different games they’re going to be playing, and they have different pieces of a puzzle that they’re going to be putting together.
So they’re not going to be educated in those rooms. There’s not going to be a long-term suspension. It’s going to be brought into that room, and then they’ll be brought back into the classroom where the students who want to get educated are there.”
Biancheria’s decision to raise suspensions as an issue is interesting, given the controversty during Binienda’s tenure related to the high number of suspensions issued, with significant racial disparity.
Biancheria’s comments suggest a student removed from a classroom for behavioral issues will disturb those inside the classroom when they return. Those not removed from the classroom, she says, are those who “want to learn”. The obvious inference is students who misbehave don’t want to learn. Long-term suspension solves that problem, in her view.
Behavior as a Product of Mental Health
Students act out for different reasons. It can be as simple as a rebellious kid being a kid. Others may have behavioral issues. Those issues can have various root causes that can include genetic conditions a student was born with, medical occurrences, experiences that affected the student’s mental health, or other psychological issues.
When considering the demographic diversity of Worcester families, the issues they face, and the impacts on young people, behavioral and emotional issues should be expected.
Working families in Worcester face significant financial hardship. Of 59 cities in Massachusets, only six have a lower median household income than Worcester.
According to the U.S. Census, 19.5 percent of Worcester residents live in poverty, the seventh highest of all municipalities in Massachusetts. Of those under 18-years-old, 23.9 percent live in poverty, the 24th highest in the state.
According to this paper hosted on the U.S. Department of Justice website, the leading cause of child abuse in the United States is poverty.
The experience of refugee families prior to their arrival in Worcester is difficult to fathom for many. The daily obstacles students from homeless families face are profound.
Widespread mental health issues, and the lack of adequate mental health care, is a struggle that all levels of government and providers are barely beginning to grasp. Young people from all walks of life struggle with mental health.
The rate of sexual abuse is impossible to know, but we do know that a huge portion of cases go unreported.
No one chooses the cause of their trauma or the effect it has on them, which can be emotionally crippling and have dire implications for mental health and behavior.
The Same Old Thinking
Biancheria’s objection to a location for climate and culture specialist to work with students, or as she described it, “a room that everybody bought supplies for” doesn’t appear to extend to other areas. Taxpayers fund resources for many activities that not all students access, like sports equipment.
Those kids, in her view, “want to learn,” and are most desirable to educate.
The City of Worcester now has a superintendent who doesn’t see any student as an undesirable.
Biancheria’s comments supporting more suspensions are the same antiquated thinking that led to the controversy over suspension rates during Binienda’s tenure as superintendent. The first public calls for the city to move toward a new superintendent came during that time. While the school committee renewed Binienda’s contract for another three years, by the end of her second contract, only John Monfredo supported continuing her administration.
The suspension controversy was, arguably, the beginning of the end of Binienda’s tenure.
Some adults just don’t want to learn.
