BPS Superintendent Search Public Panels and Citywide Parent Council Update

THIS WEEK: Superintendent Search Public Panels

As you may know, the search for our next district Superintendent has continued apace over the past year or so. The twelve member Search Committee was initially charged with recommending a total of three finalist to the School Committee to choose from.

This past Thursday, they recommended four finalists to the School Committee.

There will be four days of public panel discussions run by different stakeholders as well as public interviews by the School Committee. Each candidate will be given one day each. The dates for each of these starts TOMORROW. Below are the dates with each of the candidates:

Monday, February 23 – Guadalupe Guerrero
Tuesday, February 24 – Tommy Chang
Wednesday, February 25 – Dana Bedden
Thursday, February 26 – Pedro Martinez

The process is happening very, very quickly and I urge all of you to spread the word, AND ATTEND!

These four finalists’ individual profiles and their (selectively redacted) applications are here: http://www.bostonpublicschools.org/Page/4464. At present, this page also contains a live stream to the interviews and to the public panels BPS plans to hold. BPS has made the assurance some of the panels will be live streamed.

If you are able to attend in person though please do. Please encourage other parents including from other schools who may not know about them, teachers, staff, students, and community members to join you as well for these public events.

Details about the public panel discussions and School Committee interviews are below, and are identical for each day:

10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
Panel Discussion with Community Partners
Paramount Center, Bright Family Screening Room
559 Washington Street, Boston
Moderator: Ayele Shakur, Search Committee Member and Education Chair of Boston NAACP

1 – 3 p.m.
School Committee Interview
Winter Chambers, 26 Court Street, Boston

4 – 6 p.m.
Panel Discussion with BPS Students and Teachers
English High School Auditorium
144 McBride Street, Jamaica Plain
Moderator: Samuel Acevedo, Search Committee Member and Executive Director of Boston HERC

6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
Panel Discussion with BPS Parents and School Leaders
English High School Auditorium
144 McBride Street, Jamaica Plain
Moderator: Dania Vazquez, Search Committee Member and BPS headmaster

Many thanks to the many Curley parents who submitted some really thoughtful questions the Citywide Parent Council co-chairs for the evening panel.

Hope to see you all there!

All details about the panels are found here.

BPS Citywide Parent Council Update

The panel discussions in the evenings will have one parent from the Boston Special Education Parent Advisory Council (SPED-PAC), and two of the four co-chairs of the Citywide Parent Council (CPC).

The Curley’s two CPC reps this year are Heshan Berents-Weeramuni and Leah Barcan. Please contact them for more details.

We need to elect this year’s SPED-PAC representative at our next SPC meeting.

For those of you who may have missed the report backs from the CPC at this year’s Curley SPC meetings, the Citywide Parent Council is the umbrella organization of all School Parent Councils in all our schools. Schools send their representatives to the CPC in order to work with other parents from every other city neighborhood on issues that affect all parents and students. It is the official voice at the city level of all BPS parents, and was formed under Judge Garrity’s 1974 desegregation order.

Below are the links to the past few meeting minutes. The December minutes contain a list of the elected members of the various committees if you want to know who to contact:

The CPC has been working on a range of topics including the budget, school quality, facilities and long-term planning, equity issues, and building more effective parent voices in decision making within BPS, including on the Superintendent Search Committee and the Joint Steering Committee on SSCs.

All meetings are public, and the remaining CPC meetings for the year are as follows:

Monday, March 2nd, 6-8pm, Title 1 Center, 445 Warren Street, Dorchester (rescheduled from this Tuesday)
Tuesday, March 24th, 6-8pm
Tuesday, April 28th, 6-8pm
Tuesday, May 19th, 6-8pm
Tuesday, June 16th, 6-8pm

Meetings from March onwards we hope to move to the new BPS headquarters in the Bolling Building in Dudley Square.