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Tracy O'Connell Novick Profile picture
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26 Nov, 4 tweets, 1 min read
finally listening to the #MAEdu Board of Ed meeting from Tuesday, and I will attempt to keep my outbursts on here to a minimum, but the degree to which the Secretary seems to take no joy in his job just makes me sad.
Schools are neat places!
Kids are fun and interesting people!
Young adults are great and funny and wise!
So many educators just bring so much JOY to what they do!
School districts have so many great people in all sorts of jobs--driving buses and making lunches and balancing books--that are fun to meet!
Seriously, getting to work with so many school districts of so many different kinds is a great privilege of my job and DAMN, he's missing it!

...it's just sad.

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More from @TracyNovick

Tracy O'Connell Novick Profile picture
28 Nov
A thing that I think we need to recognize (that I've been putting off saying because it falls under "but they finally got you testing and you still don't like it"):

The rapid tests that are rolling out to schools?
They have to be confirmed with a second test.
(Worcester schools were offered the tests and said no, because having everyone who tests positive retested didn't seem functional; this is not to make any remark on districts that decided otherwise.)
Two of us in my family have had the "go get tested" experiences in the past week (for symptoms, not exposure); my husband was told to wait two days; I waited in line for 2 1/2 hours (and from what I'm seeing, that was short).

We can do this. Many cannot.
Read 4 tweets
Tracy O'Connell Novick Profile picture
27 Nov
Ok, here's a single blog post covering that #MAEdu Board of Ed meeting from Tuesday: who-cester.blogspot.com/2020/11/novemb…
(when I can stop the meeting, there's additional italics)

One observation as someone who read the coverage (including #onhere) before I saw the meeting, on MCAS:
Missed from anything I saw was that the most unified voice coming from the Board (opened by new member Lombos) was for clarity and precision in communication over what MCAS will be used for.
That was repeated several times.
Read 6 tweets
Tracy O'Connell Novick Profile picture
27 Nov
ok, back at listening to the #MAedu Board of Ed and I tweeted out that earlier thread before I got to the part where the Commissioner talked about the spike in mental health issues among young people--still haven't seen data on that--and (here's the real puzzler)
related that to the state collecting time on learning (effectively) data for all districts "to make sure" schools are connecting adults with students "so that we can try to mitigate some of this depression and isolation among children"

whoa
There's just a whole lot going on.
First, data can of course be used in many ways, but as this was outlined to superintendents, this was to give a standard set of information across districts on which to draw to frame what is really happening in and across districts.
Read 12 tweets
Tracy O'Connell Novick Profile picture
27 Nov
>>deep breath<<

Ok, couple of things on this and articles of this ilk: washingtonpost.com/education/2020…
First, yes, absolutely, remote schooling is making some kids anxious and stressed, and having kids draw and talk about that is a good idea.
I would say that there also should then be a feedback loop to the schools, because some of what is mentioned in the article is solvable (Creedence should be able to be dressed comfortably; Piper should get long enough breaks to go on the playground)
Read 13 tweets
Tracy O'Connell Novick Profile picture
29 Oct
@DanaGoldstein Dana, here's what my district in Worcester, Massachusetts needs to get all students back into classrooms:

Somewhere between twice as much and three times as much space as we have now, given how crowded our spaces are. We have nearly fifty schools, so plan accordingly.
@DanaGoldstein We then will need staffing for those spaces. Now, we're already an underresourced district: by the state's own measures, we are already short about 700 teachers.
To that add probably at least another 2000 teachers to have actual staff in those additional classroom spaces.
@DanaGoldstein Now, that's assuming that the $15M that our city is putting into our HVAC systems for ionization equipment is sufficient to let us use all the spaces we have.
Read 20 tweets
Tracy O'Connell Novick Profile picture
29 Oct
I have far more than can fit into 280 characters to say about the @worcesterpublic budget document, so I will limit myself to two things:
It is far and away the most useful document I use as a #Worcester School Committee member (I’d argue it should be), and I feel very, very lucky to work with it.

I personally know that I do a better job because of the budget document we receive from which to deliberate.
If you, anywhere else in Massachusetts, find my school finance work on here and elsewhere of use, ten plus years of close use of the #WorcSchools budget book is part of why.
Read 4 tweets

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