About Month: January 2023
Good evening members of the Pittsfield School Committee,
I’m William Garrity, Taconic Class of 22 alumni, and former student representative to the school committee, and I’m here tonight regarding transitioning Taconic to a fully CTE school.
Continue reading “Public Comment to the Pittsfield School Committee Regarding Making Taconic a Fully CTE School”This past week a bill was filed in the Massachusetts House and Senate to give student representatives voting rights on their local school committees. The Senate bill was filed by Senator Adam Gomez (SD759) and the House bill was filed by Rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier (HD2806) with help of the Massachusetts Association of Student Representatives (MASR), which I was a founding group member of. Lets take a look at the bill!
Continue reading “Student Representative Voting Rights”View part 2 of this series of blog posts here!
As I continue to write these blog posts, I am starting to realize that the presentations given out by the administration basically have a lot of the same information in it (why the district wants to have Taconic become a fully vocational school, the benefits of the CTE program, myths about the CTE program, rough timeline, etc.) but with some added information not found in previous presentations. Because of that, I’m just going to summarize all of the new information from here on out. You may view the linked presentation or video recording if you want to see what else was talked about.
On November 28th, Taconic Principal Matthew Bishop, Taconic Vice Principal for CTE Teaching and Learning Marcie Simonds, Assistant Superintendent for College and Career Readiness Tammy Gage, and Superintendent Joseph Curtis hosted a virtual CTE Community Information Session to discuss Taconic transitioning to a fully vocational school (this was a rescheduling of a meeting that was going to take place on November 10th but was canceled due to technical difficulties). The presentation covered the following additional points not discussed in previous blog posts:
Continue reading “Taconic Becoming a Fully Vocational School: How did we get here? (Part 3)”View part 1 of this series of blog posts here!
On the agenda for the July 20th, 2022 School Committee meeting was a “Presentation and Discussion on Steps Needed to Make Taconic High School a Full Vocational School for the 2023-2024 School Year” (timestamp 1:30:00 – 2:42:56).
This presentation by Taconic Principal Matthew Bishop, Assistant Superintendent for College and Career Readiness Tammy Gage, and then Pittsfield High Principal Henry Duval covered the following points (note that this information was accurate as of July of 2022):
Continue reading “Taconic Becoming a Fully Vocational School: How did we get here? (Part 2)”This is the first big blog post I have done on this site, so lets see how this goes!
I have been somewhat out of the loop for the past few months on where things stand regarding Taconic’s transition to a fully vocational school. This was an issue that popped up during my tenure as a student representative, but because it came close to the end of my tenure I didn’t get to discuss it that much (even though I tried to get a discussion on having the transition start in the fall of 2022 on the agenda before I left for various reasons). And because of my busy schedule this past fall I wasn’t really able to keep up with the Pittsfield School Committee that much. But as this is an important topic and that I received word from the district that the School Committee will be voting on turning Taconic into a fully CTE school at their January 25th meeting, I think it is a really good time to delve right back in and see where we are at.
But first, lets review how we actually got to this point. I’m going to start from the March 23rd School Committee meeting as that is when the School Committee seriously started to consider transitioning Taconic to a fully vocational school (and we need somewhere to start). Though I should point out there was a presentation given on this matter at the July 14th, 2021 School Committee meeting (timestamp 39:45 – 1:38:47) which does have a little bit of background information though that information is repeated throughout future presentations.
Continue reading “Taconic Becoming a Fully Vocational School: How did we get here? (Part 1)”