The Pittsfield School Committee will have a meeting on Wednesday, March 13th at 6pm in City Hall Council Chambers (70 Allen St). The meeting will also be broadcasted on PCTV Channel 1302, PCTV’s Facebook page, and PCTV Select.
Any member of the public may wish to speak during our public comment period. Public comment is limited to 3 minutes per person and the public comment period is limited to 15 minutes unless the school committee votes to extend the public comment period. Anyone wishing to speak during the public comment period may be required to sign up before the meeting starts.
Acceptance of Donation for Taconic’s Auto Technology Program – Toyota Motors North America, Inc. is looking to donate the use of a 2023 Toyota GR86 with an estimated value of $25,723 for 5 years for Taconic’s Auto Technology Program. School Committee policy requires the committee to accept any donation of $5,000 or more to the Pittsfield Public Schools. The School Committee voted to accept the donation.
Assistant Superintendent for Business and Finance Kristen Behnke gave the presentation. Here is the most important information:
Big takeaway: If Pittsfield was in group 11 we could possibly receive $1 million to $1.5 million more based on rough estimates. More information will come during our budget workshop on February 28th.
Superintendent Curtis gave an overview of the work the School Building Needs Commission and the school restructuring consultant DRA (who were the architects for the Taconic High School building project) have done. Here are some highlights of the presentation:
The proposed Joint City Council and School Committee Workshop would also include a tour of the Crosby and Conte sites.
When asked about PHS administration mentioned that it would cost approximately $120 million to renovate PHS. It would also be difficult to run two building projects at once.
Approval of Memorandums of Understanding with the United Educators of Pittsfield and the Pittsfield Pittsfield Federation of School Employees/AFT, Local 1315, Bus Drivers’ & Attendants’ Unit – These Memorandums were tableduntil our next regular meeting.
Next School Committee Meetings
At the moment our next meeting will be our budget workshop on Wednesday, February 28th at 5:30pm at Reid Middle School. Due to the nature of the workshop format this meeting will not be recorded (though the first portion of the meeting which is a group presentation might be, more information to come).
Our next regular meeting that is scheduled is Wednesday, March 13th at 6pm at City Hall in City Council Chambers.
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.
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.
The November 28th, 2022 CTE Community Information Session
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:
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):
With Twitter looking like it is going to fall flat on its face any minute now, I think it is a good time to be more active on this blog. And what a great way to start than with sharing some data!
Most of you may or may not know this, but the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education collects and provides access to a lot of data about each school district and school in the state. All of this can be accessed through DESE’s School Profile’s website.
One of the types of data they collect and share is the breakdown of Advanced Placement (AP) exam scores per high school per exam (if the number of students who took the exam is not less than 10). Recently they came out with the exam score data for the 21 – 22 school year, so I decided to look at how students faired on the AP Exam for Taconic and Pittsfield High.
