Education – Page 2 – William Garrity's Blog

Upcoming School Committee Meeting February 14th, 2024

Posted on February 12, 2024 by William Garrity

Click here to view the agenda for the meeting

Click here to view the packet information

The Pittsfield School Committee will have a meeting on Wednesday, February 14th 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.

Agenda Highlights

Acceptance of Donation for Taconic’s Auto Technology Program – Toyota Motors North America, Inc. is looking to donate a 2023 2023 Toyota GR86 with an estimated value of $25,723 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.

Report on Education Spending Outside of School Committee Budget and
Governor’s Budget Update

Discussion of Submittal of an SOI with the MSBA Regarding Crosby Elementary
School and the Submittal’s Role in the Restructuring Planning – The district is looking at a potential new building project on the Crosby site as a part of its restructuring project. In order to get state funding for the project, the Superintendent must submit a Statement of Interest (SOI) to the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) by Friday, April 12th. The School Committee and the City Council must vote to authorize the Superintendent to submit the SOI. More information will be discussed at the meeting.

Executive Session – There will be an executive session to discuss negotiations with the United Educators of Pittsfield (teachers union), the Pittsfield Educational Administrator’s Association (educational administrators union), and the Pittsfield Federation of School Employees/AFT, Local 1315, Bus Drivers’ & Attendants’ Unit.

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 will be discussed in executive session and then the School Committee will vote on them in open session. The Memorandums of Understanding will be released after the executive session.

In Defense of Students on IEPs

Posted on October 22, 2023 by William Garrity

I attended the United Educators of Pittsfield’s Mayoral Q&A session on October 19^th. I decided to attend to learn about the mayoral candidates’ positions on educational matters as if elected I will be serving with one of them on the Pittsfield School Committee.

During his opening statement mayoral candidate John Krol made the following remarks that I feel is worth sharing:

“There’s three different types of students in every single classroom, there are high performers, there are middle of the road, and then there are those who are on IEPs and those kids that also can be disruptions in our classrooms.”

As a former student who was on an IEP throughout most of my time in the Pittsfield Public Schools, I find this remark highly offensive not only to me but to our students on IEPs in our district.

Emailed Comments to City Councilors Regarding Term Limits and School Committee Age Requirement Petition

Posted on June 9, 2023June 9, 2023 by William Garrity

Dear Councilor,

I hope you are doing well. As I am taking a course at Berkshire Community College on Tuesday and Thursday evenings throughout June, I am unable to attend the public comment period at the June 13th City Council meeting. Therefore I am sending my comments to all councilors via email before the meeting.

I am still recommending that the City Council file the petition regarding term limits for public office, which was charter objected at the May 24th meeting.

After sitting through the deliberation on this problematic petition, I want to respond to two major arguments that were brought forth.

Public Comment to the Pittsfield School Committee Regarding Making Taconic a Fully CTE School

Posted on January 31, 2023 by William Garrity

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.

Student Representative Voting Rights

Posted on January 22, 2023 by William Garrity

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!

Taconic Becoming a Fully Vocational School: How did we get here? (Part 3)

Posted on January 16, 2023January 16, 2023 by William Garrity

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.

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:

Taconic Becoming a Fully Vocational School: How did we get here? (Part 2)

Posted on January 13, 2023January 16, 2023 by William Garrity

View part 1 of this series of blog posts here!

The July 20th, 2022 School Committee Meeting

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):

Taconic Becoming a Fully Vocational School: How did we get here? (Part 1)

Posted on January 12, 2023January 16, 2023 by William Garrity

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.

Pittsfield School Committee Meets Wednesday, April 27th 2022

Posted on April 22, 2022May 13, 2022 by William Garrity

Here is the link to the agenda for this meeting. And here is a link to the packet for this meeting.

Key things to note about this meeting (which there isn’t a lot of):

Approval of school choice participation – we get to see the number of students who will be able to school choice into Pittsfield
Adoption of the FY23 school year budget – so far it doesn’t seem like there are any updates on the budget from last meeting (thought that could change)
“Determination of the Format for the Superintendent’s Summative Evaluation in July 2022”
Executive session to discuss contract negotiations with the Pittsfield Federation of School Employees

So yeah, not a big meeting but there are still some important matters at hand.