I attended the United Educators of Pittsfield’s Mayoral Q&A session on October 19th. 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.
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.