School Committee accepts grants totaling $502K

By Barbara Taormina

The School Committee, this week, announced the acceptance of four new grants that reflect changing trends in education. The first is a $334,000 state grant for teacher diversification.

“It’s a good chunk of money,” said Superintendent Dianne Kelly, who explained the grant, which will be used all of next year.

It “will improve the pipeline of teachers going into the profession and allow us to work with our own high school kids with internships opportunities at elementary and middle schools to increase the diversity of our staff,” said Kelly.

Committee Chair Patrick Keefe noted that the last time Revere received a teacher diversification grant there was backlash in the community, mostly on social media. “I don’t understand why,” said Keefe, who added that he thought there was a lot of misinformation about the program.

“It’s great the city can get this grant to make sure the teacher population reflects the student population,” said Keefe.

According to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), Revere’s student population is 3.4 percent African American, 64.2 percent Hispanic, 3.7 percent Asian and 27 percent white. But the Revere teaching staff includes 27 African American teachers, 88 Hispanic teachers and 858 white teachers.

CityLab will receive a $25,000 Innovation Pathways design grant for work involving green energy. The grants are meant to give students experience in high-demand industries. The district will also receive an $18,000 English as a Second Language certification grant that will allow content teachers to obtain a second license in ESL and better serve students. Revere also received a $125,000 early college support grant that will pay the tuition of Revere High students taking early college courses.

Honors program debate continues for Middle School

Earlier this year, students and parents made the case for reinstating the honors program in Revere schools. This week, the School Committee learned that was easier said than done. Superintendent Diane Kelly updated the committee on the challenges and needs involved in bringing back honors at the middle schools, which include hiring four new teachers at each school and spending $30,000 on a PowerSchool consultant. There are also challenges anticipated with maintaining the middle school team model and with ensuring students are able to select their choice of electives, such as art and music.

Kelly said the number of teachers at the high school makes reinstating honors more likely but the middle school honors program was problematic. “This may not be as attainable as we would like to make it happen,” said Kelly. “We all want it, but we have to accept the reality.”

Kelly said middle school principals were reaching out asking her not to put them in the position of requiring honors programs.

Committee member Stacey Bronsdon-Rizzo urged the committee to listen to the experts and the people actually doing the work. But committee secretary John Kingston said there was an honors program just four years ago, and he could not understand why reinstating it was so complicated.

“We’re not reinventing this,” said Kingston, who said he didn’t understand the pushback. Kingston called it a crime to deny a student who has worked hard the opportunity to take an upper-level course, and he reminded the committee that 60 parents came out to ask school officials to reintroduce honors in city schools.

Committee Vice Chair Jacqueline Monterroso offered two motions. The first requested that the Ways and Means Subcommittee, which is working on the final details of this year’s school budget, prioritize the hiring of new teachers for a seventh and eighth grade honors program. Monterroso’s second motion called for delaying the implementation of a sixth grade honors program until educators see the results from restarting honors for seventh and eighth grades. Both motions passed.