Worcester Public Schools

By Rosalie Tirella

Worcester City Manager Mike O’Brien is including branch libraries in his proposed 2014 budget! Well, sorta. According to his proposal, there are going to be branch libraries open once again in the city of  Worcester, but they will be run out of our public schools, many of which shuttered their in-house libraries years ago. When I attended the WPSchools – Lamartine Street, Providence Street Jr. High, Burncoat Sr. High – we had great school libraries in each school.  I loved and used all the libraries at all my schools. The librarians and their staff were great. I took out books for book reports, learned how to research term papers, checked out fun stuff for me. My mom used to make cupcakes for the Lamartine Street School library bake sales. Sadly, few kids in Worcester’s public schools have that experience today. Remember: our city branch libraries – except for Greendale and GBV – were shuttered years ago.

We say HOORAY FOR THE CITY MANAGER for wanting to make libraries and all their wonderful resources available to ALL the city’s children. America needs an educated, always-learning work force.  Libraries instill a comfort … a comfort with magazines, computers, i pads, technology, learning … .  HOORAY FOR OUR LIBRARIES AND OUR KIDS!!!

We have been blogging and writing in ICT about this issue for a long, long time. Thanks for listening, city movers and shakers! … We don’t care how it’s all funded, just get the branch libraries the heck open again …  slam open the doors and welcome all  kids (and their families!)!

From the City Manager’s budget proposal (public info):

” … the City Manager believes that the community can strengthen student outcomes with an unprecedented partnership and collaboration between the Library and the Schools. How can Worcester leverage public & private resources to achieve equitable access to literature, information, and technology for students, teachers, families, and neighbors? The solution is to have a Worcester Public Library Children’s Branch Library in every Worcester elementary public school.

“Four pilot sites will be identified, which will bring the partnership between public library and public schools to the next level. Both Schools and Public Library are partners for success. When school principals/teachers and public librarians join forces, kids win and communities thrive! …”

YES!!!!!

By Edith Morgan

We give a lot of lip-service to the preciousness of our children, and are forever trying to improve their educational experiences. And now there is much talk about pre-school education, with the hope that here at last is the magic pill that will prepare every child to succeed in the test-crazed environment of our schools.

I am a fervent believer in early childhood education, and if done right, it can be a very beautiful and enlightening experience. My parents, who never even left us with a baby sitter, had enough faith in the public schools to let me attend free public pre-school in 1934 – in Paris, France. Though I have a terrible memory, I still vividly remember one hands-on experience, “dissecting” an orange, and admiring the wonderful structure containing the tiny “juice containers” in each slice – which you can see if you carefully peel back the skin and push out the inside. Try it sometime! Of course we were read to, sang songs, learned rhymes, and were taught many valuable lessons in how to cooperate, take turns, follow directions, etc.

If the idea is merely to prepare toddlers earlier to learn letters and sounds (which takes so long at this age, and is so quick and easy at age 7) it is not worth the money and time… Just stretching an already bad curriculum down two years will simply produce more learning-disabled children, more turned off by school earlier, more disinterested in academics. Save your money and your children if that is the plan.

But if we are serious about really helping our young to be competent, creative, full-fledged human beings, giving them all a good start is worth the money and effort. There are models of what great early education looks like, and they have been around a long time. But are we willing to hire and pay for the best-trained, most experienced early-childhood teachers, give them the environment and supplies they need, and get out of their way? Are we ready to understand that PLAY is the work of young children, and expanding their vocabularies via great literature, poetry, music, and art is job #1?

Too many of our children today come to school with tiny vocabularies, and have to compete with others who have 10 times as many words, and who live in a home where every day they build more ideas and concepts. There is NO way that even the greatest teacher, best school, most wonderful books and music can make up for the daily advantage of a good home. But at the very least, we should do our best to level the playing field a little – not with more testing, more phonics, more drills, but with well-structured experiences that will enable them to start on the road to becoming more than job-seeking drones and eternal consumers. How sad that the richest nation in the world is unwilling to offer its children that great experience, which I had almost 80 years ago in another country.

By Alan Gordon

The Worcester Public Library is hosting a month-long September exhibit of the cartoons of my late father Malcolm Gordon. Born in 1929, Malcolm grew-up on Houghton Street on the East Side of the city, attending Union Hill Elementary School and graduating in 1949 from Commerce High. Drafted during the Korean War, he was stationed in Munich, Germany as an Army cartographer and cartoonist. He attended Vesper George Art Institute in Boston on the G.I. Bill then spent a few years in New York experiencing first-hand the professional freelance cartoon art scene, before returning to permanently settle back-home in Worcester.

From the 1950′s through the early 1980′s, Malcolm published several thousand magazine gag cartoons in dozens of national and regional publications, ranging from big markets such as Golf Digest, House & Garden and Woman’s World to more specialized magazines such as The California Highway Patrolman and The Dakota Farmer. He specialized in dental humor, publishing hundreds of his cartoons in a monthly cartoon column in the dental magazine CAL. Malcolm was keenly interested in changing technology in the U.S. and featured the topic in many of his cartoons, creating humorous features about computers and other inventions. His monthly cartoon feature “The Light Side” was published in Laser Focus magazine, one of the first laser technology magazines in the U.S.

My childhood memories growing-up here in Worcester are full of my Dad’s cartoon career. As a family, we experienced his career right alongside with him. It was fun as a kid to see every stage of his cartooning process, starting with his writing of a gag idea, then sketching and inking cartoons, mailing them to publishers, then getting a cartoon accepted (and sometimes rejected, as every artist and writer experiences!) and finally receiving the magazine in the mail with the published cartoon in it. I took the daily mail delivery to our household for granted, but it had to be one of the more creatively unique mail calls in Worcester, loaded as it was with the constant back-and-forth correspondence of Dad’s always active career.

Time flies and life’s entered yet another stage; Dad passed away in May of 2011 and his career is the stuff of recollection, memories and exhibits such as the Library show. In hindsight, my thoughts these days on Malcolm as father and professional cartoonist are dominated by four impressions of his career and life experience. The first is the wide range of his production; after Dad’s passing, my brother David and I found ourselves reminiscing through thousands of cartoons, almost every one of them having been published. My second impression is how different Dad’s world was from today. His was a pre-internet world, in which the pace of his cartooning was set by once-a-day mail delivery, typewritten or handwritten letters and the very rare long-distance professional phone call. It may seem slow and frustrating to today’s constantly on-line artist or reader, but to me it seems more satisfying and much more suited to the pace of the artistic and creative process.

The third recollection of my Dad’s career is how far his cartooning experiences took him beyond his day-to-day life here in Worcester. Proud and caring of his profession, in the 1960′s Dad teamed with many other nation-wide cartoonists to found the National Cartoonists Guild and was also active in Toon-In, a fledging industry magazine for freelance cartoonists. Via traditional “snailmail” U.S. Mail delivery, these activities not only brought him into personal friendships with other well-known national magazine and comic strip cartoonists, but also led to his cartoons being exhibited in international world-wide exhibits in New York, Montreal, Berlin, Brussels and Milan. In 1969, we took a family trip to the International Pavilion of Humor Exhibit in Montreal. Malcolm once told me that one of the most satisfying moments of his career was standing anonymously in front of his cartoon at the exhibit, just watching complete strangers wander by and laugh in enjoyment at his displayed cartoon.

Fourth and finally, I can’t help but be so impressed by how well Malcolm lived the last few decades of his life in the face of mounting health issues. Ironically, blindness that began in the early 1980′s prevented Dad from continuing his beloved artistic interests into the final 29 years of his life. Yet his positive outlook toward life and his love for cartooning and art in general never wavered. He remained active with family and friends, sharing his cartooning experiences with people, maintaining a keen interest in goings-on within his profession and following the cartooning careers of new rising professionals and aging old-time colleagues. He took particular pride in the graphic arts accomplishments of my brother David.

I think its most appropriate that the Worcester Public Library is the host setting for Malcolm Gordon’s career retrospective cartoon exhibit, given his life as part of this community. It was the Worcester public school system that encouraged and fostered his childhood love of art and cartooning, with his Commerce High School art teacher becoming a valued source of encouragement and mentoring to him and his fellow Commerce High art student Jean Gibree. Dad appreciated the importance of offering art education in the Worcester school system and gave back later in his career, teaching an art course for a few years in the mid-1970′s to students of all ages in the Nightlife program at Belmont Street Elementary School.

And it was at the old Rice Square Public Library Branch in which Malcolm and his older brother Noah, one East Side brother developing as an artist and one East Side brother developing as an accomplished novelist, where the pair found a neighborhood oasis from which their lifelong creative passions grew and flourished. Theirs is a true Worcester story as well as a personal life-long adventure.

The Cartoons Of Malcolm Gordon exhibit is on display through September 30 at the Worcester Public Library located downtown on Salem Street. The show displays a sampling of published cartoons, original artwork and correspondence from various eras of Worcester native/resident Malcolm Gordon’s nationally-known magazine gag cartoon career, ranging from the 1950′s to the 1980′s. Exhibit space is located in the glass display cases in both the front and central areas on the first floor of the Library.

By Michael True

Civil wars and drone attacks dominate the news, as negotiations to end hostilities in Afghanistan and Israeli/Palestine collapse. In Syria, the government victimizes its own people, including children, in an archipelago of torture chambers.

At the same time, peace activists and organizations transform conflict, and work to build a global civic culture. The popular media, however, provides few accounts of caregivers such as United Nations advisers and Doctors Without Borders who daily risk their lives to heal and to support vulnerable populations. Similar initiatives involve Peace Brigades International and Christian Peacemaker Teams who accompany workers and ordinary citizens to protect them from war’s violent network.

Over the past forty years, four hundred colleges, universities, and research centers are engaged in studying and developing theories and strategies essential to peacemaking, including conflict transformation, respect for human rights, and nonviolent intervention.

LOCALLY

Activists and organizations in the Worcester area provide aid and services to victims of violence, and teach peacemaking skills. At Clark University, Assumption and Holy Cross colleges, courses in peace and conflict studies focus on the history of successful nonviolent campaigns over the past century that led to the overthrow of dictatorships in the Philippines, Yugoslavia, Egypt, and Libya.

The Center for Nonviolent Solutions, initiated in 2009, sponsors free workshops for students and teachers in the Worcester Public Schools. Last fall, through a grant from the Massachusetts Humanities and in cooperation with Clark University’s Jacob Hiatt Center for Urban Education, the Center sponsored a Teachers Professional Development Institute on Nonviolent Movements in the Modern World, which provided free graduate credits for teachers in the Worcester Area. At the concluding session, teachers from grades fifth through twelfth reported on how they incorporated aspects of the course in history and literature classes on the Troubles in Ireland, the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., and nonviolent resistance to the Nazis.

In a summer program at University Park Campus School, students will learn skills in mediation and cooperation preparing them to become peer mediators. The goal of the a Summer Academy for ninth graders is to “increase the peace” in school, at home, and on the streets as they in turn work with middle schoolers. The curriculum includes games, activities, and discussion related to the following questions: (1) How might we express anger in healthy ways? (2) How can we speak up against bullying and discrimination? (3) How could we become better peacemakers in our families and the community? The Center is also providing a Peer Mediation training for tenth graders from University Park Campus School.

Through its Community Mediation Services, the Center for Nonviolent Solutions sponsors thirty trained and experienced mediators available to assist people in transforming conflict to reach their own mutually acceptable agreements. Any case, with the exception of court-appointed or divorce, is welcome. More information is available on the Center’s website: www.nonviolentsolution.org

With support from local foundations and individuals, the Center also affirms and cooperates with local organizations that share its mission and provide help to people in times of crisis, including 1. YWCA and Daybreak, committed to empowering women and combating racism.2. Abby’s House, providing hospitality and counseling for women in need.3. St. Francis and Therese Catholic Worker, offering hospitality to homeless people as well as education and internships on issues of justice and peace.
4. Dismas House, a half-way house helping former inmates return to full citizenship.
5. Goods for Guns, Injury Free Coalition for Kids, and the Men’s and Women’s Anger Management Program at University of Massachusetts Medical School, in association with city agencies, cooperate in sustaining peace in the community.

NATIONALLY

Throughout the U.S., various organizations construct peace through on-the-ground community-building and legislative lobbying. Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) with a national office in Nyack, New York, and a regional office in Connecticut, for example, have been active for almost a century through Children’s Creative Response to Conflict (CCRC) and workshops and training sessions in nonviolence.

In recent years, School of Americas Watch, Ft. Benning, Georgia, and Voices in the wilderness, Chicago, have devoted themselves to resisting injustice and militarism, working “to build a new society in the shell of the old” and to offer alternatives to violence in particular settings. Similar commitments inform communal efforts involving members of the following organizations:

1. The Catholic Worker Movement, through over 100 houses, farms, and homeless shelters in the U.S. alone, feeds the hungry, houses the homeless, and engages in nonviolent resistance to war, militarism, and injustice. Several members have endured years in prison for civil disobedience against the manufacture and distribution of nuclear weapons. As a result of recent protests against drone attacks in the Middle East that kill innocent civilians, members from Ithaca, New York, spent time in prison; as did other members at the NATO summit in Chicago, for demonstrating against ”the militarization of the globe at the expense of human and environmental needs,” Newsletters from Houses of Hospitality in Los Angeles, Hartford, Des Moines, and Lower Manhattan document their commitment to healing the social order and working, as their co-founder, Peter Maurin said, to build a society “where it is easier for people to be good.”

2. Pace e Bene, Oakland, California, co-founded by a Franciscan monk, leads nonviolence training sessions recently for national protests in Chicago during a meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NAT)). The organization publishes a manual for nonviolence training, supports Vietnam Veterans Against War, and maintains offices in Chicago, Las Vegas, and Montreal.

3. War Resisters League (WRL), New York City, has maintained active programs and provided rich resources since 1921, including its annual leaflet, “Where Your Income Tax Money Really Goes.” The latter flyer points out that in 2013, 47 % of the national budget will fund U.S. military appropriations larger than all military budgets in the world combined. WRL also supports war tax resistance, organizes demonstrations against wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and publishes information on events and activities important to the history of nonviolence in the U.S.

4.American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), Philadelphia, a Quaker organization, maintains regional offices in Northampton, MA and Concord, NH, as well as in other parts of the world. Founded in 1917 and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947, AFSC a model for other peacemakers, through its programs and legislative lobbying to halt discrimination and to promote economic justice. An AFSC exhibit in Providence, now through August 25, 2012, “Windows and Mirrors: Reflections on the War in Afghanistan,” includes free exhibits, programs, and films at the University of Rhode Island Providence Campus, 80 Washington St. More information at sene@afsc.org

5.Peace and Justice Studies Association (PJSA), Prescott, Arizona, involves academics from throughout the U.S. and Canada, including peace, conflict, and nonviolence studies programs at Notre Dame, Berkeley, George Mason, Tufts and Brandeis universities, as well as the three local institutions mentioned above. Since a Pastoral Letter of American bishops, “The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response,” 1983, encouraged Catholic institutions to become centers for peace research, Catholic institutions such as Georgetown, St. John’s and St. Benedict’s, University of San Francisco, and many others have developed sophisticated programs. Traditional peace churches, Quakers, Mennonites, and Brethren, which sponsor Swarthmore, Goshen and Manchester colleges, respectively, were among the first institutions to initiate peace and conflict studies. The International Peace Studies Association (IPRA), co-founded by Kenneth and Elise Boulding, Johan Galtung, and other scholars from around the globe
has grown substantially since 1965, ,preparing students for internships and professional appointments at the United States Institution of Peace, Washington, D.C., and other agencies involved in peacekeeping initiatives.

INTERNATIONALLY

Through UNESCO, UNHCR, and UNICEF, the United Nations is responsible for peacekeeping around the globe, with teams involved in dangerous areas on the verge of war and others involved in rebuilding civil society after a war.

Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP), Minneapolis and Brussels, pays experienced peacemakers from many countries to intervene in dangerous environments, such as Sri Lanka, Mindanao, Guatemala, and Sudan. Its training for staff has received wide recognition for its effectiveness. The goals of the Nonviolent Peace Force include creating a space for fostering lasting peace between warring factions, and protecting civilians made vulnerable because of deadly conflict. Nobel Laureates, activists from every continent, and women’s religious orders, whose nuns work among vulnerable populations in the Philippines and Africa, have been particularly supportive of Nonviolent Peaceforce since it began in 1999. A recent initiative is “Unarmed Civilian Peacemaking: Being There When It Matters Most,”

A noteworthy characteristic of the organization is the modesty of its claims. “Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once,” according to one member,” but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.”
Other agencies with particular missions and responsibilities operating internationally include the following:

1. Albert Einstein Institution (AEI), Boston. AEI is a major research center devoted to reducing reliance on violence as an instrument of policy. Founded by Gene Sharp, its publications on the strategic use of nonviolent action in diverse conflicts are available in forty languages, many of them free on the internet at www.aeinstein.org AEI’s scholarship and research, in films, such as “How To Start a Revolution,” publications, and consultations has been widely effective in promoting and sustaining movements to promote and to sustain democratic governance. Its insights nonviolent theory and strategy have been successfully applied in bringing down dictators in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, and in resisting injustice, oppression, and genocide in many other countries.

2. International Peace Research Association Foundation (IPRAF), Atlanta. IPRAF provides small research grants and fellowships for Third World Women to gain graduate degrees at major universities throughout the world in peace, conflict, and nonviolence studies. In association with the International Peace Association Foundation (IPRA) and the United Nations, it supports a bi-annual conference of scholars, researchers, and activists, including its Nonviolent Commission, to benefit the educational needs of faculty and students around the globe.

3. Doctors Without Borders/Medecin Sans Frontiers (MSF), Geneva. MSF, with five European operational center and nineteen national offices, has 26,000 physicians working in seventy countries upholding people’s rights to medical care regardless of race, color, creed, or national borders. Providing care in particularly acute crises, it also promotes international awareness of potential humanitarian disasters. It received the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize. A number of its members have sacrificed their lives in ministering to vulnerable and endangered populations, as it sustains programs in its outreach to other countries and regions.

4. Amnesty International (AI), London. Initiated in the 1960s, with members in 150 countries, including national centers and local groups, AI received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 “for its contribution to securing the ground for freedom, for justice, and thereby also for peace in the world.” Regarding people jailed for their religious and political beliefs as “prisoners of conscience,” AI has been responsible for the release of thousands of prisoners. Opposing the use of torture and the death penalty, it upholds the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and similar international agreements, and also recognizes gay men and lesbians imprisoned for their choice of sexuality as “prisoners of conscience.”

5. Human Rights Watch (HRW), New York City. HRW, initiated in the 1970s, opposes capital punishment and advocates freedom of religion and the press and basic human rights. Its reports draw international attention to abuses through fact-finding missions exposing social and gender discrimination, torture, military use of children, political corruption, and abuses by criminal justice systems. Its stories of successful interventions are powerful reminders of the importance of witnessing to incidents of violence, as a preliminary means of addressing and correcting injustice. Among its sponsors are the George Soros Foundation.

* * *

In a world where violence threatens the lives and fortunes of people in neighborhoods, communities, and nations, professionals, activists, and ordinary citizens often risk their lives to construct peace cultures in violent contexts. Although occasionally recognized for their courage and effectiveness, they deserve wider recognition, through student initiatives, projects, and events essential to the common good. Their challenging and inspiring stories demonstrate the complexity of building, constructing, cultivating peace.
Through education and action, they encourage resistance to injustice and humiliation, resolution and transformation of conflict, and nonviolent social change, without killing or harming people. In doing so, they affirm the eight components of peacemaking cited in the UN document “Building a Cultures of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World,” which was adopted by 189 nations in the General Assembly in 1999.

Slowly, yet purposefully, we are trying to learn a new language that redefines the nature of peace, not as a “void” or “absence,” but as a “presence” or, in the words of Denise Levertov, as “an energyfield more intense than war.” This is the good news, amid the bad news surrounding us in a violent culture.”

By Rosalie Tirella

A few weeks ago I was back at my old high school – Burncoat Senior High on Burncoat Street. I was there for a few hours sorta on business but the rush of memories (once on the grounds) overwhelmed me. I hadn’t stepped foot in my alma mater since graduating in 1979. The old Burnocat High (recenlty built when I attended classes there) made me feel great about the Worcester I grew up in. The Burncoat High of 2012 wasn’t so reassuring.

Where to begin? The Burncoat Senior High of the late 1970s – the one in which I was an all honors and AP student, along with ton of other Worcester kids – was a place to be proud of. It was (still is!) on the wealthier side of town. When I attended, I was a poor kid living in Green Island. I wasn’t zoned to attend Burncoat, but my mom got special permission from the city to have me attend there (I think I was supposed to go to Doherty) because my Aunt “Mary” (and her family) lived a few streets away from my new high school. My Aunt Mary, whose husband my Uncle Mark was an elementary school principal in a nearby town, was a stay at home mom who would always be there in case of emergency. During the day my mom was stuck across town on Millbury Street working at a local dry cleaners. She worked from sun up to sun down it seemed, and though she was always home for us kids and did the cooking and all the other great mom stuff, during school days she couldn’t really get away from her job (no beneefits, sick days, etc).

Aunt Mary’s two boys – my cousins – atttended Burncoat and loved it. They wanted me – a smart kid – to make BHS my high school too. I would even have some of the teachers my cousins had had. My Uncle Mark had complete faith in Burncoat – he planned on having his two boys become doctors. He felt they would get the education they needed to get into the great pre-med program at Holy Cross. Well, all went according to plan: my cousins graduated from Burnocoat, got into Holy Cross, then med school and today … . Well, today, they are very wealthy doctors! Second generation Polish Americans who achieved the American dream, thanks to the WPS and Burncoat High.

In the 1960s and 1970s Burncoat was home base for the Irish Catholic middle class of the city. The school embodied honor, hard work, friendship and caring. The teachers were good to great. I had lovely (for th emost part Irish-American) gal pals (though my best friend was of French descent)! To this day I think back and marvel: In all the three years that I hung out with my smart, over achieving girlfriends, they never ever mentioned the fact or alluded to the fact that I was from Green Island (poor) and they were from places like Mary Ann Drive or King Phillips Road (middle class). They never made me feel less of a person because I lived in a three decker flat and they lived in comfy homes. In fact, I think, they were extra nice to me. They called me smart. they wanted to see my achieve. I visited their homes – got to know their parents and their si blings. And guess what? I loved them so much (and my mom was such a great mom) that they would hang out at my house, chat with my mom on a Saturday, drive across town in their used cars to pick me up on old lafayette Street so we could go to “Spider gates” cemetary, the movies or even Nantasket Beach together. Their parents were doing something right.

In a way, we were raised the same way: by strict but loving Catholic parents. Parehnts who took no crap. Parents who did not indulge their kids and let them run the household – the way tons of parents do today. We knew: We were kids and that made us second class adults compared to our parents and teachers and other adults in the community. These adults had wisdom, experience – jobs. They were running things – we needed to get out of their way. Study hard, have fun with each other – be kids. NO BS allowed.

Burncoat High back then was a gorgeous school. It is/was what is known as a “campus” high school – a string of buildings – all one level. You would walk outside to get to another building. I loved going out and in all kinds of weather to get to class! The teachers? Well, they were serious and capable. We were in honors classes – Worcester’s future, Worcester’s college applicants. We used text books (boring), we took a ton of tests, we had a ton of homework. We had a few clubs, we had great field trips to Washington DC curtesy of the great Virginia Ryan, everyone’s favorite bio teacher (except me – I was a Mr. LaBelle fan)

I was part of that world wonderful world. I graduated feeling like the world was mine … .

A few days ago, i went back to BHS on business. What I saw depressed me: cracked driveway, busted up walk ways, unpainted speed bumps, ugly side netrances where the brown paint was peeling. The building looked faded. I felt like I was walking into a ghetto school!

What happened, i asked the secretary?

Age, she said.

I will get folks to do the painting of the speed bumps I said.

She said, no! We tried that several times and the union always put the kibosh on our volunteer efforts. And never ever did the work.

Everything looked so dingy (outdoors). In doors it was a bit better. The lockers were new and I was told new bathrooms for the students were installed.

Still, things had changed.

The secretary told me: 50 percent of BHS students are poor – eligible for the federal governtment’s free lunch program. Thirty percent of the BHS students were labeled “special needs.”

I said: This wasn’t the way it was when I was 16 and a student here.

She said: Most of the kids in the neighborhood go to charter, catholic or other private schools. BHS is now filled with poorer kids … .

I felt sad. I wanted the best for these new students. I hope we as a city can nurture the new future. I so want the Burncoat Senior High School of 2012 to be the high school I so loved years ago – and still do!

Good news!    Click below. – R. T.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/26/pink-slime-beef-plants_n_1380111.html

By Paula Harrity, coordinator of volunteers, Worcester Public Schools

Every day school is in session, more than 23,000 students converge on the Worcester Public Schools. More than two thirds of these children are poor, many do not speak English as a first language in their home, and increasingly, the Worcester Public Schools welcomes refugees who have come here from war torn nations, and they have witnessed first-hand the horrors of mass destruction and hunger.

The Coats for Kids program provides new winter outerwear to needy children who attend the Worcester Public Schools, Worcester Head Start, Community Partnerships and for Children, and several area homeless shelters. This service began 25 year ago and serviced 400 children. Last year (2010-2011) 2,200+ children were given new winter jackets, hats & mittens. This past year the program was expanded to secondary students. In addition, a quantity of winter jackets, hats & mittens were provided to the Parent Information Center to have on hand for needy families arriving from other countries. Click to continue »

By Rosalie Tirella

Re: Worcester Public Schools Committe “Vice Chair” Tracy O’Connell Novick: we’ve heard this from John Monfredo, fellow Worcester School Committee member: This will be the last time Novick is VICE CHAIRMAN of the Worcester Public Schools Committee.

Monfredo is head of the Worcester Public Schools Committee rules subcommittee, and he is working to make it a committee rule that after each municipal election, second-place vote getters get the vice chair of the Worcester School Committee – not people who do backroom deals with folks like Novick did. Monfredo told me he was not planning to vote for Novick getting the vice chair slot, but Mayor Joe Petty (the Chairman of the Worcester School Committee – like all Worcester mayors Petty heads the school committee) went to him and told him to do so, to make the WPSC seem cohesive and positive.

Monfredo told Petty he was againt Novick as Vice Chair because she had alientated so many minority parents of Worcester Public School students with her Dr. Boone witch-hunt. Novick tried to destroy Dr. Boone, Worcester’s first black female school superintendent. The minority community had had it with Novick. Monfredo told Petty if Novick became Vice Chair of the school committee, it would send the wrong message to so many city parents and kids.

Petty didn’t listen – and Novick doesn’t care who she offends as long as she gets all the free publicity that comes with comes with the Vice Chair slot. She gets to “speak for” the Worcester School Committee via the papers, TV, etc.

So now the City of Worcester must live with this mistake – a slap in the face to minority WPSchools students and their families. Remember, Worcester is a majority minority school district, meaning there are more minority kids than white kids in our public schools.

But, thanks to John Monfredo, the WPSC rules will soon be changed – he is having a meeting of his subcommittee soon – to make this Novick’s first and last stint as Vice Chair. The process will be fair – the vice chair slot will be awarded to the second highest vote getter – just like the way it’s done with the Worcester City Council. Top vote getter mayor, second top vote getter City Council vice-chair.

By John Monfredo, Worcester Public School Committee member

“I just can’t concentrate, and I worry about what the next day will bring, for living with two other families is very difficult.” … “I’m scared and afraid to tell anyone about my situation.”

These are statements from children who are homeless in Worcester and they are among the 2,400 students who worry about what is going to happen to them. These students represent 10 percent of the Worcester Public School population. The public only sees the buses rolling and sees the 44 schools in our public school system operating, but few can understand the changes that have taken place in our schools. Like all urban cities in this nation, we in Worcester have homeless children in our schools and it impacts their education!

One counselor told me about a student who received A’s and then unexpectedly his marks dropped. She finally was able to find out that this high school student was now living in a homeless shelter.

People living in poverty are most at risk of becoming homeless. In our city 71.8% of our students live under the poverty line.

Children experiencing homelessness face many barriers to education. Looking at the data, one sees a high absence rate, lots of moving from place to place, and poor health and nutrition. Again, according to the data, homeless children are likely to be ill four times more often than other children, with four times as many respiratory infections, and they are four times more likely to have asthma attacks. Unfortunately, homeless children go hungry twice as often as other children. Click to continue »

By Rosalie Tirella

We know this: Wondershit (from Wonderland) has no idea how hard I work to put my paper out. He’d last 2 secs w/ ICTimes – not 10 and a half years (as I have) – earning and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to publish my paper. Don’t worry Wondershit, I have just told tough guy # 2 about you – he’s told me he could hire someone to kill you/slash you up! Hey! What fun! When you come from places like Green Island, Wonderhsit, you are only a person or two away from someone who can do extreme damage to your enemies. I told my pal: NO! NO! It’s illegal! Wondershit will have to be slayed by words! The laptop is mightier than the sword!

But back to Wondeshit! He (along with his loser wife and two or so loser progeny) has done nothing for Worcester except bitch (via his hateful website) about its people and landmarks! We know he hates:

* Barbara Haller, former Worcester District 4 city councilor. Saying she didn’t do any work, poking fun at her at all times. – plain wrong, Wondershit, plain wrong.

* Worcester City Councilor and former Worcester Mayor Joe O’Brien – Click to continue »