The Elly Report: Candidates Corner

Worcester School Committee Candidate, Michael R. Theerman, MD

Those of you who have lived in this area for a while know that the Worcester Public Schools (WPS) have always had challenges. As an urban system, it has a disproportionately high number of non-English speaking students and youngsters with special needs. This places an unavoidable added burden on teachers and administrators as they try to optimally educate and integrate these young people into our society.

Unfortunately, other obstacles have been willfully placed along the road to learning by the three bureaucracies (school committee, administration, and unions) that run the system. One of these unnecessary barriers is the bilingual program for Hispanic students. You may recall that Massachusetts voters replaced bilingual with English Immersion two years ago at the ballot box. Yet Worcester retains it for Hispanics based on an outdated consent decree signed in the 1970's. The school committee needs to direct the administration to appeal that decree to remove this barrier to learning English.

Another issue of concern is the size of classes in the WPS. Some kindergarten and high school classes started this past year with over 30 children. It is just not possible for teachers to maintain order and instruct properly in classes that large. The cause of this problem is that we have too few teachers in the classrooms. Over the last 3 years, the WPS have laid off hundreds of teachers and closed three schools, even though they have received more money each year. This happened because they simply cannot control their spending. The teacher contract grants "step" increases in pay that average 6% over the first 10 years of teaching. So even when there is an increase in funding, it is never enough to keep up with the raises built into the contract. We then lose more teachers and class size rises.

A further issue is that employee contribution to health insurance in the Worcester schools is currently 13% of a very high-priced plan. This is far less that even the state government rates of 20% and 25%, and cannot be sustained. Furthermore, it is not fair to ask taxpayers who generally pay a much higher percentage of their health insurance, if they have any at all, to support this sort of lavish benefit.

Lastly, you should be aware that the WPS system is failing to properly educate our children. Worcester public school children have recently been reported to rank 347^th out of 351 cities and towns in the Commonwealth in academic performance. This is a looming disaster for our students and an embarrassment for our city. I have taken a pledge that, as a Worcester School Committee member, I will never vote in favor of a contract that includes raises while resulting in the loss of more teacher positions. And I will never vote for a contract unless it includes an increase in the employee health insurance contribution.

If you agree with these thoughts, I encourage you to take an active part in the election campaign this year and lend me your support. You can reach me at theerman@umassmed.org. Thank you.