Brookline Public Schools are scrambling to close a nearly $1.5 million budget gap for the fiscal year beginning in July, yet the School Committee is nevertheless setting aside $400,000 in case the city’s cost for private special education rises. Public school systems that cannot accommodate certain special needs students internally often pay to send them […]
Andreae Downs
Posted inEnvironment, Politics
Performance pacts offer energy upgrades for (almost) nothing
INTRO TEXT it sounded almost too good to be true, the way the young man speaking before Newton’s board of aldermen described how improvements to crumbling firehouses and neglected school buildings could basically pay for themselves. The source of the fiscal magic? Performance contracting. Under a performance contract, clients use savings on utility bills to […]
Posted inEnvironment
Teacher bonuses that are no windfall
INTRO TEXT Cathie Clement is trained as a lawyer, and she’s worked in industry, state government, and private practice. But the hardest job she’s ever done is the one she’s doing now: teaching math in middle school. “The only people who understand how stressful teaching is are my trial lawyer friends,” says Clement. “You’re always […]
Posted inUncategorized
Shooting for selfsufficiency
It took Mary Lou Rockwell, a job counselor and social worker at the Metro South/West Regional Employment Board’s Framingham office, three days to get through what is usually a one-hour introductory session. But Jenifer Lang, her new client, was nervous, and she couldn’t look Rockwell in the eye. However much she hid it, Lang was […]
Posted inEducation
Testing the test
The headlines shocked the public and rocked the education establishment: It was the first time the state ever tested would-be teachers to weed out who did–and did not–belong in front of a public school classroom, and almost 60 percent failed. House Speaker Thomas Finneran threw rhetorical fuel on the fire by deriding the test-flunkers as […]