After Years of Discussion, New Principal Brings Change to CRLS; More Mergers To Come

The Cambridge School Committee is starting an uncommonly active semester with a busy month ahead.

This Thursday, the committee will likely vote to adopt a restructuring plan for Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS) that would turn the five existing "houses," or educational programs based on different learning styles, into more evenly divided, more self-contained "schools."

Over the weekend, committee members will go into a retreat to reconsider the goals laid out by the committee two years ago.

And by mid-February the committee will likely approve a plan to merge two under-enrolled, poorly performing elementary schools.

CRLS Principal Paula Evans, who proposed the current restructuring plan last December, says her blueprint for smaller, more autonomous schools will decrease the student-to-teacher ratio and make sure each student gets to know at least one teacher very well.

Dick Brown, co-chair of Cambridge United for Education, says his district-wide parents' organization generally supports the initiative.

"There are some very good programs [at CRLS now] but there are also some programs where a students get lost in the system, if you're not adept at working the system and finding the best classes," he says.

The talk of high school reform that has permeated the district for the last three years finally stands to become policy.

But some school committee members say they want more details before they vote to adopt what is being called the "small-school model."

"The principal is asking us to take a big leap of faith, and we need to be more responsible than just leaping," says committee member Alice L. Turkel.

Turkel and others asked School Superintendent Bobbie J. D'Alessandro for more specific provisions on vocational training, staff diversity and other issues.

D'Alessandro will unveil the more detailed plan Thursday. She says the final version will have no major changes, just "clarifications."

The school committee finds itself in somewhat of an unusual position: While formulating district policy is normally their job, this week they will vote on a policy developed instead by a school principal.

Some committee members say they wonder whether Evans was not appointed specifically with circumventing the school committee and speeding up the process of reform in mind.

But D'Alessandro freely admits that was the goal.

Evans, whose background is in advising schools on how to restructure and in teaching education reform at Brown University, had both the credentials and the initiative to institute reform. In the new position, she would have the authority to make others take it seriously.

She says she thinks Evans has done well in consulting parents and teachers but knows others believe the process ultimately moved too fast.

"She has jumped in and said, 'I've looked at the data, I value what you're saying, I've got to move fast, so you'll think that I'm not listening,'" D'Alessandro says.

Roger O'Sullivan, president of the Cambridge Teachers Association, has strongly criticized the plan for being vague on issues like how staff will be assigned to the five schools and what options teachers will have about teaching electives. He says the union also wants an early retirement package the district plans to offer to high school teachers to be extend district-wide.

Controversy over the high school reorganization comes as union members enter the sixth month of work without a contract. Initially, the two sides planned to talk about CRLS-related issues at a later date, separate from the main contract. But the main contract talks continue to drag on, under a mediator's watch.

Representatives of the teacher's union say they want more time to examine how CRLS-restructuring will affect their working conditions before the school board votes on the plan. They hope such discussions can be lumped with the broader ongoing contract negotiations.

One change most everyone agrees on is the impending merger of the Fletcher and Maynard schools. After scrapping a controversial plan two years ago for the Maynard School to merge with the Cambridgeport School, Fletcher volunteered to merge instead.

Parents from both schools have been meeting with D'Alessandro and others since fall to negotiate how the schools' programs will be combined.

They are currently deciding which building will house the combined school. The school committee will vote on the merger's specifics mid-month.

The merger would take effect this fall. Most likely, the schools would relocate for a year to the building not chosen for the permanent location while the district renovated the other facility.

The school would then move into its long-term home in fall 2001.

A second merger is scheduled for fall 2001, when renovations of the M.E. Fitzgerald school will be finished. Fitzgerald, a K-8 school, will then welcome middle-school students from the Haggerty school, which will become K-5.

Members of the school committee will also look to make progress on broader, district-wide issues. Chief among those are reducing the racial disparity in student performance and, in the face of declining enrollment, reforming the city's system of racial quotas for distributing elementary and middle school students.

It's also agreed that, with the results of a state audit of district finances in hand, the budget process will be especially exacting this year. Many committee members say they need to take a "critical look" at why Cambridge has high per-pupil spending but test scores below state averages.

"We haven't gone in and said, 'Is the money going where we want it to go?' No one has ever looked at it that way. We just tinker around the edges," says newly-elected committee member Nancy G. Walser.

With fewer students in the district, cuts will most likely come in personnel. Many feel there are too many administrators and clerical staff.

"We'll be looking at every position. But we're not overly endowed with administrators," D'Alessandro says.

Passing the tenth-grade version of the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) will be a requirement for graduation starting with current ninth-graders. D'Alessandro says she hopes to work out alternative assessments, such as portfolios or senior projects, with the state.

But she says the MCAS means the district will have to make some changes as well. Though Cambridge schools have become quite independent, there should be a core curriculum, she says.

If the test exists without a corresponding curriculum at the district level, "then shame on you, no wonder your test scores are low," D'Alessandro says.

Pressure from the state makes this term seem all the more important. On the school committee, there is a sense that the panel needs to act decisively in the coming months.

"Every time we go out and buy another consultant and do another study, the same things come up--better teachers, better guidance, better schools," Simmons says. "It all says the same thing in different ways. You don't need to be a Rhodes scholar and we don't need to spend another dime studying it."