Much to his credit, my son was quoted twice in the local papers this week about the shortcomings in the Mashpee Public Schools.
Both he and his wife have become grassroots activists for change and improvement, and since he’s blogged about this, I won’t recap the details.
Personally, I’ve been disgusted by the public misstatements of fact by the Superintendent of Schools and by the School Committee’s adoring and supine support of the Superintendent; as the Mashpee Enterprise put it, their performance evaluation of said Superintendent has been undeservedly “sanguine”.
Today, though, I’m moderating my position somewhat, having seen an audit report from the DOE’s Educational Management and Audit Council.
This report, which was delivered on June 9 of this year, was based on a study of the Mashpee schools from 2002-2005: key dates because the new Superintendent didn’t start her job until June 30, 2005.
The report says, in effect, that Mashpee kids overall are performing below the state averages in standard MCAS exams, especially kids with special needs and those from minority familes, and that this is a direct result of a grotesque underfunding of the public schools in this town.
The Cape is an under-served region in terms of state largesse, which mostly goes to big cities with low property values. Mashpee is in the lowest quartile of funding on the Cape.
The report is voluminous, over 140 pages, but even a casual reading helps me understand why the word “excellent” gets thrown around so much by the school department’s leadership: given the absolutely dismal record of recent years, the fact that the Mashpee schools aren’t subject to decertification and takeover maybe earns their administration a point or two.