When Mayor Domenic Sarno delivered his State of the City address back in February, his speech, as is customary, included a list of good news and accomplishments that have taken place under his administration. On that list: the success of a program that brings city school teachers’ to visit their students’ families at their homes, to build relationships and strengthen communication between educators and families.
Four months later, that program is in peril, thanks to proposed cuts in the School Department’s fiscal 2012 budget. The budget plan calls for cutting the department’s parent facilitators from full-time to half-time positions, a move that would result in the loss of their employee benefits. The reduction in hours would also leave the facilitators without the time to conduct home visits, according to the Pioneer Valley Project, the community activist group that got the program off the ground in the first place.
PVP—a coalition of community, faith and labor groups—initiated the program in 2006, beginning with a pilot program at Duggan Middle School. Since then, the project has steadily expanded; this year, the program is in place at eight city schools, and it’s slated to expand to 14 next year. Last year, the National Education Association Foundation awarded the city School Department and the Springfield teachers’ union a $1.25 million “Closing the Achievement Gap” grant to expand the program, with the assistance of PVP.
“But this growth will be hard to realize if the school department cuts the infrastructure for the program,” PVP organizer Fred Rose said in a message to supporters. If the facilitator positions are reduced to part-time, he predicted, “Many experienced facilitators will leave, and the remaining half-time facilitators won’t have time to support the home visit program.”
PVP is calling on residents to voice their support of the home-visit program at the next School Committee meeting, on Thursday, June 2, at City Hall. The public speak-out period runs from 6 to 6:30 p.m.
