Lynn gets grant for readiness school

LYNN – The Lynn Public Schools will be one of the first districts in the state to launch Gov. Deval Patrick’s experimental readiness school program, the state’s Executive Office of Education announced this week.Patrick spread $200,000 worth of planning grant money to 16 school districts across the state, including Lynn, where the governor devoted $10,500 to developing an innovative readiness school at the elementary or middle school level.Superintendent Catherine Latham said Wednesday that initial funding is for planning purposes only and she has not determined which existing school would take on the readiness program.Salem State College has been interested in partnering with a local school, possibly the Ford, for some time and Latham said representatives from the college and from the state have visited the district to gauge the feasibility of beginning a readiness program somewhere in the city.Latham said she has not made any decision on where the program would end up and is in the process of putting together a planning team to establish some specifics on how the program will work.”Salem State College had been interested in making the Ford a readiness school, but what we are interested in at this point is looking at any sort of innovative program that we can implement in the district,” she said. “Right now the grant is very small, it is just a planning grant so we will assemble a team and begin planning to see if we can implement this program in one of the schools.”Along with school administrators, Latham said the planning process would include principals and union members.The readiness schools initiative is one of the primary proposals that emerged from Patrick’s Education Action Agenda last summer and the federal government’s new “Race to the Top” education funding plan, which will provide $4 billion to individual states that promote education reform.According to Patrick’s plan, readiness schools will exist in three forms: Advantage Schools, in which faculty and leadership will develop an “innovation plan” and performance contract; Alliance Schools, in which external partners such as colleges and other local organizations partner with a school to develop an innovation plan; and Acceleration Schools, where innovation plans will be implemented by Education Commissioner Mitchell Chester.The last of the three readiness school plans will be reserved for chronically under performing schools.”The strong response to the readiness schools initiative shows that school districts are enthusiastic about the opportunity to use greater autonomy to improve their schools,” said Patrick. “Readiness schools provide powerful opportunities to promote innovation, close achievement gaps and give students and families more choices in public education.”The planning grants are funded under the state’s targeted assistance program and are designed to help school districts to plan and implement reform to improve student achievement in the 2009-10 school year and eventually help establish readiness programs by the fall of 2010.The readiness program has seemingly taken the place of Patrick’s extended day initiative, which had a successful beginning before funding problems essentially derailed any new planning grants.Like the readiness school initiative, the longer school day was supposed to allow for the implementation of new, innovative programs to improve the state’s overall academic success.The initial grant funding will support 22 programs in 16 districts including, along with Lynn, Revere, Salem, Pittsfield, Boston, Adams-Cheshire/ North Adams, Ashburnham-Westminster, Gill-Montague, Fall River, Greenfield, New Bedford, North Middlesex Regional, Ralph C. Mahar Regional, Randolph and Somerville.Each district received a different amount of grant funding depending on the needs of the schools and the number of programs planned, with Boston’s $36,376 the higest payout.”These 16 districts are positioning themselves to be among the Commonwealth’s leaders in