August 08, 2008

Kudos to Noah Bombard

Great story in WoMag this week on the Shifting Population in our schools. Here is my favorite line:

"Nearly two thirds (65.2%) of Worcester's students are from low-income families. Ten years ago that percentage was slightly less then 48%. "

In ten years the percentage of students from low-income families has increased over 17%!! That is unreal. Do you think maybe we should stop building more low-income housing? Must read story!!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

a. The Good: Good point Bill.

b. The not so good: I think that's actually a 36% increase in low income student demographics

c. I may get taken to task for this comment, but does anyone wonder why parents with yoyung kids continue to flee from these demo's.

d. I'd be curious to know what is vs. say 20 or 25 years ago.


An Aside.

1. Schools are rumored to sometiems inflate the level of poverty of their students are at, as it yields more school lunch money, etc.

2. Thank you Jim McGovern.

3. As I have said on here before, even Ray Mariano(now WHA CEO) sent his kids to private school. Would you dare drive a Toyota to your General Motors assembly plant job?

Here's to hoping the sunshines on Worc this weekend.

John said...

I guess I will chime in here since I just had a child graduate from Burncoat this past June & another child that wil be a Senior this coming school year. We kept them in the public schools because they thrived in them all the way through. They went to Clark st, Forest Grove & then Burncoat High. My son got into a very good college & my daughter is applying to some very good colleges. In high school there have been alot of disruptive students & I kinow they are both sick of it but overall they did pretty well. My son graduated with high honors & took 4 AP courses. We were always prepared to move them to SPM if it looked like things were not going well.

We are west siders & live in a nieghborhood with lots of kids the same age as ours. I would say about 1/3 went/go to Burncoat/Doherty/Voke - 1/3 went to West Boyslton & 1/3 went to SPM.

Bill Randell said...

My point was not so much on the school system. I believe there are always going to be kids who are going to be able to do well in a school.

Guess my point was more to the overall demographics of the City of Worcester. If you keep building low income/ affordable housing, you end up with low income people.

I am not saying that everyone has to be rich, but maybe should stop building housing to attract low income/ affordable people and think about building residents to attract people with higher income.

This is nothing new.. RKG said this 6 years ago in their housing study.

Anonymous said...

John;

if we had more parents in the urban core of the city like yourself we wouldn't have he problems in the schools that we are having..if we had leaders who were more outspoken (were not afraid to lead) about this or lets say as loud spoken as they are about getting more money to solve the problem we may not have the problems (mess) we are having.

Money taken out of sidewalk budget last year to support voracious eater - School System..Winfield Street sidewalks behind me still look like crap and the urban schools still suck because of those we are trying to tame..two net losses again