I spent the first two weeks of August on a glorious vacation in PEI with my family, so, in an attempt to have actually taken that time off, this edition of WPS in Brief looks a little different. I will not be covering the August school committee meeting in my usual play-by-play format. Instead, I am sharing a few reflections from Tuesday night’s redistricting meeting and linking to other local reporting on what happened at the one full school committee meeting this month.

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Let’s dive in:

Initial Redistricting Scenario.

If you missed my post about the initial redistricting scenario—including what would change and why WPS is undertaking this process—you can read it here.

The initial proposal is just that: a proposal. There are three more scenarios coming, with public forums and months of feedback before anything goes to the full school committee for a final vote. There are plenty of boundary lines that could change. But it’s important to keep the larger goals of this important work centered. Redistricting gives us an opportunity to ask not only, “What does this mean for my child?” but also, “How do we make Worcester Public Schools stronger and more equitable for every child?”

Nelson Place/Norrback Divide.

One issue that emerged during Tuesday night’s redistricting discussion probably would not surprise anyone who has followed Worcester’s real estate market or read the recurring “Where should I buy a house in Worcester?” posts on Reddit: Nelson Place is perceived as one of the city’s “better” elementary schools, and families want to remain within its attendance boundary.

That perception is not necessarily a measure of the education children actually receive inside the building. But it is real. Nelson Place is regularly mentioned alongside schools such as Flagg Street and West Tatnuck when people discuss where to purchase a home in Worcester. The $58 million building, opened in 2017, is the newest elementary school in the district and sees some of the highest requests for voluntary transfer from other neighborhoods. Real-estate listings sometimes identify the school as an amenity, and families have said they bought homes specifically so their children can attend the school.

Case in point, on Tuesday, a parent of a rising Nelson Place first grader whose home would be reassigned to Norrback told the School Committee, “I purchased my home with careful consideration of where my children would be receiving their education.” She said recommendations from lifelong Worcester residents whose children attended Nelson Place and Forest Grove influenced the family’s decision. After moving in and speaking with neighbors whose older children attended the schools, she said, “I knew I made the right decision.” The parent, who said she serves as Nelson Place’s PTO treasurer, asked the committee to pursue alternatives that would not “negatively impact my son and his friends’ education at Nelson Place.”

During Tuesday’s discussion, school committee member Molly McCullough (district A) also raised the new proposed boundary between the two schools and discussed alternatives she had previously suggested to the district’s redistricting consultant, including using Ararat Street instead of the railroad tracks as a dividing line. She said that her proposed “solutions” had so far “struck out,” but that she was “still working on it.”

That caught my attention because the alternative boundary McCullough discussed along Ararat Street would directly affect the school assignment zone for her own property, something she did not disclose during the discussion. Her home is currently assigned to Nelson Place, but would move to Norrback under the initial scenario. The alternative boundary she proposed would keep her home within the Nelson Place boundary.

The map below shows the general area McCullough discussed, highlighted in yellow.

The perception surrounding Nelson Place, that it’s one of the district’s better schools, is what makes McCullough’s advocacy for the boundary change worth flagging. The perception of a school can in turn influence how desirable, and potentially valuable, a home in its assignment zone is perceived to be. I cannot say whether the proposed boundary change would affect the value of McCullough’s property, and I am not making that claim. But Massachusetts conflict-of-interest law prohibits municipal officials, including School Committee members, from participating in a particular matter in which they have a financial interest, including when a matter could alter an official’s property “value, rights, or use.” The term “participating” encompasses more than casting a vote; it can include discussion, recommendations and advice.

There is also a relevant precedent. In 2021, the State Ethics Commission advised a Natick School Committee member that she could not participate in a school-closing decision because of its potential effect on the value of her nearby home. The potential conflict arose not from where her children attended school, but from her ownership of property that could be financially affected by the decision—a principle that applies, for example, when an official’s property would be affected by a zoning change.

The Natick case does not mean every school boundary decision creates a conflict. Massachusetts law exempts some general policy decisions when an official’s financial interest is shared by a substantial portion of the community, and citywide redistricting may qualify. But Tuesday’s discussion moved beyond the broader plan to a specific boundary—and an alternative that would keep a small group of houses, including McCullough’s, assigned to Nelson Place. Only the Commission can determine whether a conflict exists, but the public should not be left to speculate. School committee members should publicly disclose potential conflicts, seek guidance from the State Ethics Commission before participating, and share the Commission’s determination. That transparency is essential to maintain public trust in the redistricting process.

How we talk about other schools.

This redistricting process is going to be long, complicated and, at times, emotional. Families should ask questions, scrutinize the maps and share what they know about their neighborhoods and schools. But as we do that, I hope we can remember that there are real children on every side of every boundary line. And keep that in mind as we have these conversations.

In 1994, when I was in fourth and fifth grade, my hometown of Framingham went through redistricting because schools on the south side were overcrowded. My elementary school had grown from 634 students to 822 in five years. By my fourth-grade year, there was so little space that the sixth graders were being taught in the town administration building.

My school was also more than 50% “minority”—the language used at the time—and the district was required to redraw boundaries to address the racial imbalance. What I remember most is the overwhelming sense that other families did not want their children reassigned to our school. They talked about buying homes specifically so their children would go to different schools. They emphasized how difficult the transition would be for their children. The message I heard was that our school, and, by extension, the children already attending it, were not good enough.

During Tuesday night’s public comment, I heard echoes of that same dynamic. Redistricting means some children may have to change schools or buildings, and families have every right to ask what those transitions will mean. My own child’s school closed suddenly in 2023, forcing them to move to a new school. I understand that transitions are hard and that the district must provide meaningful support to the children affected.

At the same time, there is a difficult line between advocating for our own children and speaking as though another school—or the children who attend it—is somehow less desirable. Children hear these conversations, too. They hear how adults describe another school building. They hear when attending school with children from a different neighborhood is framed as a loss. And they notice which programs and communities adults rally to protect.

None of this means families should stay silent about legitimate concerns. It means holding two questions at once: What does my own child need, and what would make the district stronger and more equitable for every child? The measure of this process should not simply be whether each of us gets the outcome we want, but whether every child in Worcester has access to a school worth fighting for.

What happened at School Committee.

I am not doing my usual play-by-play recap of the August 13 School Committee meeting, but several local outlets covered the major issues.

The School Committee unanimously rated Superintendent Brian Allen “proficient” in his first annual evaluation. The Telegram & Gazette covered the evaluation, while MassLive reported on concerns raised by some parents.

The Worcester Guardian reported on calls from union representatives for School Committee members to become more directly involved in negotiations. The current contract expires August 31.

Questions about enrollment at Nelson Place also came before the committee after parents described difficulties navigating the placement and voluntary-transfer processes. Two petitions seeking de-identified information about placement decisions were referred to the administration. The Guardian later published an explanation of the differences among neighborhood enrollment, voluntary transfers and special education placements.

You can also watch the full August 13 meeting here.

PSA: Download the updated school calendar.

WPS has posted an updated 2026–27 school calendar. Take note that there are four weekdays between October 9 and November 11 when students will not have school:

• Friday, October 9 — Professional development day

• Monday, October 12 — Indigenous Peoples’ Day

• Tuesday, November 3 — Election Day/professional development day

• Wednesday, November 11 — Veterans Day

Don’t forget to put those dates in your calendar now, especially if you will need to arrange child care!

Thanks for reading. Good, local journalism is essential to a healthy city. It leads to higher voter turnout and less political polarization. We don’t all have the same priorities, but in order to have productive conversations we need to be working with accurate information. Please support our work here at Worcester Sucks and consider a paid subscription. Happy back to school and see you in September!

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Tip Jar!

Dear Shaun,

Could you settle an argument my boyfriend and I are having? I say that you’ve got to wait for either a signal or a car to stop to cross the street in a crosswalk. My boyfriend says as long as you are in the crosswalk you are safe to walk and shame on the cars for driving dangerously. He actually is reading over my shoulder right now and wants to add that you really can walk across the street at any time because pedestrians have the right of way and jaywalking isn’t a real enforced law.

-Wondering Walkers

Dear Wondering Walkers,

Of course the easiest thing to do is look up the actual law here in the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts. That is boring and also All Cucumbers Are Bountiful. You, the writer, are correct that you should be cautious when walking with your loved ones and wait to see if the three-ton murder machines are going to stop and allow you to get to the other side of the street. However your boyfriend, the man who stoops over you as you write, is right that pedestrians have the right of way and cars should be cautious of crossers.

Unfortunately, we do not live in a caring and compassionate society. Picture this, boyfriend, you are attempting to cross the street like you are Frogger incarnate. Folks are in oversized SUVs, on their phone, and eating fries from Chick-Fil-A, and you are merely trying to get to the Little Free Library at your local Universalist Church. Of course those Nissan Rogues should go against their namesake and stop when they see a living, breathing human in front of them. But that is just it: they are not seeing you, boyfriend, they are trying to get a “flush five” or whatever on Balatro while fighting with their ex on their phone. Holding the phone mind you, not using the hands-free option that they definitely have based on the year their car was made.

Now you, the writer, a clear narc—you are also in the wrong. How are you going to get through life waiting for someone else to let you do what you want to do? Sure, patience is a virtue, but action is success. While your boyfriend runs across the road avoiding semis and jumping on lily pads you are literally standing on the sidelines with no option to beat his high score. Of course, you believe in humanity to do the right thing. I bet you went to Clark University and you love Ted Lasso (I do as well). We all can’t be pie in the sky, sometimes that pie is on the windowsill and you have to grab it.

You’re both wrong. Nothing should be done in extremes. Extremes bring us aunts yelling at children on Facebook about bike lanes or fathers ignoring their wives to listen to more conservative talk shows. Sometimes the path best taken is a quick jaunt across the street when you have enough time before another vehicle is swerving while watching the Nelk Boys stream. But sometimes you got to wait and chill. Just be cool?

NEWS

Still dipping my toes back into shows so I don’t have a lot going on at the moment. But you can find me at Ralph’s every Tuesday for the foreseeable future! Love you guys!

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The civilian review board drama keeps unfolding and unfolding and will again be the subject of today’s (tonight’s) post. The primary guide I’ve been trying to get out will have to wait yet again! Let’s get to it.

First, this outlet only exists because of the members of our community who want it to so much they send me the equivalent of one maybe one and a half Dunkies a month. If that’s you, thank you thank you thank you! If it’s not, it could be, and it’s just one maybe one and a half Dunkies.

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Imposing Ignorance On The System

Next Tuesday’s council meeting (agenda) will again focus primarily on the manager’s decision to forgo the civilian review board proposal he floated, in retrospect quite obviously, to placate an angry community after the DOJ released its WPD investigation detailing all manner of horrible power abuses, up to and including systemic rape.

It’ll be another meeting to tune in to, show up for, make a stink about. The council will do... something... with the manager’s report. Remains to be seen. But it’s another opportunity to give ‘em the business. The course of the night colored by the bizarre news cycle around the DOJ’s abandonment of the Worcester investigation. As I covered last post, this was set off by a three paragraph, self-congratulatory press release from the city manager, in which our esteemed not-the-mayor Eric Batista tried to trick us into believing the DOJ absolved the WPD. The investigation, he said, was dropped “without sustaining any of the findings” in the 2024 DOJ report.

Turns out that was a lie! Flat out, unambiguous lie. Unbelievable.

Big ups to Sam Turken at GBH who got his hands on the actual letter the DOJ sent, releasing the full text of it earlier this week in a story headlined “Newly obtained DOJ letter sheds light on decision to close investigation into Worcester Police.”

The letter is from Patrick McCarthy, acting chief of the special litigation section of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, and it’s addressed to Brian Kelly, the lawyer the city initially hired to put out an atrociously Trumpian statement about the report when it was released. (Remember that? I can’t even bring myself to go get the link. It was so rotten. Ugh.)

Here’s the full text of the letter. As an exercise, humor me: read it closely. Be on the lookout for any language about sustaining findings.

I write regarding the Department of Justice’s investigation of the Worcester Police Department (WPD) pursuant to 34 U.S.C. § 12601. Our investigation focused on allegations of use of force and sexual contact during undercover operations. As explained below, the Department is closing this matter.

Since our December 9, 2024 findings report, WPD has taken a number of important steps and shared substantial information with us. We requested, and PD produced, existing and updated policies, training materials, incident reports, body-wor camera video, and complaint investigations related to use of force and sexual misconduct allegations. We reviewed all reported uses of force by WPD officers from July 1, 2025 through December 31, 2025, with the assistance of a subject-matter expert. On July 14, 2026, our team met with WPD leadership and personnel. including Chief Saucier. In addition, WPD clarified its policies to demonstrate a strengthened use-of-force review and explicit prohibition against officers engaging in sexual contact while on duty.

Based on these developments and lack of current allegations concerning the conduct that was subject to the original investigation, we are closing this matter without further action. We thank Chief Saucier and WPD for their cooperation, and we commend WPD for taking steps to improve its practices.

Did you see anything in that about the allegations being sustained or not sustained? Still an open question what “sustain,” the way the manager used it, even means. But the tone, I think it’s fair to say, is ‘you have made improvements since we found this pattern of bad behavior, there seems to be less bad behavior now and better systems to prevent it.’ The entire letter rests on the tacit assumption that the DOJ stands by what its investigators found.

The line that opens the third graf is the most critical: “Because of these developments and lack of current allegations...” i.e. no evidence of what we found and still believed happened is still happening (more on that in a sec). It’s not something you say when you’re doing a take-backsies. That the city manager tried to twist it into that, ‘the DOJ told me they made a whoopsie,’ is intellectually insulting. Grounds for termination for an executive who makes north of $300,000 annual. A willful misleading of the public on one of the most important questions the municipality has faced in a long time. He won’t be punished, I feel confident saying, and therein lies the true nature of corruption in this city. It’s in who he lied for, and who will happily swallow the lie, and who will parrot it, that the above-board corruption of our city government is and will continue to be on full display.

Exhibit A:

Wherein Kate Toomey is asking permission, for some reason and to whom remaining unclear, to hold a meeting of the subcommittee she has the sole legal authority to schedule meetings for. In keeping with the way she sees her role, this “discussion,” should it ever happen, will be for propaganda purposes only.

Reading deeper into this letter from the DOJ, knowing what we know about their greatly diminished capacity in the arena of civil rights, we should take the “lack of current allegations” with a grain of salt. The letter lists three things that happened prior to the DOJ dropping off: 1. a review of reported “use of force” incidents, which doesn’t include unreported sexual assault, i.e. most sexual assault, especially when a cop is involved. 2. They met with the chief once. And 3. the WPD demonstrated a “strengthened use-of-force review” and “explicit prohibition against ... sexual contact on duty.” This, in context, means there was no explicit prohibition against WPD officers having sex on duty prior. Alex here says it better than I could:

These are thin grounds on which to close out an investigation that required hundreds of man hours, dozens of interviews, and sorting through reams of documents to put together. It’s hard to imagine that a DOJ Civil Rights Division that wasn’t gutted by 70 percent over the past year, redirected to explicitly white nationalist enforcement priorities like “Fraud” with a silent “Somali,” would let years of work go so easily.

Celebrating this moment the way the manager did in that release is pig-like chauvinism, a great stain on this city that will linger for years and years.

While the majority of this city council is sure to swallow and spit up the lie, Councilor Khrystian King released a statement earlier this week that speaks plain truth to the situation.

It is beneath Worcester’s leadership to treat the federal government’s failure to finish its work as vindication or proof that the original findings lacked merit. The City Manager’s latest mischaracterization continues a pattern established at the outset, when the City Manager and Mayor approved a statement from the city’s outside counsel labeling the DOJ report “unfair, inaccurate and biased” before the City Council had an opportunity to publicly review and deliberate on its findings.
This effort to discredit the findings places Worcester’s leadership in disturbing alignment with a Trump administration actively dismantling civil-rights protections. Worcester’s experience must also be understood within the broader federal retreat from civil-rights enforcement.

If the manager’s calculation in releasing that lie of a statement was that it’d help paper over the civilian review board debate before Tuesday’s meeting, that has backfired spectacularly. Instead, he showed us exactly why we still need one.

I was pleased to find this sentiment echoed in a statement by the coalition for a civilian review board released this afternoon.

A department describing its own progress to the agency that investigated it is not equivalent to independent confirmation that the progress is sufficient, sustained, or complete. This is precisely why Worcester needs a permanent, independent Civilian Review Board: to verify progress independently of the department’s own account of itself.

A few more notes on this:

A meeting of the city’s Advisory Committee on LGBTQIA+ Affairs that took place on August 5 was finally uploaded to the city’s YouTube page earlier this week. The committee, which advises the city manager directly, took a unanimous vote to draft a memo stating its opposition to the manager’s abandonment of the civilian review board proposal. Staff Liaison Patricia LaFore, same one that does the HRC meetings, emphasized repeatedly that they only had the power to send a memo and could not vote to make a public statement, per a three year old rule implemented by the manager they ostensibly advise. As of press time, the memo is apparently on the way to the manager’s office, but it hasn’t been publicly released as far as I know.

Acting chairman of the Human Rights Commission Randy Feldman yesterday released a statement emphasizing the position of the commission (minus the police chaplain Batista personally appointed to it to placate the law enforcement community). Feldman said the the alternative offered by the manager, a separate system of review for some cases taking place under his DEI office but not replacing WPD review, misses the point: It’s not independent. He then details the long history of HRC policy suggestions being ignored.

An independent review board should also have the authority to examine departmental policies and practices, not simply individual complaints. Worcester’s experience with the Human Rights Commission demonstrates why this distinction matters. Over the past several years, the Human Rights Commission has reviewed and raised concerns about numerous proposed police policies.
Virtually all recommended significant changes were not adopted, save for one concerning using professional translation services if the officer at the scene did not speak the language needed.
Policies involving use of force, juvenile arrests, undercover operations, responses to individuals experiencing mental or behavioral health crises, and the operation of specialized units remained unamended by HRC suggestion.

A well-articulated summary of the current failures, providing a nice contrast for the next thing:

Joe Petty was cornered outside a diner it seems by a cable crew for Spectrum News and he gave an off-the-cuff interview about all this. “The chief has done a good job implementing the policies and procedures that they wanted implemented.” Going unmentioned was that a civilian review board was one of the things they wanted implemented. On that, Petty said: “Like they seem to cause some more chaos, more anxiety than getting anything done. Look what happens in Boston. The Commissioner just comes in, says, no, I’m not going to do it.”

It’s different here, where the manager and police chief ignore the Human Rights Commission, the Worcester Regional Research Bureau, the Board of Health, the Advisory Committee on LGBTQIA Affairs, a large coalition of local organizations, the hundreds of city council speakers at this point, the lawsuits for garish abuses of power, the reporters getting sued for writing about it...

“So people have with experiences, you’ve got to listen to them,” said Petty, as likely as not understanding that he was saying something that meant nothing.

The other day I had “Democracy Now” on the radio, courtesy local legends WCUW, and caught the line “imposing ignorance on the system,” delivered in a statement by a scientist with NOAA, as part of a comment on the Trump Administration’s abrupt decision to cease funding the Artic Report Card, an annual report tracking all manner of data on the Artic’s overall health. It seems to me, looking at this note next to the Petty quotes above, that Trump’s imposition of ignorance might be experiencing what the economists call the “trickle down effect.”

Later in the same show, I caught another line, “accountability should always be with the system designers.” Whatever this messed up system is in Worcester City Hall, it’s not the one on paper, and Joe Petty is for a certain fact one of its designers.

So with that in mind, do mark your calendars for next Monday night’s municipal operations subcommittee meeting. Charter change is on the agenda, and in so much as a way out of Petty’s system is possible, it will more likely than not involve a charter review process—a process that has only ever been used in this city to diminish the role of the public, not the other way around. But hey there’s a first time for everything, right?

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Odds and Ends

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I also want to plug a fundraiser for the wife and daughter of local tattoo artist Christopher Welch. Chris died in a motorcycle crash on I-190 last week. Katie knew him, said he was the sort of guy who’s always a treat to run into, always had a story, something cool in the works, type of guy so crucial to any artistic community who’s always in everyone’s corner, always jazzed and hyping everyone up. Their daughter’s just two months old, a fact that could bring me to tears if I hang on it any longer. Here’s the link again.

Good Reddit thread from a Worcester Subredditor who found out how much money we pay Eric Batista to carry the water of the small and unaccountable coterie that actually makes decisions. As noted, it’s more than real and notable mayors such as Michelle Wu and Zohran Mamdani. Such is life under The Dome.

Two late night posts for the Worcester Sucks team tonight. Be sure to read Aislinn’s post on the WPS’ Friday news dump about residistricting. Releasing all that info juuuuust ahead of a meeting about it on Tuesday is very a very City Hall move from the folks over at Durkin Administration.

Ok I gotta get to bed ASAP. Good night, moon. Good night, computer. Good night, computer friends. Here’s a real deal rock and roll song.

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Worcester Public Schools released its first districtwide redistricting scenario ahead of Tuesday’s School Committee Operations and Governance meeting. You can review the meeting agenda, presentation, and administration’s report . Here is the interactive scenario map. For more background on why WPS is undertaking this process and how it began, read my initial redistricting overview from March.

Let’s dive in:

What problem is WPS trying to solve?
Districtwide, WPS has enough elementary school space. Elementary buildings are currently about 84% full overall, which is considered an ideal utilization rate. The problem is where those seats are located. Individual elementary schools range from 57% utilized to 113% utilized. Some schools are significantly overcrowded, while others have substantial unused space. Current elementary boundaries also include disconnected “satellite” zones, divide neighborhoods and send students from the same elementary school to different middle and high schools.

The initial scenario attempts to:

• Bring elementary schools into a narrower utilization range of approximately 77% to 92%.

• Eliminate split feeder patterns so students from the same elementary zone continue together to middle and high school.

• Remove disconnected satellite zones.

• Place at least one Pre-K classroom in every elementary school over time, as funding becomes available.

• Create districtwide access to magnet and technical programs rather than limiting access by quadrant.

• Address expected enrollment growth from new housing developments.

• Better align school enrollment with actual building capacity.

This is a complicated puzzle. Moving one boundary to relieve overcrowding can increase transportation time. Keeping students close to home can result in unequal building utilization. Expanding access to specialized programs may require moving those programs or changing how students are admitted. Many of these same tensions—including transportation, equity, school capacity and disruption to students—were raised during the district’s first community forum in March.

There is no scenario that maximizes every priority at once. We can do anything, but we cannot do everything. Still, many of these issues are successfully addressed in the initial redistricting scenario.

What would change?
Almost every single school geographic boundary has some change— you can look at them more closely here. The biggest change is that every elementary school would feed into one middle school, and every middle school would feed into one high school. No more kids getting split at transition years!

A quick breakdown of notable changes in the draft scenario include:

• Belmont Street would move from the North Quadrant to Burncoat.

• Columbus Park would move from the South Quadrant to Doherty

• Jacob Hiatt would become a neighborhood school in the South Quadrant.

• The Gerald Creamer building on Granite Street would become a neighborhood school again, serving Pre-K–6 and helping relieve Rice Square and Grafton Street. The GCC program would move to the Fanning Building.

• Rice Square and Grafton Street sixth graders would attend Worcester East Middle. Rice Square sixth graders began attending Worcester East last school year.

• The current Worcester Arts Magnet building would become a neighborhood school serving the growing Burncoat area.

• The arts magnet program could move to the Francis McGrath building, while the McGrath neighborhood zone would largely become part of Nelson Place.

• Plumley Village would be assigned entirely to City View instead of being divided between City View and Belmont Street.

• Worcester Dual Language Magnet would remain a districtwide, lottery magnet school.

In terms of individual school zones, some of the largest reductions would be at Chandler Elementary and Rice Square. May Street, Elm Park, Grafton Street, Heard Street, Thorndyke Road and Midland Street would also have smaller zones. On the other side, City View, Nelson Place and Goddard would receive substantially larger zones, while West Tatnuck, Roosevelt, Clark Street, Flagg Street, Quinsigamond and Vernon Hill would also serve larger areas.

The chart I made below shows the net change in the number of students living within each elementary attendance zone (not the change in current school enrollment!) For example, 732 students currently live within the Rice Square zone, but only 421 attend Rice Square. Under the proposed scenario, the number of students living within the Rice Square zone would drop to 413. In other words, the chart shows how many students would be added to or removed from each school’s geographic zone, not necessarily how many students would enter or leave the school.

Secondary Schools.
At the secondary level, the challenge is different. Worcester’s middle and high school buildings are not proportionally sized. Doherty High has considerably more space than its feeder middle school (Forest Grove), while the South Quadrant has more middle school capacity (Sullivan) than high school capacity (South High). The presentation suggests that boundary changes alone cannot solve this problem.

One presented potential solution is a districtwide high school lottery or controlled-choice process to fill seats beyond those assigned through each quadrant’s regular feeder pattern. If that moves forward, families will need clear, public information about how seats are assigned and how equitable access will be ensured.

School Time Changes.
The proposal would also establish three school-day tiers: 7:15 a.m.–1:38 p.m. for high schools, Burncoat Middle and specialized programs; 8:15 a.m.–2:38 p.m. for other middle schools and elementary special education hubs; and 9:05 a.m.–3:28 p.m. for neighborhood elementary schools. Several schools would also be renamed to remove terms such as “community” or “magnet” when those labels no longer reflect their programming.

What should you keep in mind?
This is an initial scenario, not a final plan. It is intended to give the community something concrete to review and improve.

The plan also depends on WPS addressing voluntary transfers. About 14% of non-special education elementary students currently attend outside their assigned zones. If that continues, the new boundaries will not create the balance shown in the scenario.

Most schools would not see dramatic demographic changes under this scenario, but there are some notable shifts. Nelson Place and West Tatnuck would serve more low-income students, while Norrback, May Street and Thorndyke Road would serve fewer.

We also do not yet know when changes would begin, whether they would be phased in, or whether current students and their siblings could remain at their schools. Those details will obviously matter enormously to families, but we are not at that implementation stage yet.

What’s Next?
Right now, the district is asking for feedback, and this is where your local knowledge can be especially helpful: unsafe walking routes, natural neighborhood connections and places where a proposed line simply does not make sense. Families can see their current and proposed assignments and submit feedback through the district’s Community Input Mapping Tool or email alignment@worcesterschools.net. Of course, look at what the proposal means for your own family. But also look at the bigger picture: Does it use our buildings more fairly? Keep neighborhoods together? Create clearer pathways for students? Expand access to programs and opportunities?

Final scenarios are expected to go to the School Committee in December, following public meetings and community forums throughout September, October and November (see below).

There will not be a perfect map. But this is a once in a generation opportunity to make it better, and to build a stronger WPS for all our kids.

An Amuse-bouche...

It do be feeling like that. I used to work there and always fantasized about how to get that thing (‘ummmm his name is Buster, actually’) on top of Union Station as some elaborate prank. Luckily for Eric my beloved former general manager (Hi, Eric) I was never able to roll the 25/20 I needed to pick Buster’s lock.

Had to set aside the primary election primer I was working on all week because the city manager did a very annoying Friday news dump, our main focus today. Said dump, coming juuuust before 5 p.m., was a terse three paragraphs: the DOJ,the manager said, “informed the city” that the investigation into the WPD is closed.

On the one hand, which faces upward, a wet finger extended to the wind, no shit. On the other, which extends downward, wrist-deep in the muck of our little political backwater, sifting around, questions, questions, questions.

Also in this issue:

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Let’s get to it.

“For Immediate Release”

By way of a classic Friday news dump, City Manager Eric Batista demonstrated he’s learning how to be a truly evil little guy.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 8/7/2026 4:52 pm

WORCESTER, Mass. – The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) informed the City of Worcester Thursday that is has chosen to close its investigation into the Worcester Police Department without further action and without sustaining any allegations from its 2024 report.

When the DOJ released its original report, the municipality was already taking steps to improve its practices to promote fair, safe, and unbiased policing in the community. That work continued after the report was announced and will continue into the future, as ongoing improvement is necessary to have an effective police force.

“I want to thank the DOJ for recognizing the positive steps the WPD has taken to strengthen its policies and practices and for their thorough attention to this matter,” City Manager Eric D. Batista said. “I also want to thank Chief Saucier and the entire department for working cooperatively with the DOJ and for their work every day that helps make Worcester one of the safest mid-sized cities in the country. While the DOJ investigation may be closed, we remain committed to proactive evaluation and improvement.”

And that’s it! Just three little paragraphs that seek to put a firm cap on four years of “the DOJ report” resting as the backdrop to pretty much everything in Worcester politics.

How did they inform the city? When? What did they say exactly? What does “without sustaining any allegations” mean?

I sent an email to the DOJ, not that I’m expecting anything back on it. But it read:

Hey there just reaching out to confirm information being shared by city staff locally: that the DOJ reached out to the city (Worcester MA) On Thursday 8.6.26 to “that is has chosen to close its investigation into the Worcester Police Department without further action and without sustaining any allegations from its 2024 report.” Here’s the release the city put out. Don’t see anything on the DOJ’s end.

And I filed two FOIAs with the city: one for emails between the DOJ and city officials about anything at any time on Thursday (pro tip: ask the city to search by domain, i.e. “@usdoj.gov,” rather than query individual email addresses), and the other for calendar entries. If these queries bring back hits, I’m sure it’ll take the maximum amount of time the city has (25 business days all told) and an appeal or two to the state’s records supervisor to actually get the documents. We’ll see.

As it remains, the manager’s release is wholly insufficient. We have no idea what “informed” really means, and the manager, it seems, is banking on the news-consuming public to fill that gap in a way that’s advantageous to the police department, and thereby to the prospects of Batista keeping his third floor office.

In order to properly understand the situation, we need to zoom out and look at what’s been going on at the DOJ lately.

The Worcester investigation was one of the last acts of the local DOJ civil rights division under Biden. When Trump took over, most of the attorneys who worked on it were replaced within months.

It’s been no big secret that the DOJ’s work in Worcester has been effectively over. Without the involvement of the DOJ, it would fall to local advocates to push the manager to make good on his promises, the civilian review board being the most prominent.

The DOJ’s capacity to investigate civil rights cases, including pattern and practice investigations into police departments like the one in Worcester, has been severely diminished over the past year and a half—a conscious dismantling of the ability to investigate racism, while doubling down on “fraud” (of the “Somali fraud” variety) and other such racist dog whistles in the administration’s war on immigrants.

The Civil Rights Division is down from 90 or so attorneys in 2024 to 20, according to a Bloomberg Law report in April. Who knows how many more cuts have been made since.

DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, which has lost about 75% of its career attorneys since President Donald Trump took office again, has fewer than 20 attorneys handling civil rights investigations into patterns or practices of constitutional violations by state and local law enforcement, according to the MacArthur Justice Center report, shared exclusively with Bloomberg Law. That’s down from more than 70 attorneys working on these types of cases at the end of 2024, the report said.

In early 2025 Trump issued an executive order directing the DOJ to “review all federal consent decrees” with law enforcement agencies.

Worcester never got that far. Consent decrees are the end result of a pattern and practice investigation like the one announced in 2022, then released in fall of 2024.

But they often take years to get there. In nearby Springfield MA it took two years, with a fully staffed and willing DOJ, to get from releasing the investigation (2020) to signing a consent decree agreement on police reforms (2022). Emphasis on fully staffed! As opposed to the present circumstances: “barely staffed.”

Presciently, George White, a professor of race and public policy at CUNY York, was quoted in a Capital B story in April, 2025, saying the gutting of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division would leave cities like Worcester, with open pattern and practice cases, “adrift for the next four years, or until we get a completely different administration in place.”

“If you don’t have that kind of external pressure in place to make sure that these actors are actually doing the right thing — creating equity, and creating fairness — they’re not going to do it.”

The way the process typically goes: 1. DOJ announces the investigation, 2. DOJ investigates, 3. DOJ releases findings of the investigation and suggests reforms, 4. city and DOJ negotiate in court to reach an agreement on the scope and nature of the reforms. This last part is the “consent decree.”

Worcester only ever got to step 3. That was back in early December, 2024. Shortly after Trump was inaugurated, in January 2025, the DOJ started ghosting the city. We heard less and less until we heard nothing at all. What should have been happening stopped happening. The U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts overseeing the investigation was replaced by a Trump appointee, who made wishy washy comments about the investigation.

In March, the chief of police put together a response document, which the council sent to Kate Toomey’s Standing Committee on Public Safety, where it of course went nowhere, by design. At that March meeting, the chief said he’d recently met with the new U.S. attorney, Leah Foley, and said that they didn’t even mention the DOJ report. At the point he said that, we could more or less call the DOJ report dead in the water. I wrote as much at the time:

And we need to be operating with clear eyes about a DOJ that’s most likely to just... quietly dip out. ... The federal government situation makes the path to meaningful reform an unusual one for such an investigation, but there is a path. The situation isn’t by any means hopeless, it just falls to us—the community that pays this police department—and not the federal government. It all falls to us and how we organize.

Really, what Batista’s answering in this moment, with his recommendation against a civilian review board, is the question of whether or not he would listen to the community that continued organizing after the DOJ dipped out. And that answer was a “no,” as we’ve well covered by now. This Friday news dump amounts to tacking an exclamation point to the end of that “no.”

That context is important for understanding this release from the city—what’s in it, what’s not in it, and why now.

Let’s take those three questions one at a time.

—First, what’s in it: not very much. At three paragraphs, there’s little information to be gleaned, even between the lines.

Then, the customary “I’d like to thank...” quote from Batista, the tacit implication being some sort of victory occurring. Let’s look at it again.

“I want to thank the DOJ for recognizing the positive steps the WPD has taken to strengthen its policies and practices and for their thorough attention to this matter,” City Manager Eric D. Batista said.

When did the DOJ recognize the positive steps? How? Did they, even? The manager provides no answer, leaving the reader to assume the DOJ said it when they informed the city they dropped the investigation. Or, even worse, Batista is advancing the idea that dropping the investigation means a tacit recognition of progress, which as we’ve established is not the case.

The prior two grafs give no indication the DOJ dropped the report because of the improvements made locally. If they did, you’d have to imagine that’d make the release… reaching, as it already is, to pull the framing of a “win” out of this.

—What’s not in it: how the city was informed, anything at all that the DOJ officials said, who reached out to who, and what this bit of “informing” was apropos of. It also doesn’t even mention the fact that the civilian review board is on the agenda for a week and a half from then. It also doesn’t acknowledge that they waited until 4:52 p.m. on Friday to make it public, despite having apparently learned on Thursday. The “Friday news dump” is a classic fuck you move government officials pull. The timing of this news dump sets up a situation where the news consuming public has a week and a half to finish chewing the narrative they served about the DOJ’s apparent decision to drop the investigation.

What’s also not in the release, and this one feels the most on purpose, is what in tarnation “sustained any findings” means. It’s worked into the sentence quite cleverly, so as to avoid direct attribution to anyone in particular, but just by order of appearances, looks enough like something the DOJ said to a reader not thinking very hard about it.

In Worcester, let’s be honest, that’s most readers. The framing allows for a colloquialization to happen, a game of townie telephone, ending with the sentiment “the DOJ took it all back” spreading far and wide. It’s something we might very well hear Kate Toomey say out loud in the coming weeks. But the DOJ didn’t “take it back” they just dropped the investigation before they could “sustain” the findings—if that’s something they even do in these investigations, which is itself unclear. And taking this news in light of the dismantling of the division responsible for carrying it out, it’s much more likely they didn’t have the resources to pursue it than they decided there was nothing to pursue. The release tries very hard to slyly advance the idea that the DOJ had a change of heart, when in reality they had a change in man-power and in top-down directive. The victory here for the city manager is not an earned one, but rather the luck of the draw: a byproduct of a white supremacist executive branch reshaping its DOJ toward priorities that advanced white supremacy and gutting the rest.

For instance, on the very same day (Thursday) the manager apparently heard from the DOJ, the Trump administration announced the launch of a website called Fraud.gov. Fraud Dot Gov, folks. The best 30 Rock joke never written. Fraud Dot Gov is a dashboard of sorts for the public to view the hard work of the Task Force To Eliminate Fraud, an entity created in 2025 that essentially repackages the DOJ’s financial investigations.

It is much more likely the DOJ dropped the Worcester investigation because they had to send all their lawyers down into the fraud mines than it is what the manager would have you believe, that we were such good boys and girls the DOJ said “you did it, gold star.”

You can’t condemn the brutish behavior of ICE and celebrate the inability of the DOJ to hold police departments accountable. To do so is fundamentally contradictory. So, in the case of the Batista administration, having now done both, the question becomes: which one’s the lie?

The shock tactic cruelty of ICE’s street rips, as seen on Eureka Street, is part and parcel with the dismantling of the DOJ’s civil rights work. The MacArthur Justice Center last April, in a report on the gutting of the civil rights division, put it well:

As federal agencies, including the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), have grabbed headlines with their shocking cruelty, the Administration simultaneously has leveled a devastating—but far quieter—attack on mechanisms designed to check state and local law enforcement. Emboldening state and local police departments and prison systems in this way risks disaster. After all, the combined size of these departments’ personnel dwarfs the number of federal officers who answer directly to the Administration.

—Why now: Given all the questions presented above, I think it’s a safe assumption that the “Friday news dump” was a tactical move to head into the next council meeting on the winds of a more sympathetic narrative to the city manager’s decision. It allows the old guard of the council to say, “look, even the DOJ doesn’t see a problem anymore.”

It’s a smarmy move, relying on the majority of this city’s political class being credulous, simpering, conflict-averse and in a state of complete fealty to the police. It will probably work.

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When the council inevitably throws the CRB proposal in the proverbial trash, be it at the next meeting or some other time in the future, they will have told basically everyone in the city who cares to go fuck. The coalition that showed up at the last meeting is massive and will grow. The Human Rights Commission and Worcester Regional Research Bureau have recently been joined by the Board of Health, who called for a joint meeting with the HRC, and the Commission on LGBTQ+ Affairs, which took a vote in support of the CRB proposal. Basically, the entire bench of city hall is set against the small group of police loyalists and townies who will make this extremely consequential decision. And they will make that decision in a callous and insultingly low-IQ fashion. We’ve seen this show before. For instance, Kate Toomey has not bothered to even respond to the people who’ve called on her standing committee to hold a meeting on the issue. Flagrant disrespect, in keeping with the modus operandi.

While we’re at it, a good thread on the most often heard response, ‘we already have the POST commission,’ to which the only response is ‘yeah, and… ?’

Giselle l Writer | Avoider of Burnout (@notjustawriter) • Instagram photos and videos

Worcester Working Families (@worcworkfam) • Instagram photo

How do they think that’ll work out for them in the long run? Moe Bergman, who remained on the council by the grace of some 36 votes, and is the second-longest running member of the Standing Committee on Public Safety, should be especially nervous. By any indication, he isn’t.

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Odds and Ends

That’s it for today! We’re already “at length” and the hour grows late. Thank you for reading yet another edition of this newsletter. I hope you found it useful, entertaining, enlightening, etc. If you did or didn’t I suppose please consider putting down a deposit on my ability to continue churning these things out.

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There were a few important stories I wasn’t able to get to in this issue. (Need a sign that says “you can’t cover everything” like the “every second counts” one in The Bear.)

—One we’ll definitely cover on the next Outdoor Cats: Went to the premiere of Burning Down The House at Hanover Theater Thursday night with Chris and Katie. Will have lots to say about that.

—One we might if Chris wants to: There’s been a development in the bad faith lawsuit police union president Thommy B. Duffy II filed against This Week In Worcester‘s Tom Marino. He’s angling, apparently, to flush out Marino’s sources on a string of hugely revealing and important stories following Eureka Street. Highly suggest giving Brad Petrishen’s story on the matter a read. That a police union official is using the courts to ferret out a journalist’s sources is a press freedom issue that should be getting much much much more play than it has been. Should Thommy B succeed, it would set an ugly precedent in this state, which, as Brad points out, is one of only 10 in the nation that lacks a “shield” law protecting sourcing. Free country for me but not for thee says the legislature.

Some lesser important but noteworthy happenings. The Hanover Theater’s recently departed director Troy Siebels is set to do that job at The Worcester Guardian. In an interview with Radio Worcester he says pretty much outright he’s there to fundraise. Best of luck, big dawg.

Program transfers are finalized as Community Health Link offloads and closes up, generational homelessness epidemic be damned. WBJ has it.

You love to see it! Rent control advocates flooding the statehouse…

Keep Mass Home (@keepmasshome) • Instagram photos and videos

A mesmerizing video about data centers and how we all love them.

New Ceremony record out hell yeah!

Ok podcast soon then another one of these after that. Talk soon!

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This so happens to be Shaun’s first post back since the one-week paternity leave I graciously and also generously allowed him. All tips today go straight to Mr. New Baby Daddy (a name he insists you all call him now). —Bill

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HORRORSCOPES

Leo- If your stomach hurts, it is probably just gas. I know you haven’t developed how to pass gas properly yet, so just cry loud enough, pull your knees to your chest, and I’ll help massage it out of you.

Virgo- Your feces were originally black, now they are a yellow rice-like substance. The planets are telling you that you are out of the darkness and into the multi-textured light that is existence.

Libra- I know you can only see four feet in front of you, and the stars suggest that is the smartest thing for you right now. You should only come in contact with things that are within your grasp. Anything beyond that radius is not worth your time and a greater distraction in your life.

Scorpio- Sometimes you just need a change. Things can be wet. Things can be squishy. Things can be just feel stale and forgotten. All that needs to happen is a quick wipe clean and a brand new start.

Sagittarius- Communicate less. Use sound and gesture to get your point across.

Capricorn- Your hair will change. It always can. I currently have my head buzzed. Yours will take a new shape, and you can keep it, discard it, dye it, or tie it. Your head may even outgrow it.

Aquarius- You’re in need of making brand new connections in your life. While these relationships are new, different and foreign, they will keep you alive. You are loved, hold these new people in your life close.

Pisces- You’ve spent most of the last year holed away in your own filth. It was dark and you kept to yourself. A recent change has forced you out into the world. The stars suggest taking this challenge head on, screaming.

Aries- There is an older person in your life who is taking your change just as hard you are. Realize that they are experiencing you just as much as you are experiencing them. Give them grace and they will too.

Taurus- Dogs fear you. Keep your hands to your damn self for a while.

Gemini- Sometimes it is best to sleep it off. Sure you’ve got to eat and interact with your surroundings. But sometimes the best thing you can do for yourself is just to rest.

Cancer- I’ve recently become a father yet again. Give me a break and I’ll get back to you next week. Or, if you are really that needy, go use Leo’s.

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NEWS

August 14th is the comedy kickoff show Hot Dog! at George’s Coney Island. Show is at 8PM and this is my first show back doing comedy since I had my baby. COME HANG!!

August 15th is THE WORCESTER HOTDOG SAFARI.

Far as news goes, it’s a light week. We spend considerable time working through a rough editorial by Massterlist’s Jon Keller about why Jim McGovern doesn’t get many challengers. It’s a trip. Some of the worst writing I’ve ever seen.

“The Untouchable Incumbent”

Maybe there’s a clue in that most rare phenomenon, a member of Congress facing absolutely no competition for reelection. No Democratic primary challengers. No Republican general election foe. Not even a stray independent or third-party wingnut who flits onto the ballot like a fly seeking purchase on a dog’s leavings, pending certain disposal by the voters.

(Hey it’s Chris, up top I talk about the Benn Jordan data center noise study thing. Here’s Benn’s full channel, he’s a foundational always-watch YouTube guy for me. I keep thinking about how we all kind of live in an oil field now?

Most of Benn’s contemporary work is focused on surveillance-state/Big Tech-state resistance and avoidance, but I originally got into him through this mind-blowing video he made about how Aphex Twin sounds like Aphex Twin and why kind of no one else ever has or can.)

The Russell quote can be found in the last written Worcester Sucks post: “There will be no going off script.”

Thanks for listening and please please please consider a paid subscription if you can afford one and want this outlet to continue existing!

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And I was serious about needing a Watermelon research assistant: billshaner at substack dot com.

This podcast is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Overcast, Pocket Casts others via this RSS link.

Intro music by Bill Shaner 8.3.26

Outro music: “STAMPEDE” by Genesis Owusu

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If you’re coming in cold: The city manager said “nope, actually” to the civilian review board he pitched after the DOJ report in 2024 made problems in the police department more difficult to ignore. After two years of allegedly working on this, the manager came back with a rather terse report, at 30 some odd pages, which was heavy on repackaged information and light on details about this CRB model they allegedly thought long and hard about.

At that meeting last week, more than 100 people showed up to speak in favor of a civilian review board, the need for police accountability, and the longstanding issues with the WPD.

Since, there have been some very interesting developments. Lawsuit developments, the continued suppression of the HRC, despite the role the manager claims it plays vis-a-vis civilian review, a pressure campaign on Kate Toomey’s Standing Committee on Public Safety, an amazing George Russell quote—Worcester’s a little bit fun to report on again!

We’ll get to it all, but first I want to bring your attention to a few things. I’ve been hard at work since in the video editor, where I feel very much like a chimpanzee happening upon a Nintendo Switch, but I’ve got a playlist of about 20 of what I thought were the best public comments up on YouTube.

Such as my man Andrew Marsh right here, who yields back the balance of his time like no one I’ve ever seen, this clip being no exception.

And I whipped up a few quick-cut reels reels for the newsletter’s Instagram.

Part 1 — Emphasis on lawsuit costs ft. Giselle Rivera Flores, Janet Davis, Andrew Marsh, Roberto Diaz, Tom Marino

Part 2 — Emphasis on Eureka Street, ft. Sue Mailman, Etel Haxhiaj, Ashley Spring

Part 3 — Built around Jermoh Kamara’s white-hot testimony about the way the Ghanaian community is used for political purposes while their concerns are ignored. This is the one that really “took off,” which is great. “Many of you out here parade yourself in the Ghanaian community, in our African communities, in our Black community, thinking that you care,” she said, “but you don’t give a damn about these communities.”

Jermoh’s full comments are worth a watch if you ask me. Oh look at that they’re in a playlist readily available on the internet along with everyone else’s.

36 votes, man…

It took me a long ass time to get all that done and while it may not have been a newsletter post per se, it was very much part of the goal of this newsletter. I’ve found that video editing is at its core a form of writing, or can be treated as such, once you get past the layers and layers of additional technical considerations. You’re making the same decisions: what to keep, what to cut, how to arrange it for the reader’s (viewer’s) benefit. And reels “meet the people where they are” a whole lot better than these written posts do, unfortunately. The Instagram has more followers than the newsletter has subscribers, (we just hit 6,000 thanks in large part to Kelly Cashman, our poster-in-chief ~salute emoji~) and all three of the reels “did numbers” as they say.

Sheesh!

But Instagram does not pay the bills. So think of it this way: your subscription gave me the time and energy and mandate and platform to get clips of a lot of solid community members talking about the real problems of the WPD in front of 30,000 people and counting.

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Since, there’s been a few updates:

—Details were released of the settlement the city reached with the 12 protesters the WPD brutalized in June, 2020, at the tail end of a BLM rally downtown, during which then-police chief Steven Sargent took a performative knee outside the courthouse. The city now owes those 12 individuals a lump sum of $825,000 in damages. The Telegram‘s Brad Petrishen—he’s been absolutely busting ass lately on this WPD stuff, much respect—got the details from Hector Pineiro, the attorney representing the demonstrators. Brad’s story is worth a read because right next to Pineiro saying, essentially, “yup this is a public document here ya go,” the city’s main spokesman is issuing a litany of excuses as to why the city can’t provide the settlement details.

Pineiro...

“For all intents and purposes, this case is over,” Hector E. Pineiro, the plaintiff’s lawyer, told the T&G July 22, saying that he, in addition to already receiving the funds, gave the city approval to file the final stipulation July 8.

...versus the city:

The city on July 20 told the T&G it would need an extra 15 days to “search for and review” the settlement agreement to fulfill a request the newspaper had filed under Public Records Law July 6.

The excuses are of the sort the city often employs when it has no standing to keep something from the public but wants to—like a candy apple, where the apple is the lie and the candy is the circular and purposefully vague lexicon of municipal governance and the stick used to twirl that apple around in the hot candy goo is a one-time local journalist who now makes much more money than he did and knows what he has to do to keep making all that money: he has to be a good sturdy stick.

—The police unions praised the manager for dropping the CRB proposal, per the Telegram.

“We’ve made a lot of changes,” Capt. Matthew Early, head of International Brotherhood of Police Officers Local 504, said, opining that the current level of oversight is already making it difficult to recruit and retain officers.

He also said he’s against a CRB because it could potentially “alienate” police officers. Snowflake aura.

Worcester’s favorite son Tommy Duffy II “deferred” to a New England Police Benevolent Association Facebook post he definitely didn’t write and doesn’t all read in his exact speaking cadences. It reads, in part, that the a CRB would “(inject) politics into policing while duplicating oversight that already exists.”

The most politically powerful man in the city, made that way because of his leadership role in the city’s king-making political institution, says we can’t have any politics in policing.

The sad part is he likely believes what he says... Like he’s not lying on purpose.

—Organizers have started a campaign to call Kate Toomey, chairwoman of the public safety subcommittee, to pressure her to put the CRB on an agenda—any agenda! So far, nada.

Fun fact: Toomey is personally named in a federal lawsuit filed in May by community organizer Gordon Davis, over a petition urging the police to look into systemic racism that Toomey tabled in 2024 and the city council has since left to collect dust. I pulled all the docs from PACER: Davis v. Toomey PACER docs

Way back in May of that year, Davis filed a petition that read...

“Whereas the Disparities in Arrests Report shows a disproportionate number of Black and Latino people arrested in Worcester. The police chief has said that this systemic racism harms Black and Latino people.

Whereas the statement by the Worcester Police Chief is evidence of a clear and present danger.

We ask the City Council to assign to the Public Safety Committee the task of investigating the issue of systemic racism and public safety. The investigation should include public hearings.

Toomey tried to file it but then-Councilor Thu Nguyen (miss you) pushed it to a vote, and the motion to file failed, 6-4. So Toomey squirmed for a bit, vaguely invoking the “inaccuracies” in Davis’ five-sentence petition before tabling it.

I wrote a whole subsection about it at the time in a post with the evergreen headline “A Town Full of Babies.”

Since Toomey tabled it, Davis’ order has appeared at the bottom of every single city council agenda, in the “tabled” section that the council under Mayor Joe Petty has used as a sort of public trash folder.

It appears, every meeting, next to orders that are often years old, like a 2019 item from then-councilor Konnie Lukes.

Toomey or any other councilor could at any time take it off the table and file it, thus ridding themselves of the burden of carrying it from agenda to agenda. But no one bothers— or perhaps dares?—to do that. So it stands as a sort of running metaphor: systemic racism is the item of business on every agenda that they can be relied upon to not address.

Davis’ lawsuit is one worth following. Will update when there’s an update.

For now, just something to call and/or text or email Kate about when hitting her up.

It’s truly one of the marquee ways Mayor Joe Petty demonstrates he’s dabbing on us, in the Matt Christmanian use of the term. Kate Toomey is an out-and-out police apologist, using what is probably the single most important (in theory) publicly elected seat for police accountability to cheer lead and claim valor.

—Speaking of Joe, last week he went on Talk of the Commonwealth and made it clear he’s a hard no on civilian review board, not that we were surprised.

“Passing something like that undermines everything the chief has done and his authority,” he said.

Then, a few days later, former District 3 City Council George Russell, Mr. Peppers and Onions himself, was on the radio, and he delivered a surprisingly accurate summary of the situation on the city council in this new term.

Host Hank Stolz framed the dynamic of the council as progressive versus centrist. Russell corrected him.

The only thing I would disagree with you, Hank, is that you refer to the council as a centrist. … But the bottom line is, is that they’re not centrist. This council is a very conservative council. It’s made a real move to the right.

And when I think of centrist, I think Sean Rose, I think of Joe Petty, I think of myself, that people that were able to take stands on liberal issues and on conservative issues both and be able to do it. I don’t I don’t see that in the majority of the council right now. Majority of the council right now is is more to the right and more more conservative.

You do, I think, have to hand it to him.

—On Monday night the Human Rights Commission met for an hour or so, and on display were many of the concerns former members expressed during public comment.

First, the meeting opened with the board’s staff liaison, Patricia LaFore, the city’s director of human rights and accessibility, actively suppressing a conversation about the civilian review board report. Chairman Randy Feldman came prepared with a letter he’d written about the matter and LaFore prevented him from sharing it.

Then they moved on to a discussion of the highest profile currently open lawsuit against WPD, the mental health response model lawsuit filed in March, concerning the fact that cops, untrained in mental health response techniques, are almost always the first and often the only responders to a mental health emergency.

Feldman walked through the fine points of the lawsuit in careful detail only to be bludgeoned by a know-nothing comment from Father Jonathan Slavinskas, the literal chaplain of the WPD and out-and-out cheerleader for police. Feldman ended his summary on the remarkable fact that WPD training includes just one course in the 20-week training regimen that deals with mental health emergencies, and that the 40 hours of mandatory online training a year, as proscribed by the state, has only one mental health course—on the wellness of the officers themselves. Less than 25 percent of Worcester officers have participated in the voluntary trainings on offer.

To which Slovinskas asked, “Is that something we should confirm with the Worcester police, just to make sure all those... that’s accurate?”

In the manager’s report, he described the HRC thusly:

Within Worcester’s existing accountability framework, the HRC serves as an important avenue for community participation and engagement. One of HRC’s foundational responsibilities includes oversight and review of issues involving WPD. Over time, this relationship has continued to develop through increased communication, collaboration, and structured opportunities for dialogue.

But at the meeting earlier this week, we saw city staff openly working to make sure none of that happens.

From there the HRC members tried to wrap their heads around the confusing way that city staff have constricted their ability to actually ask the WPD questions at the annual meeting coming up next month. Lafore made it clear that if they don’t provide the questions in writing and well in advance, the police won’t be answering them. Take this exchange, for instance…

Member Kerry Whiterell asked if the board really needed to draft and submit a formal list of questions.

“I was also under the impression that there was going to be, this was maybe going to be a little bit more conversational in nature and questions that we have were able to bring with us to the meeting. So I just wanted to clarify which questions need to be given in advance and which are things that we can bring to the meeting because I’m certainly gonna have questions, but I was maybe not aware it was so formal.”

LaFore said you absolutely have to draft the questions.

We’re gonna go with the question responses categorically like we received last year and then update the data and that we anticipated there may be some discussion about that.

If there are other questions, she said, “I think it will be reasonable for us to present them as soon as we can for them to prepare to answer questions when they come here in August.”

Feldman tried to soften LaFore’s response.

“I would say reasonable but not required.”

But LaFore immediately resharpened it.

“I don’t think you’ll have much conversation if they don’t have fair notice of what the discussion’s gonna be.”

Translation: There will be no going off script.

Public appearances from the police are often conflated with the police being transparent. The above moment is a glimpse into how most if not all of the public appearances are tightly choreographed public relations stunts. The routine meetings with the public safety committee are a great example.

Which brings us nicely to our next news item....

—The police released, sorta, some data on crime over the past six months, compared to the same time sample going back five years. The upshot: arrests are up, crime is down. Cue the “Home Improvement” confusion noise. Euuuurgh?!

Listen I’m no Einstein but arrests are for crime in a categorical sense. More arrests equals more crime not less crime. So let’s challenge that assumption by digging into this new cache of WPD data.

Curiously, the report wasn’t released at all, but rather teased out, I guess, on the department’s Facebook page. I couldn’t believe it... I dug through PrimeGov for a few minutes, finding nothing, then went back and reread the Telegram story linked above and yup... “according to (the department’s) Facebook page...” and it’s a post with a screenshot of an infographic, no text, and about 4 or 5 likes over three days, truly a lost post given the engagement on WPD posts about literally anything else.

I’d say this was an attempt to reclaim the narrative, but you’d think if that were the case they’d have tried just a little bit.

The data itself is indicative of a few things. It provides a snapshot of January to June going back five years, listing incidents by how they were initiated, and then violent crime and gunfire reports.

In the incidents section, we see a massive spike in both arrests and “patrol-initiated” incidents, meaning no one called in any public safety threat, the officer just took it upon themselves. 911 calls, the only tried and true way of gauging whether a civilian perceives there to have been a crime committed, are down over the five-year average, in line with the violent crime statistics reported in the second block of the infographic.

Per the dictates of Shotspotter’s “crime forecasting” AI tool, called Resource Router and other names rolled out by the company to make it harder to research and report on, officers are to make routine “community engagements” in the areas that the large language model synthesizing past crime data dictates they go on a given date and time. These “community engagements” are sometimes reported out over the scanner and, anecdotally, they tend to be ‘telling an unhoused person to get lost.’ When I hear “community engagement” on the scanner it’s accompanied, as a rule, by some “quality of life” the officer observed. Outdoor Cats co-host Chris Robarge has the scanner on more than I do, and he’s noticed it, too.

More often than not, an officer is going to “run names” on such an “engagement,” and if it pings back in the system that the person has a warrant out—most likely for missing a court date or a meeting with a parole officer or falling behind on court payments—then the officer racks up an easy arrest. Otherwise, disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct and trespassing are all right there on any given encounter with an unhoused person. Arresting them for these minor offenses all but guarantees a “failure to appear” warrant automatically issued by the district court clerk some time in the future. And so you have basically a perfect system for keeping the same small group of people cycling through the court system, bleeding them of whatever money, autonomy, or sobriety they can muster in the in-between.

It occurs to me at the moment that the vampire-thrall dynamic is a useful analogy here, but I’ll hold onto that one for another time.

The AI’s mandate to do street harassment under the guise of the pleasant-sounding “community engagement” policy, plus the newfound ability of anyone in the city with a smartphone to log a complaint about seeing a homeless person somewhere they’d personally rather not, anonymously, via the 311 app... something that happens on a near daily basis.... produces a situation where arrests can shoot up 50 percent while violent crime—i.e. the only real public safety threat under police purview—is down across the board.

I’m reminded of a new episode of Doom Scroll I listened to earlier this week with #1 GOAT marxist geographer David Harvey (”Right To The City” is my bible), wherein he says that throughout history technological advancements have all served in some way to discipline and diminish the power of labor.

The way 311 and SoundThinking’s surveillance products have exacerbated the homelessness crisis in subtle and plausibly deniable ways feels to me an extremely good piece of evidence to support Harvey’s claim. But who’s to say...

Worcester’s dip in violent crime is in keeping with the trend nationwide. This is a societal phenomenon. The behavior, good or bad, of the WPD has little bearing on it. But the “visible homelessness” problem in Worcester is something the police can very much take credit for. Left with little else to do, they have exacerbated the problem in their attempts to fix it by enforcing a defacto banishment ordinance.

That’s how the police department can produce this absurd dataset: crime is down, arrests are up.

The city council, when inevitably given the chance (likely within a month or two), will credit them for both. The lack of crime will be due to the brave men and women of the WPD “who are out there every day...” they’ll say, along with the other five or six phrases they cycle through, all of them safely meaningless. The arrests will be proof positive of their get-to-it-iveness. The unsheltered homelessness crisis unfolding before our eyes will be the failure of someone else, certainly not the police and the courts and the county jail. More than likely, they’ll blame “the towns.” Or, more accurately, that’s what they’ll say out loud. But in their heads and their hearts they’ll be sure of the real culprit and what should be done to them.

The next council meeting is set for August 18. Definitely mark your calendars as that’ll be another one worth showing up for and tuning into.

Also: the day before, on Monday, August 17, the municipal operations subcommittee is holding a hearing on charter review. That’ll be interesting.

Cursory search of the calendar shows nothing for the public safety subcommittee. Makes sense, given there are no notable public safety issues at the moment.

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Look at this simply incredible find my friend Nessa pulled from the whatnots depths of the Lincoln Street Savers.

Excited to see The Shoestring and friend of the newsletter Andrew Quemere teaming up on a series called “The Brady Bunch,” about officers on the Northwest District Attorney’s “Brady list” — i.e. officers whose conduct has been such that their testimony is not allowed in court. The first edition is about a Granby cop who paid subordinates to do his homework. Lmao.

Records allege Granby cop sexually harassed women, paid subordinates to do his schoolwork

An outside investigation found that the former lieutenant, Gary Poehler, boosted his pay by obtaining two degrees after having police department employees write papers and take exams for him, records say.

In light of the investigation’s findings, the police department sustained an allegation of “conduct unbecoming” for “cheating in pursuit of academic degrees and receiving compensation for those degrees,” according to the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission’s online disciplinary database. The department also sustained an allegation of a “non-minor policy violation,” finding that Poehler “abused his position as a lieutenant” by asking the employees to complete his schoolwork, the database says.

Once we get the Worcester DA’s Brady list—something they continue to deny even exists—we’ll have to do our own Brady bunch. That list remains the holy grail of Worcester reporting.

Funny one from Andrew Quemere. State police officer stealing a bobcat from a tree service he hired at his house in the exact town where this would happen, Palmer, MA.

Meanwhile in New York mamdani is going after bad landlords…

I pick up Worcester events coming up...

You love to see it!!

Good story in Playboy the other day: “What We Didn’t Learn from Vietnam” by Tom Bissell.

Good track:

Ok! That’s it. Talk soon!

In keeping with the heavy-then-light format of the show, this segment appears toward the end, at the 59 minute mark.

Before that, we talk about the only thing in Worcester politics really worth talking about at the moment: the manager’s decision to abandon his pursuit of a civilian review board. Catch up on that news here and here and on the Worcester Sucks Instagram you’ll find three compilation reels of public comment I worked pretty hard on.

I have a substantial “print” post in the works about where we stand on that front. It’s almost done. Stay tuned!

Watch an orca ram a sunfish so hard that the fish explodes

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Intro music by Bill Shaner 7.29.26

Outro music: “Nashville Cats” by the Del McCoury Band

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Welcome to the July issue of WPS in Brief. This month covers key topics from one school committee meeting.

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Let’s get to it:

Superintendent’s Goals and Self-Reflection.

At the beginning of each school year, the superintendent presents annual goals to the School Committee for approval. At the end of the year, he reports back on how those goals were met (or weren’t). It’s an important process because, when done well, these goals serve as both a roadmap for the district and a key accountability tool for the superintendent, the School Committee, and the public.

While Allen’s presentation lasted just twenty minutes, his 44-page self-assessment covered a lot of ground. I could do a deep dive on every goal, but in the interest of keeping this brief, I try to highlight the biggest takeaways.

Because Allen has been in the district so long at such a high level, it allowed him to hit the ground running as a first year superintendent. One thing I want to emphasize is where Allen’s strengths lie: he has an expert’s understanding of operations, systems, and organizational structure (as I reported when he got the job, he’s one of the best in the state, if not the region). His leadership has focused on turning the district’s strategic plan into concrete systems and processes, with nearly every initiative tied back to that plan, which runs through 2028—the same year his current contract expires. As Allen put it, “Running the Worcester Public Schools is equivalent to running a massive, highly regulated enterprise. We are more than a half billion dollar operation navigating complex legal, civil rights, and special education mandates... ultimately our role is shielding schools and classrooms from many of these operational challenges.” Whether you agree with every decision or not, his emphasis on building systems that support schools is a consistent theme throughout his leadership. It’s also what I believe sets him apart from many of his peers.

Student Goal.

The Superintendent set a goal of increasing the percentage of students meeting or exceeding benchmark on Star Reading (grades 2–9) and Star Math (grades 1–9) from 33% to 36% by the end of the 2025–26 school year. By June, 35% of students met the benchmark in both subjects, representing a 6 percent gain in reading and a 5 point gain in math. According to the district, this is the largest single-year improvement since Star was implemented districtwide in 2021–22. That’s encouraging, though I’d be interested in seeing the data broken down by grade level and student group. Districtwide averages can mask important differences, and some grades have historically shown as much as an 11 percent gain over the course of a single year.

The district also noted that fewer students fell into the lowest benchmark category than at any point since Star was adopted, suggesting growth occurred across the achievement spectrum, not just among students already close to proficiency. As always, though, the bigger question is why scores improved. How much reflects stronger instruction, increased familiarity with the assessment, changes in testing conditions, or other factors? It’s also worth remembering that Star is a universal screener and that student proficiency rates are heavily influenced by factors outside a school district’s control, including family income, home language, and parents’ educational attainment. Worcester’s student population saw decreases in both low-income students and English learners this year, which likely plays some role as well.

There was a deeper conversation around assessments later in the meeting, which I touch on farther down in this brief.

Collaborative Teaming Goal.
The district exceeded its goal of creating more consistent collaborative meeting structures across schools. The target was for 70% of collaborative teams—including Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), grade-level teams, departments, and school leadership teams—to consistently use four core meeting practices by the end of the year. According to Allen, 84% of team meetings included all four practices (using a standard agenda, sharing it in advance, reviewing meeting norms, and documenting action steps), and 38 of the district’s 49 schools met the district’s standard for implementing the collaborative teaming model with fidelity. This is one of those goals that’s hard for the public to see directly, but schools are full of meetings, and having consistent structures can help make those meetings more productive. It’s another example of Allen’s broader focus on building systems and processes that he believes will lead to stronger instruction over time.

Communication Framework Goal.
Allen also reported that the district met its goal of implementing a unified communications framework. The idea is to create a more consistent approach to how Worcester Public Schools communicates with staff, families, and the broader community, while also expanding multilingual outreach and accessibility. The framework is also intended to ensure district messaging aligns with the Vision to Action strategic plan.

The communications strategy document itself is pretty impressive, and I know I sound like a broken record, but communication is night-and-day compared to WPS before 2022. According to the Superintendent, the district will track the framework through communication audits, analytics, and surveys of staff and families, to see whether communication becomes more consistent, transparent, and responsive over time.

Future Teacher Pipeline Goal.
One initiative that seems to be off to a strong start is the district’s new “Grow Your Own” Future Teacher Pipeline. The goal is to recruit Worcester students who are interested in becoming teachers and, ultimately, bring them back to work in Worcester Public Schools. Given that Allen is himself a WPS graduate, this seems like a particularly meaningful initiative for him.

The district far exceeded its first-year goal, enrolling 41 students in the inaugural cohort instead of the 15–20 originally planned. According to the district, 78% of participants are students of color and 56% identify as Hispanic or Latino. Through a partnership with Worcester State University, 13 students completed their first college education course, and 25 graduating seniors took part in the district’s first “Future Educators Signing Day,” committing to pursue careers in education with the hope of returning to teach in Worcester.

Allen has also said he hopes the concept eventually expands beyond teaching. At a recent CPPAC meeting, he noted that WPS is the second-largest employer in the city and said he’d like to see similar pipelines developed for careers in areas like accounting, information technology, and other district professions.

Areas to Improve.
In his self-assessment, the superintendent reflected on several challenges during his first year, emphasizing that continuous improvement requires identifying problems, understanding their root causes, and making systemic changes. He acknowledged that communication was a common issue in several situations, including the principal selection process at Nelson Place, the proposed merger of the Worcester Alternative and ACT programs with the Central Massachusetts Collaborative, proposed administrative reorganization related to equity, and changes to elementary prep periods. In each case, he stated that the district plans to improve transparency, stakeholder engagement, and communication moving forward.

The self-assessment also outlines plans to strengthen the district’s advisory structure by restructuring groups that have seen low participation, while continuing to support established parent organizations such as CPPAC, SEPAC, and ELPAC and maintaining active middle and high school student advisory groups. The superintendent also plans to launch new teacher and community advisory groups, integrate school safety discussions into existing advisory structures, and continue efforts to improve district decision-making through broader stakeholder feedback.

Some other bits and bobs from the self-assessment:

• Artificial intelligence remains on pause. Allen reiterated that he has suspended instructional classroom use of AI with students while privacy concerns continue to be evaluated. Both the Future Ready Technology Committee (which includes parent representatives like me) and an internal AI Steering Committee are working on recommendations, with the administration saying any future AI use will be guided by student privacy, educational value, and state law.

• Screen time guidance. The school committee approved screentime guidelines that recommend that devices remain classroom-based through grade 3, and students may start bringing Chromebooks home in grade 4. The administration said it plans to revisit those recommendations during the coming school year as new medical guidance and research become available.

• A longer elementary school day is still on the table. Allen wrote that “there simply isn’t enough time in the school day” to accomplish everything the district is asking schools to do. He noted that extending the elementary school day remains part of the current collective bargaining process, making this something to watch for the fall.

• Seven elementary libraries will open next year. The superintendent said that with seven elementary school libraries operating during the 2026–27 school year, it will be the most Worcester has had since the 1989–90 school year. Future expansion will depend on available space and funding for books, materials, and furniture, but it’s encouraging to see libraries included as part of the district’s long-term vision. (Donate here!)

• Planning continues for the Advanced Scholars Academy. The district is continuing to redesign the selection processes for its admission-based programs while a working group develops plans for the proposed Advanced Scholars Academy at Worcester East Middle School and North High School. The stated goal is to make advanced academic opportunities easier for eligible students and families to understand and access.

• A new central office leadership position has been created. The district established a Chief of Equity, Access and Opportunity position by reallocating existing administrative funding. The role will oversee equity initiatives, family engagement, and several priorities within the Vision to Action strategic plan.

• The Elementary Wellness Support Center is back. Modeled after the district’s former Safety Center, the reopened center is designed to provide students with social-emotional and behavioral supports before situations escalate. The goal is to improve school climate while reducing disciplinary removals from the classroom.

• The district continues to standardize teaching and learning. More than 70 new curriculum maps for elective courses will roll out next year, while existing K–12 curriculum maps continue to be refined based on teacher feedback. The district is also implementing five required instructional practices intended to better support multilingual learners across all classrooms.

• Higher education partnerships continue to expand. Worcester Public Schools is building new partnerships with Assumption University, Clark University, Worcester State University, and Quinsigamond Community College to expand scholarships, early college opportunities, internships, educator discounts, and its Grow Your Own teacher pipeline. Allen also noted that Holy Cross and UMass Chan have expressed interest in supporting North Quadrant schools.

• Allen offered an interesting glimpse into how governance works. In his self-assessment, he wrote that he meets individually with every School Committee member each month, saying those conversations help ensure there are “no surprises” at public meetings. One-on-one meetings between superintendents and committee members are common practice, but it does provide some insight into how much discussion and relationship-building happens before issues ever reach the public agenda.

The committee will formally evaluate the Superintendent at the August meeting, which is a requirement of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).

Common Assessments and Benchmarking.
The school committee approved a three-year contract with Renaissance Learning, which the district uses for Star assessments and district common assessments. During the discussion, Vanessa Alvarez (District B) asked some clarifying questions about how these assessments are used. Dr. Andrew Lampi, of the Research and Accountability Office, explained that Star is administered three times a year for district benchmarking, with additional testing for students receiving interventions. He also cited research showing that assessments can improve learning when teachers review the results with students, help them understand what they got right and wrong, and use that information to guide instruction. He’s right, and it raises an important question: is that happening?

For years, families have asked for access to the results of the online assessments their children take throughout the year, including Star Reading, Star Math, and district common assessments. The issue has been raised repeatedly at CPPAC, where families have been told the district is working on it, but as of today the only way to get your student’s assessments is to request reports from your child’s school or, for Star, to sign up in advance to have them emailed after each assessment, (but this doesn’t give you access to past scores). Even then, the reports can be difficult to interpret. Check out the reports below. On one the reading domain is marked “secure,” but the overall score is only “meeting expectations.” On the other the student is “exceeding expectations” overall in math while multiple domains are still marked “developing.”

As a parent, you’re left wondering: What does this actually tell me? What skills should we practice at home? What misconceptions does my child have? Those are the kinds of questions a traditional classroom assessment often answered naturally because students brought their work home, teachers provided written feedback, and families could see exactly where learning broke down. With these digital assessments, that feedback isn’t readily available. Instead, I have to know my child took the assessment, request the report, and then follow up with the teacher to understand what it means. Most families aren’t going to navigate that process, and teachers simply don’t have the time to hold individual data conferences after every benchmark or common assessment. If the value of an assessment is the feedback it provides, then that feedback should be easy for students and families to access, not something they have to work to obtain.

Teachers have always assessed students by creating quizzes, reading student writing, listening to classroom discussions, and adjusting instruction based on what they observed. Those assessments were immediate, personal, and directly connected to classroom learning. Today’s standardized digital assessments are designed to produce comparable data across classrooms, schools, and the district. Data that can be valuable for identifying trends, evaluating curriculum, monitoring interventions, and measuring district progress. But if students, particularly those receiving interventions, spend hours each year taking these assessments only to receive little meaningful feedback, it’s fair to ask who benefits most from the data being collected. I don’t think the question is whether Star or the common assessments are “good” or “bad.” The question is whether they provide better feedback than the assessments teachers already create and use every day, and whether the additional instructional time devoted to district benchmarking produces enough educational value to justify it.

Assessment should serve students first. Districts need data, and schools need ways to measure progress. But if students and families can’t understand the results, if the feedback isn’t meaningful enough to improve learning, or if the primary value lies in district dashboards rather than classroom conversations, then it’s worth asking whether we’ve shifted from assessment for learning to assessment about learning.

Air Conditioning and Facilities.
This wasn’t on the School Committee agenda, but after the early dismissal for heat at the end of the school year, I heard from a lot of frustrated parents asking the same question: why don’t all Worcester schools have air conditioning?

The short answer is that many of our school buildings are old, and only 12 schools have air conditioning throughout the entire building. As temperatures continue to climb in June and September, heat-related early dismissals have become increasingly common. Trust me when I say these buildings can get hot.

What often gets left out of the conversation is why. For decades, Worcester and other high-needs districts were underfunded by the state and federal government. Faced with difficult budget decisions, districts prioritized keeping teachers in classrooms and protecting student programs, while major building maintenance and upgrades were deferred year after year. Our school buildings didn’t get this way overnight, and they won’t be fixed overnight either.

Upcoming Dates.

All school committee meetings have virtual options with Spanish translation, see the school committee site for more information.

• School Committee Meeting, August 13, 4pm

• Operations and Governance, August 18, 3pm

Also.
West Tatnuck students will now have sidewalks adjacent to the school! A happy update to the February story where Public Works committee members then-councilor Mero-Carlson and then-councilor Russell voted against the sidewalks. There’s three new members (Fresolo, Economou, and Mitra) and all three voted in favor. (ICYMI: Snowbanks, no sidewalks make it tough to walk to this Worcester elementary school: If you have children in WPS, I caution you before you watch the video from the meeting. Seeing why they originally voted down installing sidewalks-that the city is willing to pay for-adjacent to an elementary school will infuriate you!)

Thanks for reading. See you in August.

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I’ll be going live on the Worcester Sucks Instagram to capture the community org press conference in front of, or in, city hall (looks like rain). Worcester Sucks Instagram. That’s scheduled to start at 5:30.

Update: watch the whole thing here

The meeting will be on the city’s YouTube page starting at about 6 p.m. I’ll be inside, but won’t be streaming.

Meeting starts at 6, at which point I’ll do my best to get time stamped notes up on here.

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4:10 p.m. — Second HRC member resigns. Drew Schnoebelen follows Jacqueline Yang out the door in the wake of Batista’s CRB decision.

Unfortunately, I have not observed a healthy, functioning, and effective commission, especially over the last 12 months. I personally feel that over the course of my tenure, city leadership has consistently and purposefully manufactured roadblocks and barriers that constrict the Commission in a way that simply cannot be overcome without major systemic change.

Full resignation letter is on my Bluesky.

9:22 p.m. — Back from council. After two hours of public comment, overwhelmingly in support of a civilian review board, to a packed chamber applauding almost every speaker, Councilor Khrystian King held the item under privilege, pushing it to the next meeting. One of the last speakers, former District 5 Councilor Etel Haxhiaj, said there’d be more people at the next meeting. By my count, about 100 people showed up for this one. Several dozen spoke in favor of a civilian review board. Only one speaker, a man who said he worked in some capacity at Worcester District Court some time in the past, spoke against.

Summer schedule in effect, it won’t be until August 18. For the next month, the question of how the council will vote remains an open one.

More notes up as I transcribe tonight!

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And please show up to city hall 5:30 p.m. tomorrow (Tuesday) if you can! The city council meeting will be actually interesting for the first time in a while: the big promise made in the wake of the DOJ report has at long last been made an empty one. On Friday, City Manager Eric Batista announced that he’s not going to move forward with the civilian review board recommendation after all. It comes as no surprise and heads to a city council that would, at best, vote down a real civilian review board proposal by a 7-4 margin.

But that doesn’t mean it’s not infuriating. Just the opposite. This is a major moment in this city’s dramatic slide to the right since the DOJ report was released in December, 2024. A 38-page report explaining the decision stands as an intellectually insulting document, one that will surely be celebrated by the majority of the city council on Tuesday night. Because it’s intellectually insulting, mind you, not despite it being that way.

I’ve been an out-and-out doomer about our city government since the last election. But this is a meeting to show up for, to speak at, if only for the sake of letting these people know we see them. Understand what they’re doing. That they can’t just lie to us like this. That the recommendations in this report are not a suitable replacement. They’re nothing.

Toward that end, there’s a press conference happening at city hall tomorrow at 5:30 p.m., organized by a dozen or so community groups.

The council meeting starts at 6:00 p.m. (Here’s the agenda.) It’d be nice to see you there! Ideally at both.

You can read the statement in full here.

Here’s my favorite part.

The City Manager’s decision ignores the mountains of advice and evidence as well as the lived reality of his constituents. His suggestion—that body-worn cameras and a diversity officer can solve the deeply rooted problems identified by the DOJ and the report he himself commissioned—is void of all reason. By ignoring the evidence and refusing to recommend a civilian review board, the city manager has effectively said that he is willing to shield a small minority of bad cops from accountability.

That right there is exactly what he’s effectively said! The only question left is whether he won’t hold the cops accountable or he can’t. It’s about the last question you’re bound to hear answered, at least honestly. It’s in the best interest of the manager, the chief of police and the police unions, in different yet complementary ways, to have the real contours of the power dynamic remain hidden from view. But an interesting thought experiment: is the alternate timeline Batista, who does in this moment what he said he’d do—presents a CRB proposal to the council, in accordance with the recommendations of both the Worcester Regional Research Bureau and the Human Rights Commission—is that Batista on his way to getting run off the third floor? Is he already gone?

Back when the DOJ report was released, in 2024 (approximately a decade ago) I started presenting the question of whether the police control the city. Reading this report over the weekend, reflecting back on the last two years, I think I can safely answer that question: yes. The Civilian Review Board proposal really died last November, when the police achieved (or, perhaps, restored?) a comfortably secure regulatory capture of the city council. The manager’s recommendation merely formalizes the position of absolute political fealty that comes with an eight-vote majority of councilors who are unambiguously, and, for the most part, proudly, beholden to the police unions.

In the report, Batista (and, Kevin Lovaincy, the city’s chief diversity officer and Batista’s appointed cabinet member, who technically gets the byline on the main document) spend a lot of time articulating things they’ve done in lieu of a civilian review board, and much less time articulating why they can’t or shouldn’t do a civilian review board as well. Both arguments are light on specifics, and throughout, the circular language of bureaucracy stands in the place where some concrete facts should be. For instance, “administrative costs” were cited as a reason a civilian review board can’t happen, but the report doesn’t include even a ballpark estimate, either by position numbers or annual budget. That it doesn’t include such information suggests they did not get far enough in the process to put together a few hypotheticals. If you’re arguing it’s too expensive, why not chuck a round number into the discourse?

Of all the insults in Batista’s withering explanation, the worst is its reliance on the Human Rights Commission as a suitable alternative to a civilian review board.

From the report:

Within Worcester’ s existing accountability framework, the HRC serves as an important avenue for community participation and engagement. One of HRC’ s foundational responsibilities includes oversight and review of issues involving WPD. Over time, this relationship has continued to develop through increased communication, collaboration, and structured opportunities for dialogue.

This is the same Human Rights Commission that Batista battled with and ultimately neutered for their insistence on doing police accountability work against his recommendation that they drop the subject. This is the same Human Rights Commission he appointed the Police Chaplain to after letting go two of its most talented and hard working members, in a transparent sop to the Thin Blue Line set.

Let’s play the hits: In November, 2023, Batista refused to provide the HRC with records they requested about incidents of officer misconduct. A month later, Batista pulled the catty move of skipping a planned meeting with the HRC after they voted to continue their police oversight work against his request that they stop.

In December, 2024, around the time the DOJ report was released, Batista refused to post HRC minutes with attached supporting documents for two meetings, which happened to take up the matter of police oversight. But in his report Friday, he wrote…

Additionally, HRC meetings are conducted in accordance with Massachusetts Open Meeting Law requirements, providing public access to meeting discussions and opportunities for public comment. This ensures that residents have the ability to observe these conversations, remain informed about accountability discussions, and provide feedback on issues affecting the community.

May 2025, Batista refused to reappoint then-chairperson Ellen Shemitz and Elizabeth O’Callahan, two of the commission’s members most doggedly pursuing its police oversight responsibility. As a replacement, he appointed Father Jonathan Slavinskas, the literal chaplain of the Worcester Police Department and a close friend, others have said, to Anthony Petrone, the police union official and shadow city councilor and also landlord of several 4-8 unit rental properties that may or may not have sprinkler systems.

This past March, Chairperson Guillermo Creamer Jr. announced he was stepping down. A few months earlier, Creamer brought the HRC to vote on recommending the city manager craft a proposal for a civilian review board. The vote passed 5-1. Creamer didn’t publicly say why he chose to step away.

In Batista’s report, he writes that the HRC “represents an existing mechanism for community participation and accountability by creating a structured opportunity for appointed community representatives to review information, ask questions, and engage directly with police leadership.”

Of course that’s what the HRC is in theory. But in practice? The only member who’d likely agree with him is Slavinskas.

For instance, a late breaking story from the Brad Petrishen over at the Telegram: One of the longest serving members of the Human Rights Commission, Jacqueline Yang, resigned today due to the manager’s decision.

“This is the straw that broke the camel’s back,” longtime Human Rights Commissioner Jacqueline Yang told the Telegram & Gazette, adding she’s been extremely frustrated since Batista last May declined to reappoint two members who’d pushed for police accountability.

Yang confirmed she resigned July 20, and used an expletive to describe any suggestion that the Human Rights Commission plays a serious role in police oversight.

Any guesses which expletive? Here’s mine.

Brad: Do you believe the HRC plays a serious role in police oversight?

Jacqueline: Fuck no.

I think we have the HRC pretty well covered. On to the WRRB.

Back in October, the Research Bureau put out the report, that Batista himself had requested, on civilian review boards. The organization’s findings were more definitive than usual. Headline? All caps. “OVERDUE FOR CIVILIAN OVERSIGHT” they wrote (I’m summarizing) not only is it imperative Worcester adopts a civilian review board, it’s weird that it hasn’t yet. It stands—and will stand, now, for god knows how long—as the only city in the area of any substantial size that lacks one.

The second graf is unambiguous:

Today, Worcester stands as the 114th largest city in the United States and the second largest in New England, yet it remains one of the few major cities in the nation without a civilian review board or comparable oversight structure. More than half of the 200 largest U.S. cities have adopted such mechanisms, and within the region, Boston, Providence, Cambridge, Hartford, and New Haven all operate oversight entities. Worcester’s absence is striking in this context—and even more so in light of the December 2024 U.S. Department of Justice findings report, which identified systemic weaknesses in the city’s internal accountability systems.

It goes on to list 14 bare minimum requirements for such a board to be effective, including full powers to access data and subpoena for records, a sufficient and sustained budget, and a mandate for the police department to take some sort of action on its disciplinary recommendations.

So it’s jarring to read Batista write that the WRRB’s report was the “foundation” on which he built his report, about doing the exact opposite of what the WRRB recommended.

Batista’s report details at length an investigation process apparently in place in the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, wherein staff investigate complaints of discrimination alongside the police’s internal Bureau of Professional Services. But it’s carefully worded. While it details a dozen or so investigations the DEI office undertook from 2022-2025, it doesn’t make it clear whether these investigations yielded results that were any different from what BOPS would have administered. The investigations themselves can only ever end in recommendations to the police department, and there’s no formal mechanism compelling the police to listen. None of it occurs in public, nor is it reported out to a public entity. Right there, in that short summary, are at least five of the deficiencies the WRRB argued the city must solve.

In the introduction, Batista writes that the WRRB “provided valuable insights into strengthening transparency, accountability, and collaboration within the municipality’s oversight framework. In fact, the WRRB’ s findings serve as the foundation for the Executive Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’ s ( EODEI) own report.”

Tomorrow, we’ll get to see how the council reacts to this report. Expect a lot of lauding, a lot of talk about how the new chief has done such a good job, a lot of “that’s in the past now.” All of it will amount to a show of fealty.

See you at 5:30 p.m. sharp tomorrow!

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That’s all for me today. More later in the week. Hopefully I’ll be sharing the essay on my recent jury duty experience in ‘ol Worcester District Court I was going to publish over the weekend, before Batista dropped the big news. It’s very related.

As always please consider supporting this outlet. It’s not an easy way to make a living, which feels at times like it’s by design. But politely asking for a little money every time I post has worked out well so for, so I’ll keep at it.

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Oh one thing I forgot to mention: Also on the agenda tomorrow, Candy Mero-Carlson getting appointed to the Worcester Redevelopment Authority. Lol.

Good reporting in BINJ by man about town Chris Faraone about the way Boston hoovered up all the world cup money. Worcester’s mentioned a few times.

The initial February solicitation stated an intent to fund “up to five watch parties at no more than $400,000 each” in geographically diverse areas. In practice, the program funded at least nine separate watch party projects in round one alone (Easthampton, Everett, Greenfield, Worcester, Lowell, Burlington, Lexington, Weymouth, and the Haitian Community series). Instead of a few large grants, most were small allocations ranging from $10,000 to $120,000.

Keep on keepin’ on, folks. Oh, I’m going to see Twisted Teens at the Stone Church in Brattleboro on Wednesday. Beyond stoked. This track right here has a line that drops my jaw.

and every now and then i think about what tommy said
that we’re chained to the world, and we all gotta pull

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Dear Shaun,

Is it even worth it to boycott certain companies? Is my lack of purchases at Amazon, Target, BP, etc. really making a difference? It has been proven that giant companies will get bailed out by the government if they crash. So is Jeff Bezos really feeling the impact of me not using his store to get my laundry detergent? Should I go the extra step to continue to buy local? It feels like I am not even making a dent in the grand scheme of late-stage capitalism.

-Frustrated Finances

Dear Frustrated Finances,

Recently, at 39 years old, my body has blessed me with a new ailment that I will now seemingly struggle with the rest of my life. I run a mile five days a week, I play basketball for two hours every Sunday and walk my dogs for a mile twice a day. I try and eat healthy and fresh as often and possible and, sure, I drink alcohol, but I am by no means a binge drinker. However! I have now twice suffered the King’s Ailment that is known as gout.

Gout occurs typically in the great toe joint. It is unfiltered uric acid that builds up in those joints and then outputs tiny crystallized shards of that built up uric acid. I know gout has a harmless name and it is tied to those who overindulge in drinking, red meat and seafood but I must tell you that it is a pain I have never experienced in my life. I have woken up in the middle of my wisdom teeth extraction. I have woken up in the middle of two different root canals. I have been broken up with the same week I was shopping for a wedding ring. I have experienced pain. This hits different. Mothers who has given birth excluded, this pain is the most excruciating.

It hurts to the touch, it hurts not to the touch, it kept me awake all night once because the attack was so severe. In the past two weeks I have been able to stably walk on both feet for a total of two days. My wife is currently 39 weeks pregnant and she had to take care of me instead. While the pain of my toes were unbearable it paled in comparison to the pain of watching your waddling wife go up and down stairs to get your water, food and ice packs. Her feet are so swollen and she had to use those plump pedis to serve me! Stab me in the heart.

My doctor said that my kidney looked good and that my uric acid levels were not alarming and atypical to gout sufferers. Which means my body has just decided that it no longer wants to process that acid. My body gave up on me. My body said “hey you’re doing a pretty good job staying in shape, maybe too good. So we wanted to stop functioning in one key area to really give you a challenge, pussy.” Woah so toxic body! Why would my body use such language? I’m sorry about my body everyone. Not cool.

As far as boycotting goes, keep boycotting. But buy shares in these companies so you too can profit off their evil. If you can’t beat them, join them. Bad advice folks!

NEWS

My baby’s birth is imminent. I am a psycho and still will be writing. See you next week!

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Catching up on the dog days of summer, breaking down yet another round of know-nothing reactionary townie opposition to a mundane road project aimed at our uniquely horrible track record when it comes to drivers hitting pedestrians with cars. In particular we focus on Moe Bergman’s insane Facebook comment, in which he tells on himself in both the ‘basic literacy’ and ‘raw contempt for his constituency’ departments.

It’s the same conversation I pulled out toward the bottom of my written post from yesterday.

From there we zoom out, talk about press freedom, bad faith lawsuits and the situation Channel 5 and Andrew Callaghan are dealing with—one that has no local analogs whatsoever of course.

Channel Five is being sued to the edge of existence.

As always please consider helping this outlet stay afloat. We’re down on subscribers recently and could really use a few of the free tier folks stepping up.

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Outro music: REM - Star 69

Intro music by Bill Shaner 7.13.26

Like what you hear? Spread the word around.

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Stay cool everyone.

Back from a much needed vacation and I’ve been “in the shit” all week—cramming two weeks worth of shit into one shit sandwich—which I’m now serving to you hot and fresh.

Today’s post will focus on the manager’s annual non-review last week, not so much his score or anything, as that would imply it meant something, but rather the reality that the city council has gone through a tremendous brain drain from last November to now, in a way the evaluation made especially apparent.

Also, I like where it arrives in the body of the post but I should quickly add up here at the top a stunning fact I discovered in raw federal data that hasn’t been reported locally yet, far as I’ve seen: Worcester’s homeless population spiked dramatically in the most recent point-in-time count data. Almost 50 percent year-over-year, from just under 2,000 homeless people countywide to just under 3,000. Children make up both the largest percentage by age category and the most dramatic increase. Almost 400 more homeless children were reported in the 2026 data (which works off a January 2025 point-in-time count) than in 2025 (same one year lag.) The adult unsheltered population—whom most people, especially cranks, refer to exclusively when talking about the issue—was, as ever, only a tiny sliver of the total number, and it increased only slightly.

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First, a few lighter news items. And of course the customary asking nicely for a little bit of money so I can keep putting in the hours upon hours it takes to write these posts.

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Shouts out to the reader in a purple tie-die shirt who said hey to me as he was crossing the street in front of Katie and I on Park Ave by WPI. I think you said something about the newsletter but I could just barely hear you over “Boys of Summer.” You look like a man who understands that when Boys of Summer comes on it stays on. Also when I finally get my act back together on the merch front I’m thinking a run of custom tie-die long sleeves.

Also we were on our way back from both of our first times going to Cool Licks. That place is bananas! Absolute crime against god (complement) the amount of soft serve flavors they offer. Most places got three tops, Cool Licks rocking a baker’s dozen all day.

Summer schedule is well upon us and things are slow at city hall.

Coming up this week, a Central Mass Planning meeting on the 15th, which includes the potentially interesting agenda item:

Planning Board on the 16th. Nothing jumping out at me.

School Committee on the 17th. Aislinn’s got you covered on that over in the WPS In Brief department: “Agenda Preview: July 16 School Committee Meeting”

I have jury duty on Wednesday. Super hoping I get picked to be honest. The sort of insights to be pulled from that experience… plus a better look at the supposed random number selection machine at the clerk’s desk for dismissing the alternate juror… for those careful readers who remember my coverage of the Haxhiaj and Spring trials. Does it exist? Who knows.

Last but not least, the trailer for BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE is out, you can watch below, and I am so stoked to see this thing. It premieres August 6 at the Hanover Theater. See you there?

For background on this project check the interview we did with producer John Keough a few months back. “Episode 59: Burnin’ Down The House”

Ok let’s start with a few quick hits.

“My god, it’s repulsive“

Well the past week’s #1 story was definitely also the dumbest. Former Framingham cop and one-time, perhaps current, purveyor of certain controlled substances Kyle Pursell’s project to disgrace the former Dive Bar reached a new zenith previously thought impossible. He commissioned a local artist (who’s definitely exactly the artist that this guy would commission ) to replace the iconic Dragon / Snake / Snake-Dragon mural on the side of the building with uh… this…….

Now, we here at Worcester Sucks would never disgrace the image of Smiley Ball in such a way. Sure we might write a Marxist economic history of the symbol for Playboy Magazine and sure there might be some slight, totally incidental in a legal sense, similarities between it and our OG logo. But we didn’t do that.

I first noticed it on the Worcester sub-Reddit, in a post delightfully slugged “My god, it’s repulsive.”

On Friday I saw it IRL and man pictures do not do the repulsiveness justice. It’s just… come on man it’s not even funny. It just sucks. It’s sad. The only cool part about it is there’s apparently video of the artist falling off a ladder while painting it lol. Happy hunting, I’m too busy.

Shouts out to Travis Duda for executing so well on the little idea I sent over: “old mural mauling new mural.”

Now in case you thought I was committing out-and-out slander with the first graf of this section, let’s take a quick look at the legacy Pursell left in Framingham. Luckily friend of the newsletter Andrew Quemere was all over this story.

Pursell was one of two officers in that department busted for cocaine-related activities that remain vaguely stated but, given what we generally know about police officers, would have had to have been a step or two above a quick trip to the bathroom if you catch my drift. The other officer was fired but Pursell pulled the classic move of resigning before the investigation concluded. Quemere got his hands on the resignation letter, which is an interesting read. “I have decided to move in a different direction in my career and pursue new opportunities.” That was in January of this year, meaning the new opportunity was very much a reference to his current desecration of Dive Bar.

Quemere, in his newsletter, “The Mass Dump,” wrote:

According to the Brady records, the police department found on February 6 that both Black and Pursell violated policies against criminal conduct, controlled substances, association with known criminals, and conduct unbecoming an officer or employee.

The department found that Pursell violated two additional policies when “his taser was not properly secured in his department-issued vehicle” and “he used his department-issued vehicle for personal transportation and transported civilian passengers,” the records say.

The department also determined earlier, on September 17, that Pursell violated two policies when he “failed to cooperate with an investigation into his alleged drug-related activities” and “failed to report to the police station at a specific date and time as ordered by a superior,” the records say.

That Dive Bar is turning into Cop Dive Bar is already, on its own, a poetically insulting development. Now we wait and see whether the city or the team will take any action to get the thing taken down. Seems to me under normal circumstances they would, but the fact we’re dealing with a member of the “law enforcement community,” however temporarily embarrassed he may be, changes that equation. In order to get the mural down, they’ll have to tell a cop what to do.

City settles with brutalized demonstrators

Though light on the details a settlement has been tentatively reached between the city and 12 of the people the police department brutalized at a BLM rally in June 2020.

The lawsuit was filed in June, 2023 and last week a federal judge dismissed it, initiating a 60-day period for the two parties to arrive at a number, it seems like.

After force marching, beating, intimidating, and firing the kitchen sink of ‘less lethal’ munitions at a small group of mostly young people on Main Street the night of June 1, 2020—pulling out all their fancy military grade toys to administer a punishment for the crime being too mad about police murdering people to leave the large rally earlier when everyone else did, the police arrested 19 of them.

The arrest reports were literally copy-pasted in some cases. They arrested people who weren’t even demonstrating. It was a mess. Charges were quietly dropped by DA Joe Early the following March, citing “insufficient evidence to continue prosecuting.” But in the weeks following the incident, the power elite of the city cast the situation as a riot that by the grace of god the police were there to stop… exactly the same thing they did after Eureka Street, by the way.

As I’ve written and spoken about a million times by now, this was the inciting incident of the whole newsletter you’re reading. I was there. It was awful and eye opening… a moment I’ll never forget. I went into it dimly aware that the cops were not what they seemed and came out knowing exactly what they were, and how the whole apparatus of city government conspired to kick the brush back over the trap door the cops had momentarily opened.

Not gunna do ‘the whole thing’ here. If you want to read more about that night and the fine points of this lawsuit, I did a whole big thing a few years ago: “Overwhelming force and garish brutality.”

As detailed in the 100-page complaint, the cops that night were expecting a fight, they created the circumstances for a fight, they instigated a fight, they fought with overwhelming force and garish brutality. A few dozen young people looking for an outlet to express their anger at a violent and oppressive institution, met with the full and terrifying force of it. After, all of the city’s political class rallied behind a narrative which lionized the cops and made a feral boogeyman of the kids. Thank god for the WPD they said. If the cops weren’t there, something bad could have happened.

Now, we wait to see how much the settlement is going to pay out. From Brad Petrishen’s piece:

City spokesman Thomas Matthews said the two sides were still working to finalize paperwork on the settlement, which won’t be official until signed.

The judge’s order notes that either side can petition to reopen the case if a resolution is not “consummated” within 60 days.

Hopefully the resolution is consummated to the great personal enrichment of those 12 people the cops abused senselessly, whipped as they were into a reactionary panic that they showed us on May 8, 2025 to be more of a default state than any aberration the more generous among us may have been willing to give June 1, 2020.

Pyscho-Geographic Brain Drain

Dork that I am, I was watching a Youtube review of a book I want to check out on the situationists, “Leaving the Twentieth Century” by McKenzie Wark, and the Youtuber, Shannon Kim, spent some time on the situationist principle of psycho-geography.

And I was reminded of an essay I’d read earlier this year in Harpers by Hari Kunzru exploring the psycho-geography of London.

In the first issue of the publication Internationale Situationniste, “psychogeography” is defined as “the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals.” This might sound bloodless, but for the Situationists it was part of a utopian revolutionary program. The small band of café radicals sought to overthrow not just a government but the entire global system, which relied on what they called the “organization of appearances,” or simply “the Spectacle.”

This was earlier in the week, and I had just freshly pulled the following clip of Tony Economou’s “evaluation” of the city manager.

“I think our park system in this city is tremendous. Where other city can you go, move into a neighborhood and walk to a park. You can’t, only in Worcester, and I’m thankful for that.”

His earnest-appearing amazement at the fact Worcester has parks and his belief that this is somehow exceptional suggests there’s a psycho-geographical effect at play in this city, a sort of ambient diminishment of possibility.

You don’t need me telling you this, but find a city that doesn’t have neighborhood parks.

Toronto, for instance, last time I was there, Katie and I sat in a delightful and well-used little neighborhood park, eating cheeseburgers from Matty Matheson’s little burger shop that was right across the street and watching a schlocky little neighborhood jam session, about as many people playing as people watching. The weird little drum thing you sit on and slap right under your crotch. There were people all around us sitting in the three inch grass, in small groups and by themselves, and considering Tony’s comments I’d be shocked if any one of them drove there.

Closer to home, Southbridge, Leominster, Fitchburg… they all have parks in neighborhoods. I mean, come on. You would be hard pressed to find a city on the east coast of the United States without neighborhood parks.

It should be prohibitive that someone nominally in charge of our city can show, without shame or compunction, that he’s never been to a real neighborhood in another city, has no conception of what they look like, but is nevertheless convinced that Worcester as good as it can get. A true dimness of the overall imagination, let alone the specifically political variety—one that is the rule among old guard councilors, who now hold an 8 or 9 vote majority, not the exception. Off screen, as Economou’s saying one of the most embarrassing things I’ve heard a councilor say, I’m sure more than a few were nodding along.

Of course, it’s the electoral realities of Worcester that produces this outcome. Ours is a system that manifestly rewards reactionary townies who want for nothing but their place on the nice side of the tracks, and maybe, if they’re lucky, a little cut of the action. The fact Economou is in that seat is the sterling example. He eeked out a win against someone obviously more passionate, competent, creative and forward thinking—more representative of the demographic Worcester’s economic development strategy depends on, and who any smart Democratic City Committee person would be looking at as Grade A bench material.

We don’t have smart Democratic City Committee people. We have cronies enmeshed in a network of favors, antagonisms and mutual animosities. Keith Linhares was boxed out of the club immediately, probably because he spoke on the Gaza resolution and the DOJ report. And so we have Economou, who chalked the whole thing up to “words on paper” at the one candidate forum ahead of the election, and for that he was applauded and then, ultimately, elected, by about 7 percent of the fine people of shrubby District 1.

Gotta love it though. The above-board corruption capital of the state, made that way by the psycho-geographic wall between it and the outside world. Lurie’s Dome, by another name.

Now on to another guy who’s spiritually “been there forever” but is a first time councilor, Dr. Moneybags himself. Satya Mitra. Not going to spend much time psychoanalyzing this quote. It’s perfect just the way it is. (I was going to include clips but Substack will not cooperate with me.)

“Those days, if I had to listen to Frank Sinatra, I would use the turntable to put the plate and run the music. Now, if I ask to listen to Frank Sinatra, my son says, use the cell phone. So that has been the major difference.”

Moment #3 comes courtesy Kate Toomey, who offered a new riff on her recurring conspiratorial theme of other towns dropping off their needle drug users in Worcester.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the recent stabbing incident on the common and it should have been addressed I think in a more decisive and timely manner. The increase in our Worcester’s unhoused population has been linked to correlate with the decrease in Boston’s unhoused population. And I’ve heard this anecdotally from people who are out in the street dealing with these folks. These are not people that have been in our community for years. These are a lot younger group of people. They’re more aggressive and more challenging to work with. And so we have more of them. We’re doing an awful lot of things to help our unhoused. There’s no question. But we’ve got a different type of population and it’s impacting our community. We need an all hands on deck with this issue.

Sniffing bullshit, I went to the source: HUD’s Point In Time counts. The latest numbers, from a count taken last January, shows Boston’s overall homeless population did decrease by about 350, from 5,898 in 2024 to 5,540 in 2025. Worcester’s increased by just shy of 1,000. Which is crazy. 1,927 in 2024 to 2,864 in 2025. A 48 percent year-over increase.

I think I am the first person locally reporting that fact by the way, not that it’s some crazy scoop, the numbers are out there. No one else has bothered to look. You can check my work with this data set I pulled out of the raw data from HUD (PIT, housing inventory).

The data shows the most dramatic increase from 2024 to 2025 is in the “homeless children” category. Worcester added 387 more homeless children over its 718 in 2024. Children are, by nature of the state’s right to shelter law, rarely seen on the street. The “adult unsheltered” population is what Toomey’s talking about. Across all the adult age categories there’s no increase as significant as the jump taken in homeless children.

Let that fact settle in: Worcester’s meteoric rise in homelessness is animated mostly by a wave of homeless children.

Is that the data Toomey said she saw? That implies a Boston shipped out a “different type of population.” It’s worth revisiting this line from Toomey.

“These are a lot younger group of people. They’re more aggressive and more challenging to work with.”

Age 18-24 only increased by 5, 132 to 137. So who does she mean? That is, taking at her word she means anyone, and is not just regurgitating the rhetoric of whatever cop spoke to her last.

The type of unhoused person Toomey’s obviously talking about is what they call the “unsheltered chronically homeless.” When you’re talking about homelessness as a blight, these are the people you are talking about. Those, like Toomey and Bergman, who only ever talk about homelessness in these terms, give themselves away. The issue, for them, is a property issue. Not a human issue.

Unlike the uptick in homeless children–almost none of them “on the street”–Worcester’s chronic unsheltered population increased by a mere 26, from 72 to 98. Meanwhile its sheltered chronic homeless population decreased from 235 to 132, a 103 person drop that likely accounts for at least some of the 26 now marked as “unsheltered.”

Meanwhile, Boston’s reduction in homelessness is likely due to the fact they’ve built a lot of supportive housing.

Since Mayor Wu took office, Boston has created 668 permanent supportive housing units to help residents transitioning out of homelessness access stable housing paired with supportive services. These investments, alongside expanded shelter-to-housing initiatives and coordinated outreach efforts, have contributed to continued declines in homelessness even as many communities nationwide continue to face housing affordability.

Goes to show the way you end homelessness is giving people homes. In Worcester, our 160 or so shelter beds have not been accompanied by a significant increase in supportive housing, as projects like Oriole Drive are waylaid by neighbors, often with the willful support of city councilors (cough Candy Mero-Carlson cough), as these same officials trip over themselves to celebrate a day resource center and four (4) tiny home supportive housing units for homeless seniors.

The closing of CHL has and will continute to exacerbate the problem and there is no one in city hall going out of their way to sound the alarm, while there are plenty who, like Toomey, are sifting around in the dark for any way they can stomach to scapegoat the unhoused individuals themselves. When Toomey used the term “a different population” that’s what she was doing.

Thank you to Khrystian King, the only one on the council to speak to the issue plainly during the review, holding the city manager to do better.

I have significant concerns, Mr. Chairman, this past term regarding the lack of shelter, reduction in shelter beds for our homeless. We had a situation and we didn’t plan. Now the city manager reacted to that, advocated, and was able to move
and establish a level in cooperation with the private sector, but there was no plan.

One thing Gary Rosen and Moe Bergman both signaled during the evaluation was that a road redesign for Chandler and May is going to becoem “an issue.” Already, you may notice driving around that area, the cranks are gearing up for yet another reactionary piss baby tantrum.

Nothing worse than a dumb person who thinks they’re smarter than everyone else. It’s a strain of narcissism I find acutely annoying, not the least because I recognize something about myself in it... To confront in the wild of the adult world this rare breed, a dumbass so self-assured of his cunning, surrounded by contemptible intellectual weaklings who can’t even see it... It elicits flashbacks to the uglier moments of my middle and high school experience, before the malaise of real life disabused me of the notion I was in possession of some intelligence otherwise unknown, some higher purpose, some innate superiority. Before the difficult and depressing and ultimately edifying process of unlearning that boyish fantasy and re-engaging with the world out of real curiosity. For me it happened in my early 20s. For some I’m sure it happens much earlier. But, far as I’ve observed, most boys so afflicted by self-assured dumbassery shed the trait by the time they’re fully grown men. Not Moe Bergman.

Bergman displayed the character flaw in a recent Facebook exchange between a resident, who clearly cares enough to learn about the subject matter at hand, and Moe Bergman, who either can’t or won’t, and shows he has no plans of changing that. He did so with an overt and unabashed flare that’s rare to see in an adult man.

Let’s walk through it, as it’s useful for getting your head around why the “double rotary at Chandler and May” drama is on its way to being front page material for the foreseeable future, despite it being an obvious non-issue to those among us who are at least partially well adjusted.

I want to highlight the line in the last graf—”a conscious choice to maintain a dangerous status quo”—as this is incidentally or intentionally the best way of describing Bergman’s approach to politics I’ve ever read. His two main things are “cars go fast” and “more cops,” both of which are conscious choices to maintain and/or exacerbate the dangerous status quo of life in this city.

Otherwise we see here a perfectly well articulated critique, backed by fact, and put to a public official for the purpose of real accountability. Now let’s look at how said public official responded.

First of all, accidental Dril tweet. Seriously, the syntax and grammar are worrying to see from someone holding both a law degree and public office. Secondly, and more to the point, look at how “location” is highlighted in the screenshot Bergman took. It seems to me he tried to “click” on “location” and it didn’t work. So his galaxy brain rendered the conclusion that there’s “no supporting data” and thus the image becomes “meaningless.” Check and mate. Then consider that Bergman is apparently dumb enough to think MassDOT would go to the lengths of faking a data visualization to justify a road redesign project. The world’s most boring and pointless conspiracy. That little thing he did with the crash data map right there is the archetype of self-assured dumbass in a nutshell. And he put it out there for the world to see. Insane.

As Piazza mentions in his reply, the data is readily available.

Soooooo much data is readily available. I’m no wiz kid but 20 minutes on the MassDOT data portal is more than enough to see the problem.

For instance here’s five fatal pedestrian accidents in the area of May and Chandler in the past 10 years.

As Etel Haxhiaj pointed out in a post on Instagram, there have already in the first six months of the year been three pedestrian deaths.

Bergman really invoked “trust but verify” and did neither. None of this will reach him, he will never be convinced of the fact his position is a losing one, morally, intellectually, pragmatically. Like Economou he’s subsumed to the psycho-geographical diminishment Worcester’s geography produces, sitting in traffic at the Newton Square rotary thinking Worcester must be the only city in the world it’s hard to drive a car around in at peak hours.

Odds and ends

Maybe it was shaking off the vacation vibe and getting back to reality but this post really took it out of me. Subscriptions are also down to 725 paid which is not ideal! Please consider helping this outlet survive in a world that is very difficult for little outlets like us.

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Maureen Binienda’s interim superintendent gig racket continues apace.

State retirement laws prohibit Binienda from accepting a permanent, full-time position as a superintendent in Massachusetts without seeking a state waiver. However, she pointed out that she is licensed in Rhode Island and could opt to seek full-time permanent employment in that neighboring state.

Relatedly, Bishop McManus will soon be out of public life insh’allah.

Raphael Warnock is coming to the DCU in September. If you have a spare $130 lying around you can go see him speak lol.

This post from Birchtree scared the shit out me and a lot of people reading the comments it looks like. If it was meant to, nice work.

“Florida Water Blues” by Twisted Teens. What a track. What a music video. God bless Swamp Massachusetts.

Looks like they’re playing the Sinclair in a couple weeks. July 23. Perhaps I will be taking a trip to the city. Ok talk soon!

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The next school committee meeting is scheduled for July 16, with Executive Session at 4 p.m. and open session scheduled to start at 4:30 p.m. See the full agenda here. You can watch it via zoom or Youtube Live. Spanish translation is available on zoom. Currently, there are no standing committee meetings scheduled for July.

Here’s my preview:

Superintendent’s Evaluation.
The Superintendent will report on his 2025-2026 school year goals, which include:

You can read up on these goals in more detail in last September’s brief. Allen also wrote a self-assessment, which reflects a first year focused on turning “Vision to Action” by strengthening district systems rather than launching a wave of new initiatives. He reports significant progress toward his student learning goal, with Star reading and math scores improving to 35% of students meeting the benchmark. It’s just shy of the 36% target, but represents the largest percentage since the district began using the test. He also exceeded his professional practice goal, with 78% of schools implementing the district’s “collaborative teaming structures with fidelity.”

The bulk of the self-assessment centers on instructional leadership: curriculum renewal, implementation of high-quality instructional materials, classroom walkthroughs, support for multilingual learners, the Vision of a Learner initiative, and expanded partnerships with local colleges and universities. Allen also notes that he visited schools 120 times during his first year and emphasizes data-informed decision making and collaborative leadership throughout the report.

From my lens as a parent, Allen has been one of Worcester’s stronger Superintendents. But one thing that stood out to me was how little attention the self-evaluation gives to relationships with families. Family engagement is mentioned as part of Allen’s entry plan and the district’s strategic framework, particularly around communication, but there are few concrete examples of work with families or measures of parent engagement, communication, or trust. Family & Community Engagement is one of the four standards used to evaluate Massachusetts superintendents, so it will be interesting to see whether the school committee views this as an area of strength or one where they’d like to see more evidence.

While the Superintendent will give a presentation about his goals on Thursday, the committee will formally evaluate the Superintendent at an August or September meeting, which is a requirement of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE).

Other Items.
Not a ton else on the agenda other than some procedural items and grants, but a few items worth noting:

• A request for an update on the Safe Schools LGBTQIA training/programming (a response from the February 2025 LGBTQIA+ resolution fiasco

• A request for an update on the WPS Homework Policy (which was implemented in June 2025).

• A request for a minimum four-month lead time for curriculum, contracts, or policy changes needing approval from the School Committee. (This harkens back to when Jermaine Johnson said he felt “our knees got cut off underneath us as a committee”).

• Approval of a three-year software license and services contract with Renaissance Learning, which the district uses for Star assessments and Renaissance DnA common assessments. No contract or cost is included in the agenda materials. The current student privacy agreement also does not specify what WPS student data is collected (only which fields are required or optional) and does not appear to be signed by a WPS representative. All WPS student privacy agreements with ed tech companies can be found here.

That’s it, have a great week!

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July Horrorscopes

Cancer- The stars request that you send you resubmit your resume. The position you sought in this universe has been filled. However, after a recent merger, some similar positions have opened up that the star feel you might be a great fit for. Please allow 7-10 business days for a response. Thank you.

Leo- We just got a bidet and now I’m a freak for it. Get you a bidet if you don’t already. We should all wash our ass properly.

Virgo- July 1st was the day that the New York Mets pay former player Bobby Bonilla $1.19 million. The owners were in the middle of getting had by Bernie Madoff and didn’t have the money to buy out Bonilla so they came up with this payment system instead starting in 2011. Bonilla retired in 2001. He will continue to get paid until 2035. Find your Bonilla scheme.

Libra- July 1st was also Canada Day, a celebration of the day Canada decided to not pay Bobby Bonilla $1.19 million from 2011 to 2035. O Canada, indeed!

Scorpio- The United States Men’s Soccer team made it to the 16th round of the World Cup before losing to Belgium last night. The United States is the richest and most powerful country in the world, and only we can twist ourselves in such a pretzel to make it seem like it was an underdog story. Sure we don’t put as many resources in our soccer program as every other country, comparatively, but that is the same with out education system. Should the principal at high school graduation say, “do you believe in miracles?!” as each kid walks across the stage as well? Reminder: you’re a miracle.

Sagittarius- Sure it is too hot outside. Soon enough it will be too cold. (Editor’s note: prophetic submission, given Shaun wrote this when it was hot last week, and it’s now cold.) Then, just when you think the temperature is good enough to go out, it will rain (see above). Then, when the rain stops that wind will blow. All I’m saying is Al Gore didn’t invent the internet, but he was right about one thing.

Capricorn- EVER DRINK TOO MUCH COFFEE? YEAH ME NEITHER.

Aquarius- Jupiter and Mars saw you from across the universe and really like your vibe. They were wondering if you wanted to go some place quieter to get to know each other better?

Pisces- To celebrate America’s 250th birthday go sit in your neighbor’s backyard and gaslight them. Tell them that this is your fire pit and your family needs it or your kids will die.

Aries- Want some updog?

Taurus- I got Aries so bad.

Gemini- There is a dead raccoon that has yet to be picked up by DPW. It is on Newton St. The 311 Mobile App for Worcester has been blowing up with posts about it. You are the raccoon. Sure you’re ignored now, but someone cares about you and eventually you will be picked up. Couldn’t say the same for the snake someone reported the other day.

NEWS

I’m taking July off because the entrance of baby number 2 is imminent. I will still be hosting the Live Forever Open Mic at Ralph’s Rock Diner every Tuesday at 8 p.m. until she comes. That’s tonight!

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Also I edited the audio in the passenger seat of Katie’s car so… our usually pristine—some are saying This American Life-level, if not better—production fidelity is probably a bit lacking. I can’t tell myself because highways it turns out are pretty loud.

Please support this outlet! As all of our revenue comes from readers and/or listeners it is literally up to you to make sure we still exist. Today’s the last day to take me up on the 50 percent deal I’ve been running for the six year anniversary!

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Some links from the discussion

My piece on the rent control ballot question from yesterday

Meet the Sir Vival, the safest car that never was

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Ok I’m actually on vacation now, unlike when I said that yesterday.

Welcome to the June 2026 issue of WPS in Brief. This month covers key topics from two school committee meetings, two budget meetings, and three standing committee meetings.

Before we get started, I want to say thank you.

Last week’s agenda preview included a personal note about the Worcester Elementary School Library Coalition and our goal of helping the district open seven elementary school libraries this fall. I was genuinely blown away by the response. So many WPS in Brief readers donated, shared the fundraiser, reached out with words of encouragement, or offered to volunteer. Thank you. Your support means more than you know, and it’s a reminder of just how much this community cares about our students.

If you missed last week’s post, we’re in the middle of a community-wide effort to help launch libraries in seven Worcester elementary schools before students return in August. The biggest need we have right now is books. We’re hoping every child walks into a library that feels exciting and welcoming, with the kinds of books kids are eager to pick up.

If you’d like to help, we’re still looking for donors, volunteers, and people willing to spread the word. Every contribution, whether it’s a donation, sharing the campaign with a friend, or connecting us with someone who may want to support the effort, helps bring us one step closer. Thank you for being part of it.

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Ok, let’s dive into what happened this month:

The 2026-2027 School Year Budget.
The FY27 budget was approved largely as presented (see last month’s budget preview for a deeper breakdown), with one notable change.

Member Jermaine Johnson (District F) proposed transferring $225,000 from the Miscellaneous Education – Instructional Technology account, moving $200,000 to the elementary teacher salary line and $25,000 to instructional materials. Johnson said his intent was to fund two full-time assistant principal positions at two schools that do not have them: May Street and Heard Street, while the instructional materials funding would be used for library books for the elementary schools opening libraries this fall.

Over the past school year, the district used free cash from the city to add an assistant principal at May Street after the assistant principal from Nelson Place was transferred there. Funding to maintain that position was not built into the FY27 budget. Also, it’s important to understand that elementary assistant principals are budgeted under the teacher salary line rather than school-based administration, where the secondary assistant principals salaries live. Superintendent Brian Allen explained that this dates back decades, when most elementary assistant principals were “teaching assistant principals” who maintained their own classroom while taking on administrative responsibilities when the principal was absent. The budget classification has remained even though the role has changed.

The discussion raised some interesting points. Member Sue Mailman (at-large) offered a substitute motion directing the entire $225,000 toward library books instead, arguing that adding permanent positions could put the district in a more difficult position next year as Worcester faces projected budget deficits. Johnson argued that elementary assistant principals play an important role supporting students with IEPs and 504 plans while allowing principals to focus on overall building operations. Vanessa Alvarez (district B) questioned why Woodland Academy, a significantly larger school with higher student needs, is going into its second year without a principal (the Claremont principal has been split between the two schools). In response to Alvarez’s question, Superintendent Allen said, “I’ll come forward with a recommendation [about Woodland] at some point in the future.”

Johnson’s motion ultimately passed 7-2, with Mailman and Alvarez voting no. The district noted that, with these additions, Wawecus will be the only elementary school without a full-time, non-teaching assistant principal.

The rest of the budget conversation included questions about transportation overtime (staff absences were an issue) and custodial overtime (the tough winter and the repeated freeze-thaw cycle played a big part). As well as building substitute staffing (which is increasing to 24 positions), and the role of positive youth development paraprofessionals (the district felt the need was in a different place, so those positions were reallocated).

My Take.
After watching budget deliberations for years, I walked away this year with a familiar sinking feeling. Worcester isn’t debating whether to fund “nice to have” programs. We’re debating whether students get consistent special education services because there are enough building substitutes. Whether teachers get common planning time because there are enough paraprofessionals to cover classrooms. Whether we can open elementary school libraries AND sustain middle school athletics. Whether we can expand full-day preschool while maintaining everything else our students need. These aren’t choices any district should have to make.

Six years into the Student Opportunity Act, Worcester is unquestionably in a better place than we would have been otherwise. The $22 million reduction two years ago would have been a bloodbath of $38 million without that funding. But it also hasn’t been the panacea many of us hoped for. We are still making impossible choices because the underlying resources don’t match the needs of our students.

Here’s what else happened this month:

District Boundary Realignment.
A representative from Dillinger Research and Applied Data provided a short presentation of the current status of the district realignment process, which will eventually redraw school boundaries and feeder patterns across WPS. Since the spring, the district has analyzed enrollment and building capacity data, formed an advisory working group (of which I am a member), and held community meetings that generated more than 300 survey responses. Initial boundary scenarios are expected to be presented in August, followed by public hearings this fall, with a final School Committee vote anticipated in December and implementation scheduled for the 2027-28 school year. (For a more detailed background on the topic, check out what I wrote back in March, also highly recommend this interview on Unity.)

Key areas I want to highlight that I think families and students will be happy about: the district is looking at expanding transportation options, creating more compact boundaries that could allow more students to attend schools closer to home, and making adjustments to middle school bell schedules. They’re also exploring opportunities to expand full-day preschool as the district moves away from half-day programs, and increasing access to after-school care through community partnerships. While there are still a lot of details to work out, these are all issues that came up repeatedly during community meetings and have the potential to make a big impact for students and families.

The administration is also proposing several school name changes to better align school designations with current programming. The proposal would remove the “Community School” designation from Belmont, Elm Park, Quinsigamond, and South, arguing that all Worcester schools should function as community schools. It would also remove the “Magnet” designation from Canterbury, Jacob Hiatt, and Tatnuck, saying these schools no longer operate distinct citywide magnet programs. Jacob Hiatt, in particular, would be intentionally redesigned as a neighborhood school under the proposal. These recommendations will be considered alongside broader redistricting proposals this fall, with public feedback opportunities before a final School Committee vote expected in December.

Limiting individual device use in PreK through Grade Two.

Kate Johnson, Lakeview Elementary parent whose youngest child will graduate from high school in 2042, speaks during public comment.

At the June 25 meeting public comment was dominated by parents advocating for a petition filed by Worcester for Safe Student Technology (of which I am a member), asking for limits on individual internet-connected device use in Pre-K through second grade classrooms and for policies that prioritize hands-on, teacher-led, screen-limited learning. The petition, which has gathered 468 signatures from members of 51 schools across the district, includes exemptions for students who require assistive technology and for technology enrichment classes. Public comment pointed to growing national concerns about screen time in schools, including recent action by the Los Angeles Unified School District and parents argued that young children benefit most from direct interaction, play, movement, and hands-on learning.

Relatedly, in response to a report request from Sue Mailman (at-large), the administration is recommending a shift to a 3:1 student-to-iPad ratio in pre-K through first grade (which I think is a typo, because first graders in the district get Chromebooks). While modest, it is one of the first tangible changes to emerge from ongoing parent advocacy around technology use in the early grades and freed up $100,000 in the budget.

Bullying Policy.
At the June 25 meeting the School Committee approved a revised Bullying Prevention and Intervention Plan (BPIP), a document that must be updated every two years for the district to remain in compliance with state law.

During earlier public comment, several parents asked that the item be held in order to update other areas of concern in the policy. Sue Mailman made the same request, but Deputy Superintendent Marie Morse explained that the BPIP is the implementation plan that supports the policy, and that the district needed to approve it that evening to remain in compliance with the state. Morse added that the School Committee could separately request a review of the policy.

This is where I got confused.

The agenda item they were discussing read:

“To review and update, if necessary, Policy JICFB (Bullying Prevention), in accordance with M.G.L. c. 71, § 37O), requiring biennial review of such.”

That language appears to open the policy for review.

To address both concerns, Mailman then made a separate motion to refer the bullying policy to subcommittee as soon as possible. Vice Chair Molly McCullough (district A) raised a point of order, saying there was already a bullying item pending in committee, which meant another referral couldn’t be made.

There was some discussion over whether an existing bullying item was already pending in TLSS or Operations & Governance, with McCullough stating it was in TLSS. After the meeting, I reviewed both committees’ outstanding item lists, updated June 26. The only bullying-related item I found was a request, made during discussion of wellness rooms, for “a report on the collaboration of bullying mitigation and wellness rooms.”

That appears to be a different issue than Mailman’s request to re-examine district’s bullying policy, and it would also go to Operations & Governance, so I’m not sure why it prevented the motion from moving forward.

Here’s the video.

Public bodies only work well when everyone is operating from the same information and decisions are made through a transparent process. When facts become unclear, tempers get shorter, and disagreements start feeling personal instead of procedural, it’s much harder for the committee to move its work forward.

I’ve watched hundreds of hours of School Committee meetings over the years, and the June 25 one felt different. There was far more visible frustration: eye rolling, sighing, head shaking, curt responses, expressions of disbelief, and side conversations behind covered mouths. Patience seemed to be in much shorter supply.

And I just keep coming back to the question that I think should anchor every difficult decision: What is the best choice for students, even if it’s the harder choice for the adults?

I’ll leave you with that.

Upcoming Dates.
All meetings have virtual options, see the school committee site for more information.

• School Committee Meeting on July 16, 4 p.m. at City hall

• Subcommittees have no scheduled meetings until August.

Happy summer vacation! Lots of new families are joining WPS this fall. If you find WPS in Brief valuable, please share it with them! Last day to get the half off for a year subscription deal. Please support our work! See you in July.

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Thank you to everyone who has newly subscribed or resubscribed in the past couple weeks—the disaster scenario I articulated in my state of the newsletter report has blissfully not come to pass and we’re going to be okay knock on wood for at least another year it looks like.

While I’m on the subject let me just say it’s fascinating at times to be a landscaper, to be crawling around like a bug in dirt that is not yours and never will be—a fact made especially plain in the private community off Salisbury Street we spent the day in yesterday, where you are reminded by several signs in succession that the video surveillance cameras are running, that there is no outlet, that you need a reason to be there, and as you drive, weaving around massive concrete planters in the middle of the road seemingly designed to make it difficult for the work trucks coming in to maintain the HOA’s standards, you pass stately homes on rolling hills overlooking a green valley. The only indication to be found you are within city limits comes via the far-off whistles of CSX trains. It is otherwise serenely quiet. The chirping of the birds punctuated briefly by the chatter and plopping footsteps of homeowners walking their dogs. You smile as they pass, nod and/or wave, and they nod back, satisfied by the demonstration you are not a threat to them. And you think about all the social dynamics built into that interaction, the polite decorum of the ritual but also the expectation that the ritual occurs, all of which exist here but do not exist where you live. You think about that for a fleeting moment and drop it. There’s work to do. You re-mulch the bed under a gorgeous weeping hemlock tree, its thick mesh of bright green nettles cascading down to the curb, its canopy otherwise high, and on the interior intricately defined, an igloo-like geometry, and you do the best job you can making the mulch around that tree beautiful, because you respect that tree and decide it deserves the best of your abilities. So you sculpt the edges of the bed and the way the mulch falls down the hill, between its roots and how it catches naturally on the rock below it, keeping it upright. For an hour or so you do this. And when you’re done you look at your work with pride, that’s some nice looking mulch right there, and then you leave, knowing you are not allowed near that beautiful weeping hemlock again, not without a contract to point to—that this is a world in your city that is entirely off limits to you the second you are no longer a servant to it.

The Worcester Sucks promise is that there will be writing in here an AI not only couldn’t but wouldn’t bother to write. See above. Summarize that, Grok. You coward.

Today’s main piece is one I’ve been plugging away at for the better part of a week. It was difficult to put together and is perhaps “not ready” but feeling like a piece is ~ready~ is a luxury the present circumstances do not afford! Big whoop.

Before we get to it, a few things you should be aware of:

Council is reviewing the city manager tomorrow, an annual ritual only slightly less pointless than the budget review. It’s still a waste of time don’t get me wrong. The city manager review will begin to matter when and (big) if the city council sets any benchmarks or even expectations against which to evaluate Batista’s performance. So long as we hire city managers the fundamentally corrupt way that we do the review process, such as there is one, will also happen in a fundamentally corrupted way. In both circumstances it will not be the process that exists on paper i.e. the city council does it openly and democratically by a transparent and carefully defined process. But there’s palace intrigue to be spotted around the edges, as I wrote about last time I wrote to you, in a way I think was pretty good in retrospect. And don’t much feel like repeating right now.

The most important thing to watch for is how hard the old guard councilors are willing to “go after him.” And, then, how enthusiastically the mayor “stands by his guy.” There’s a certain point, one that will be subtle and hard to notice, where the mayor recognizes he has to drop his current guy and go searching for a new guy. None of that will occur in the way it’s supposed to, but rather with public winks and nods to what’s always going on just off screen, usually in the conveniently located back rooms of the third floor, where councilors have been seen slipping quietly in groups small and, at times, large, to have their “real” conversations.

Anyway here’s the agenda. You’ll notice the evaluation is the only item. And here’s the city manager’s self evaluation, itself worth a read. I will remain blissfully unaware of all of it until next Monday.

Ok now to what the freakin fuck happened with rent control.

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The Frontier Meets the Unforced Error

The frontier and the unforced error—two uniquely American themes, the former derived from our uniquely bloody and direct inversion on the tactics of European colonialism… a gift that keeps on giving… and the latter from the sport that defined America until America couldn’t be slaked by it, turned instead to a more instantly gratifying and violent spectacle. I’m talking about baseball and football by the way. Baseball gave us the unforced error, a specific mechanic among mechanics in the byzantine rulebook of the sport, now a part of the American lexicon due to how accurately it captures “failing at a simple task for a stupid reason.” The Billy Buckner example being the most famous, and fittingly happening in Boston.

This is what the authors of the rent control bill did when they wrote in a very specific and pointless religious exemption.

Neil Smith’s theory of gentrification as a continuation of the American “frontier” is perhaps another context in which you haven’t read someone frame the battle over rent control in this state, now comi-tragically concluded by way of a Supreme Judicial Court ruling on a ridiculous lawsuit. Allow me to change that.

First, the news in case you haven’t heard by now: the state’s Supreme Judicial Court tossed the rent control ballot initiative off the ballot by unanimous vote, answering in the affirmative, by a unanimous vote, to a complaint that the question violates an archaic state law about putting religious questions up for public vote. The complaint was made by the opposition campaign, a collection of developers, landlords, and lobbyists for developers and landlords. The rent control ballot measure has nothing to do with religion. It’s about capping rent increases at 5 percent annually or the annual increase in the consumer price index. Secular stuff, I think we can all agree. But there is one clause of one sentence in the proposed bill in which the term “religious organizations” appears in a list of other organizations that would be exempted. The SJC judges all agreed that hey it has the word “religious,” so…

While the main opinion of the court takes great pains to speak legal circles around the immutable fact of their position being ridiculous, a secondary opinion authored by Justice Kafker, takes the “you fuckin idiots would have been fine if you didn’t use the specific word religion” approach.

Although most of the initiative, which proposes to limit residential rent increases for large for-profit landlords, clearly has nothing to do with religion or religious institutions, its exemption for “[d]welling units in facilities operated solely for . . . religious . . . purposes” requires application of a test based on religion (emphasis added). This religious test also invites an intrusive review of religious beliefs and practices proscribed by art. 48 of the Amendments to the Massachusetts Constitution, as the test whether a rental unit is being operated “solely for . . . religious . . . purposes” requires an inquiry into the internal affairs of, and even the motives and purposes of, a religious institution, as well as its finances. That, in my opinion, is prohibited by art. 48.

Which is where I’m at as well. A generational opportunity tossed on an easily avoidable technicality. The campaign shot itself in the foot so hard I can’t help but wonder if it was somehow on purpose. Who was this carveout for? What religious organizations are raising rents on tenants more than five percent a year? And, adding all those holy rollers up, are they of a size or influence that losing them breaks the coalition?

It was very dumb to include that language. Perhaps too dumb. Given the amount of attorneys who worked on this, up to and including the state’s attorney general, it becomes difficult to see the inclusion of that language as a little whoopsies and comparatively easy to see it as an act of sabotage. A poison pill laid early on. Not that I have any proof or would even make such an accusation I’m just saying it stretches credulity that no one flagged the religion thing, given the “no religious ballot questions” law apparently on the books, and the mind wanders to conspiratorial places. How I would love to get a good look at the version history of that bill, ideally in Google Doc style with names attached to updated text. Never will, but a boy can dream.

So yeah, rent control is dead in the near future. The proponents may bring it back for 2028 but we’ll just have to wait and see on that.

But the real estate lobby has been pretty clear about the negotiating period being over post-SJC decision. Which is obvious, intuitively. The ballot questions was where the leverage started and ended. The CEO of NAIOP Massachusetts, one of the real estate lobbyists heading the campaign against rent control, minced no words in an interview with WBUR late last week. “Because there is no question appearing on the ballot, there is no compromise to be reached,” said Tamara Small, the CEO.

Meanwhile, in New York...

The rent control ballot question, tepid as it was, would allow voters to decide on a fundamentally important question: should the state government use its authority to make an intervention--just one!--in the real estate market on behalf of its citizens. The significance of this question comes from the grim reality that people my age or younger have never not once even seen that happen. Rent control wasn’t made illegal in a vacuum. That small moment in 1994 was part of a larger decades-long shift away from regulating and toward “facilitating” the financial engines of real estate. The ballot initiative had the potential to serve as a popular referendum on that very fundamental piece of how our state is currently run, how it ran itself straight into this housing crisis, gleefully and unrepentantly. That is, to my mind, the reason why the real estate lobby pulled out every last trick in the book. It’s pathetic, frankly, that this is the trick that worked.

The generational talent of the Democratic Party is down in New York freezing rents to extreme popular support. If people up here in Mass are allowed express the same sentiment in a quantifiable way, such as with a yes or no question put to all voters, the real estate lobby could stand to lose its total regulatory capture of state and local government.

They looked out at their little field mice scurrying around their silly little Statehouse and they were struck by a vision of what would happen if someone else were to swoop in and give one of them a cookie.

It’s interesting to note the spirit of the law used in bad faith to kill this ballot question. Referred to as Article 48, the SJC pulled out a few specific lines in their decision: “The people for their own protection have provided that the initiative shall not be employed with respect to certain matters” because “[s]ome matters are naturally unsuitable for popular lawmaking.”

There is a way of reading this passage, looking at how it was just applied, as an attempt to define housing writ large as such an “unsuitable”matter. Like a religion, the free market cannot be put to the test of popular support. For our own protection, the argument follows.

But how does all this relate to the frontier?

Smith writes:

Whereas the myth of the frontier is an invention that rationalizes the violence of gentrification and displacement, the everyday frontier on which the myth is hung is the stark product of entrepreneurial exploitation. Thus whatever its visceral social and cultural reality, the frontier language camouflages a raw economic reality. Areas that were once sharply redlined by banks and other financial institutions were sharply “greenlined” in the 1980s.

The frontier was, and remains, a construct for prying open new financial markets. Like everything else it has simply become more abstract, as an idea, as a financial instrument, as a set of settler colonial practices. But its logic, its goals, its outcomes remain the same. Westward expansion never stopped, it just stopped moving west, stopped moving in one concise direction at all, and instead it felt around for the many micro-frontiers in the interior. The “free real estate” of manifest destiny became the “cheap real estate” of the “inner city.” The frontiersman became the free market fundamentalist. The pioneer became the landlord. The Indian became the drug dealer, the thug, the inner city youth, the welfare queen, the criminal, the drug user, the unhoused person. The cowboy, the cop. The trail of tears to mass incarceration. The reform schools to the school-to-prison pipeline.

This new and abstracted frontier is one that the financial elite can open and close at will, loading up new frontiers like fresh maps in The Sims.

The perverse rationality of real estate capitalism means that building owners and developers garner a double reward for milking properties and destroying buildings. First, they pocket the money that should have gone to repairs and upkeep; second, having effectively destroyed the building and established a rent gap, they have produced for themselves the conditions and opportunity for a whole new round of capital reinvestment.

This is what city officials mean when they gloat about Worcester being “on the map.” The only reason it’s “on the map” is because it was left off the map for enough time to create the undervalued property needed to extract value from putting it on the map. It was through no fault of its own that Worcester was taken off the map, and it is likewise on the map again for reasons that have nothing to do with the city’s power elite or the decisions they’ve made, other than their total submission to the logic of gentrification, which is entirely unremarkable–the stock standard approach to municipal government for the last few decades at least. The process is overseen, managed, and executed elsewhere, by people for whom there is almost no democratic accountability. They can be sued, and they have in recent memory, but that’s about it. Truly remarkable city leadership, on the other hand, would be shown if local leaders spoke plainly about how the thing works, first of all, and second of all used the new “on the map” reality as leverage to negotiate more revenue and workforce housing.

Instead, we operate nearly exclusively on the premise that if we don’t fully bend over backward we’ll scare the capital off. This is good for the real estate industry, and good for the city officials who leave government to work in the real estate industry, like the two city managers before Eric Batista have. (Where do we think he’ll end up? Webster Five? Trinity Financial? Should we get a pool going?!)

At the time Smith wrote his book, gentrification was a nascent phenomenon, hitting neighborhoods like New York’s Lower East Side and its analog in other global cities, places that are now the almost thoroughly sanitized and effectively gated domains of an elite caste: where they park their capital and, for a time, their children. In the two decades since Smith wrote the book, the theory has borne out. Cities like Worcester have patiently waited their turn, quietly greasing the rails with “opportunity zones” and other such deregulatory schemes, and now the frontier pried open in the 90s in the first tier cities is fully “civilized,” the second tier cities of the 2000s have just about reached full extraction (Boston), and now it’s the third and fourth tier cities like Worcester who are next, either being put on the map or desperately scratching for position. Provincial backwaters neglected by capital for so many decades, they happily roll over at the prospect of “attracting” it, and fear, desperately, the thought of turning it away.

Joe Petty’s uncharacteristically hard and public stance against rent control is a sterling example of this: how he seemed to hardly bother concealing his relationship with the real estate lobby’s opposition campaign, allowing them to put their words directly into his mouth and under his byline in the newspaper. How he happily laundered their logic as common sense... the only available choice.

The lawsuit that led to rent control ouster from the ballot was filed in February, by four plaintiffs handpicked by the real estate lobby, as is made clear by the reams of “amicus briefs” (the legal equivalent of a “letter of support” type document) submitted by a rogues gallery of real estate industry organizations. The Pioneer New England Legal Foundation,

MassLandlords, Inc, Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Realtors, the good old fashion U.S. Chamber of Commerce, etc etc. even the California apartment association had to weigh in. had to check whether they were a landlord group or tenant group, very much a landlord group. Sheesh

Scrolling through the list, on the hunt as always for the “Worcester connection,” one of these documents caught my eye: “amicus brief filed for Millbury National Bank by attorney Kevin J. Powers.”

And boy oh boy am I glad I took the time to read it. It was what we like to call a “good pull.” There’s one section in particular that ties the whole proverbial room together. But we need a bit of setup to understand why.

Number one: Millbury National was the only bank to directly file their own brief. Not a stretch to think banking executives had a hand in crafting other briefs. But it is a noteworthy fact that this one small bank has its own brief in this case.

Number two noteworthy fact: Millbury National Bank’s brief was prepared and paid for by Mass Landlords, INC., an organization that also filed their own brief. “This brief is funded wholly by MassLandlords, Inc., which has also submitted a separate amicus curiae brief in its own name.” The reason for filing their own, rather than including their input in the MassLandlords brief, is chalked up to a scheduling issue. But, they note, “Millbury National Bank would not have been able to promptly retain counsel without the financial assistance of MassLandlords, Inc.” A worrying thing to hear a bank say, no matter how small.

The overall argument presented by Mass Landlords via and/or on behalf of Millbury National in the 42-page document is that small community banks need small community landlords to demonstrate they will increase rents over time in order to write mortgages for them. This is also a notable and rather grim fact, if true. Big “if.” But still, it’s worth flagging for the underlying point that the banks control the landlords in many cases, and in ways that are little known outside the industry.

Millbury National’s financial future depends on the outcome of 9 this case. Rent control would have devastating effects on Millbury National, its ability to continue to service loans, its borrowers, and its borrowers’ ability to be successful landlords.

So now, with all that in mind, let’s read one of the anecdotes included in the brief to illustrate the bank’s hardship in a theoretical world where renters have some protections.

The Petition jeopardizes loans predicated upon renters leaving and rents increasing between tenants. Millbury National has issued a loan secured by twelve rental units—in the form of three four-family Worcester properties—the rents of which must increase as tenants leave. The borrower is a Worcester police officer. The units are now renting well below market rates, and the borrower plans to increase rents for those units, but will maintain below-market rents for long-term tenants who 18 remain in their units. Millbury National’s loan was not made on the basis of current rents alone; instead, Millbury National entered into the agreement on the assumption that the borrower will be able to quickly raise the rent to market rate as each legacy tenant departs. (”The net cash after debt on these twelve units total $30,000, pro

A police officer who owns three four-unit rental properties? Sounds a lot like our old friend Anthony Petrone!

More interestingly, it isn’t. Petrone financed his four-unit rentals through Unibank or some other one (I suffer from Bank Blindness). That means there’s another Worcester police officer who owns at least three rentals of the four-unit variety, which are decidedly less common than three units.

It’s theoretically possible to figure out who this other officer is, but it would be annoying and time consuming and it’s beside the point.

The point is the loans written to this police officer are contingent on their ability to “quickly raise the rents” once legacy tenants move out. What happens if legacy tenants have no plans of moving out goes unstated. But do we really need to state it?

Up to and including a no-fault eviction order, landlords have a swiss army knife of tactics to annoy, cajole, force a renter out of their unit. Police officers are uniquely suited to this work. Indeed, for the financiers of the microfrontiers of urban gentrification, the “cop who is also a landlord” is the ideal frontiersman. Who better to carry out the dirty work of displacement than those who already do it, in slightly different ways, as an occupation. Not only do they have the ability to threaten and intimidate with more oomf than your average mon-n-pop, they are deeply enmeshed in the byzantine world of city workers, sheriff’s deputies, cops, and housing court staff that carry out evictions. They are among the most likely people to be let in on the “tricks of the trade” as it were. And the least likely people to be kept in check by what authorities there are watching out for abusive landlords–if there are any at all, an open question in my opinion.

Of course the city council could and should be that authority, but remember that Kate Toomey was able to get the entire city to change course on a mundane sprinkler ordinance that would have affected landlords of four to eight unit buildings like Anthony Petrone, who happens to be one of her police union handlers. She did so without being able to explain why publicly–it was all winks and nods and wrapped up in the overall project of dicking down on progressives. The most cartoonish surfacing I can remember of the sort of low-grade corruption that we can trust to be humming along at all times in the background.

While outside the scope of this particular post, it would be worthwhile–perhaps a future project for a slow week–to cross reference a few databases to suss out how many Worcester police officers are landlords. Far as police officers go, Petrone’s a rare breed. More of a politician than a cop, savvy enough to secure the most powerful and least democratic political position in the city, as head of one of the three police unions.

That there’s another officer out there who’s vested in what the suits would call our “naturally occurring affordable housing”–the polite way to say this is
“being a slumlord”–raises the possibility that more cops than you think are spending those six digit overtime earnings on down payments.

Writing this I returned to the images scarred in my brain from “Blood Meridian,” the most accurate (I would know) fictional portrayal of westward expansion in how thoroughly dismal and disgusting it is. And there’s a line from it that sends chills down my spine and especially so because the real life man Cormac McCarthy based the book on is buried in Worcester and I want to leave it here to chew on as we think about the way the American frontier has cycled through history, iteratively and abstractly, but has never gone anywhere, in fact has only come in closer to home.

“You can find meanies in the least of creatures, but when God made man the Devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.”

Odds and Ends

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Related to the main post today, there’s a Worcester mention in a really good Boston Globe Spotlight investigation into MassDevelopment that came out a few days ago. The piece documents how a few landlords and an official at MassDevelopment seemingly conspired to bilk the state for work they never did, mostly on low income rental properties. Like so:

Jenkins, who lives on the second floor of the three-family in Worcester, said his unit has hardly been improved. While the first- and third-floor units are in better shape, the only occupants in the last three years have been squatters, Jenkins said.

Worcester officials had given Acquah a separate grant of $134,750 to fix up the triple-decker. The city now wants its money back because of his failures; the building was sold at a foreclosure auction in late March.

“It is definitely disappointing seeing the units not come to fruition, and seeing that opportunity not delivered to Worcester families that need affordable housing,” said Peter Dunn, the city’s chief development officer.

In both Pittsfield and Worcester, officials expressed concerns late in the process about whether the apartments will be able to be rented to people with Section 8 vouchers because of their condition, a frustrating outcome for a program that aims to help low-income residents.

A little something special for the musical dessert this week. Sturgil Simpson put out a record a few weeks ago, under the moniker Johnny Blue Sky & The Dark Clouds, called Mutiny After Midnight, and he took the remarkable step of pulling all of it from streaming. So of course I bought a cassette and of course, audio geek that I am, I took a recording of the cassette and made an Mp3 version for playing it on my upcoming trip to Virginia. Here’s the first track. It absolutely rips. It’s called “Make America Fuck Again” how could it not rip?! Paid subscribers can find the whole record here via the same password I used for the merch discount code. And if you’re not a paid subscriber well buddy here’s a little deal.

Get 50% off for 1 year

This is a gift for friends by the way in case anyone from Warner Brothers’ legal department is reading. All Subscribers Are Friends (ASAB). Everyone else reading this let’s just keep it between us ok? The ASAB Compact.

Have a good week everyone see you when I get back!