METCO stands for Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, and opportunity is what Lynnfield public schools for 20 years have provided Boston children. Forty METCO students are enrolled in the town’s schools this year and they travel from their inner-city homes to Lynnfield on school days.
METCO’s track record in Lynnfield is surely deserving of praise and credit with plenty of student success stories written in local schools. Unfortunately, an incident reportedly involving two grade school-age students on a METCO bus led this week to a major upheaval in Lynnfield’s METCO program.
For a school system as small as Lynnfield’s, an elementary school principal’s resignation and the firing of two people associated with the local METCO program is startling and significant.
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Parents and teachers forge a bond with elementary school principals and Jennifer DiBiase’s departure from Summer Street School for parents and staff is a shock staff and parents are probably still absorbing.
To her credit, School Superintendent Jane Tremblay quickly announced she will personally supervise Summer Street for the immediate future. Tremblay made other personnel moves aimed at shoring up the METCO program and getting it back on track.
Her decisive actions now set the stage for a much longer, perhaps painful process of investigating the bus incident in which a student is alleged to have “inappropriately touched” another student last month.
The incident was reportedly not detailed to responsible officials in a timely manner. The reporting lapse, if it is accurate, speaks to a program that, at first glance, appears to have lacked sufficient oversight and controls. There is plenty of time to assign blame for the reporting lapse and to point fingers at officials who failed to assume an oversight role.
For now, Lynnfield school leaders need to assure Summer Street parents and Boston parents who entrust their children to METCO on school days, that a thorough investigation is underway. School committee members working with Tremblay must ensure the review process is open and involves parents.
Tremblay was in Boston on Monday discussing METCO, and her attention to the program’s problems reflects well on her deliberative leadership. But it is important for School committee members to ask and consider whether Lynnfield needs an outside party to review its relationship with METCO, including transportation policies. A third-party investigator can talk to parents and prepare a list of best practices aimed at improving the program’s local operation.
Lynnfield can point with pride to its schools and the people who work in them. But two firings and a principal’s resignation underscore a serious problem that must be exposed to the full light of public review and eradicated. Only then will METCO’s relationship with Lynnfield continue to be a strong partnership.