a memorandum from Councillor Kelley regarding CPSD Public Participation

CAMBRIDGE CITY COUNCIL Craig A. Kelley City Councillor CITY HALL, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 02139 [phone removed] FAX: [phone removed] TTY/TDD: [phone removed] EMAIL: ckelley@cambridgema.gov To: Paula Crane, Interim City Clerk From: Craig A. Kelley, City Councillor Date: 20 June 2019 Subject: Memorandum Submission Please place the attached memorandum, “CPSD Public Participation”, on the City Council agenda as Communications and Reports from Other City Officials for the 24 June 2019 City Council meeting. Thank you.

CAMBRIDGE CITY COUNCIL Craig A. Kelley City Councillor CITY HALL, CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS 02139 PHONE: [phone removed]; FAX: [phone removed]; TTY/TDD: [phone removed]; EMAIL: ckelley@cambridgema.gov MEMORANDUM To: Cambridge City Council From: Craig Kelley, City Councillor Date: 24 June 2019 Subject: CPSD Public Participation Dear Colleagues: Attached you will find an email Jared Cosulich, founder of The Puzzle School (www.puzzleschool.com), and I recently sent to the School Committee and Dr. Salim expressing our thoughts on how CPSD might encourage public submission of innovative educational ideas, perhaps along the same lines as the City’s successful Participatory Budgeting program. While we don’t have precise ideas on how this innovative thought experiment should proceed, Jared and I both believe that the District, and the City as a whole, would be stronger if it were better able to encourage, process, implement and evaluate educational ideas that originated from the wider Public. Of course, acting on this suggestion, or choosing not to act on it, is entirely the responsibility of the District and the School Committee, but both Jared and I would be happy to talk with any of you about this issue at your convenience. Respectfully, Craig Kelley, JD, MPA

2 From: Kelley, Craig Sent: Saturday, June 15, 2019 10:48 AM To: ksalim@cpsd.us; School Committee (SchoolCom@cpsd.us) Cc: Jared Cosulich Subject: Encouraging Outside Innovation in CPSD Dear School Committee Members and Dr. Salim: After, in Jared’s case, attempting to start an Innovation School under new state guidelines and, in Craig’s case, spending a lot of time looking at the CPSD budget and reviewing various school- related outcomes, the two of us have realized that CPSD, like other school districts, does not have a formal way for innovative ideas from outside District staff to be introduced, evaluated, approved and piloted. People can make suggestions, of course, but those suggestions follow an informal path through the District and it is not clear how one could make sure their suggestions were considered. Similarly, schools have some discretionary funding in their budgets but that, also, is not a process for handling outside ideas. Given the importance of innovation in maximizing the effectiveness of any organization, we urge the CPSD to institute a formal process to handle school-related innovative ideas in a comprehensive, consistent and transparent manner with the expectation that a certain number of them, based on available funding, will be piloted, evaluated and possibly be part of the CPSD budget for future years. A possible, though not entirely relevant, model is the Cambridge’s Participatory Budgeting. A similar budget for piloting publicly generated ideas in CPSD, when compared with the City budget, would be roughly $200,000. Challenges in implementing such a program would include: • meeting Bargaining Unit constraints • creating appropriate analytical tools to measure a suggestion’s success • determining the range of ideas that could be funded • establishing the process itself and similar administrative issues We are sure these challenges could be met and, in doing so, CPSD would be opening up the discussion of how to improve our District to all sorts of people who currently have no clear method for their ideas, however good or bad, to be evaluated, much less implemented. Some types of Participatory Budgeting in schools has been explored elsewhere and seems to have had benefits: https://www.participatorybudgeting.org/pb-in-schools/ Although we are thinking about a process for piloting a wider variety of ideas than are usually considered through participatory budgeting, we are really just wondering what the ideal process should be for CPSD to explore new ideas and ensure that the students, teachers, families and the broader community of CPSD are part of the new idea review process and can review the results, providing everyone with greater understanding of how CPSD is exploring new ideas for continuous improvement.

3 We would very much appreciate meeting with any of you who might be interested in this idea to help create a formal proposal for submission to the School Committee and future discussion. All the best, Craig and Jared