Sentinel
& Enterprise
Museum, school ending
collaboration
By Kyle Alspach
Tuesday, May 9, 2006
FITCHBURG -- The Fitchburg Art Museum is ending its decade-long collaboration
with the city on the Museum Partnership School, just days after Superintendent
Andre Ravenelle said he would cut the $150,000 being paid by the city
to the museum.
Museum officials
are pulling out of the school's steering committee, and will no longer
offer the school unlimited use of the museum as of the fall -- instead
requiring a fee for each visit to the building.
Peter Timms, art
museum director, said the museum understands the "financial plight"
of Fitchburg and agreed to the new terms with school officials and Mayor
Dan H. Mylott.
Ravenelle proposed
his fiscal 2007 budget to the School Committee on Monday.
The budget doesn't
include the $150,000 payment to the art museum, which the Fitchburg
school district has made in past years to compensate the museum for
its services.
Partnership school
classes have used the museum at least once a week as part of their lessons,
Ravenelle said.
The Museum Partnership
School dates to 1995, when it began as an experiment in teaching academic
subjects through the use of art.
The school has grown
to about 150 students, and Mylott stressed Wednesday that it is "alive
and well."
"We're glad
that there's still a relationship (with the museum), even though it's
going to be slightly different than it has been," Mylott said during
his weekly press conference Wednesday.
The school serves
grades five through eight, and will get a new name this fall as it converts
into a "pilot school."
Pilot schools have
their own say over matters such as budgets and curriculum, and are run
by a governing council which is outside city control.
Fitchburg's pilot
school will be the first in Massachusetts outside Boston.
Mylott said one
main reason for ending the $150,000 payment to the art museum was an
audit report which disapproved of the expense.
The state-funded
Office of Educational Quality and Accountability questioned the value
of the educational assistance provided by the museum, saying it has
been worth less than $20,000 per year.
The agency had demanded
the city reduce its payments to the museum, and said the Fitchburg school
district risked sanction by the state Department of Education if it
didn't comply.
Timms said the new
arrangement will allow the school to still use the museum building for
a fee.
The school will
be charged per visit, but Timms said he didn't know exactly how much.
"It would depend
on the nature of the visit, what the teacher wants, how much the museum
is providing," Timms said.
School Committee
member Patrick Magnan said he believes this a better arrangement for
Fitchburg than paying a lump sum to the museum.
Magnan and another
School Committee member, James O'Donnell, have repeatedly stated at
committee meetings that the museum's services are not worth $150,000
a year.
"We know the
program works for students, but we should only be paying every time
we use the museum," Magnan said Wednesday.
The dissolution
of the partnership will also end the influence museum officials have
at the school.
Two officials will
soon leave the school's steering committee, which is planning the institution's
transition into the pilot school model, according to Chad Radock, president
of the Fitchburg Teachers Association.
The officials had
made up two of the six members of the committee, Radock said.
"We're disappointed
we can't work as closely with those officials," he said.
The new name for
the school has yet to be determined, Ravenelle said.
But its arts-focused
curriculum will remain the same, he said.
"Basically,
the direction and the core of this program is not changing at all,"
Ravenelle said.
The school has grown
from a handful of students originally in 1995, to about 150 this year,
Ravenelle said.
It is now housed
on the fourth floor of Academy Middle School, after its ailing building
on Academy Street closed last year due to lack of repair money.
The school is part
of B.F. Brown Middle School, but will become independent with its own
principal in the fall.
The pilot school
transition is being subsidized by a $600,000 grant from the Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation.
