Delivery & Content

Contents of this month's Board Book Mailing
(photo credit: mas)

Two weekends before a Regular Board of ESE Meeting, I receive a UPS delivery of the Board Meeting Book.

The delivery also contains a packet of any mail sent to me c/o the Department in Malden.

Since my first meeting in September, the Board Book has varied in size from 1" to 2.5". This month, as we enter "Charter School Season", the contents of my delivery included a 3.5" Book, replete with anticipated agenda, back up, reports, and recommendations relevant for discussion and/or action at the Special Meeting (Monday, January 26) and the Regular Meeting (Tuesday, January 27), and four pieces of mail.

Some Charter materials have been distributed electronically. Items in the Book pertaining to Charters this month include:

• Information on (4) New Charter Applicants (for initial discussion). By statute the Board votes approval of new charter schools at its February meeting. In November 2014, the Department received final applications to establish four charter schools. The Department provided an overview of the process for reviewing and granting new charters and a summary of the charter applications that are pending.

• Proposed Amendments for UP Academy Boston Charter School, Salem Academy Charter School, Hampden Charter School of Science, and KIPP Academy Lynn Charter School (discussion and vote)

• Martin Luther King, Jr. Charter School of Excellence: Report on Conditions and Commissioner's Recommendation for Probation (discussion and vote)

• Boston Renaissance Charter Public School: Report on Probation and Commissioner's Recommendation for Renewal (discussion and vote)

It's a lot of reading, to be sure. Presentations will be distributed at the Special and Regular Meetings, too, and there is room for them in the Book. Several Tabs do not have material (Minutes of the December Board Meetings, State Graduation and Dropout Results for 2013-14, Update on PARCC, i.e.), which I find most challenging; it is difficult to bring intelligent discussion to the table when materials are distributed the night before the meeting, or, at the meeting.

The four pieces of mail that were forwarded by the Department are:

• Season's Greetings from the Nashoba Valley Technical High School Committee, Administration, and Staff (of Westford MA), stamped by the Department "received December 17, 2014"

• Season's Greetings and a 2015 desk calendar from SABIS Educational Systems, Inc (Eden Prairie MN), no date stamp

• Western MA Education Leaders Coalition (WMELC) Position Statement of December 3, 2014, with Cover Letter and List of WMELC Member Districts and Educational Collaboratives, sent January 14, 2015 (stamped January 16, 2015) from the office of Superintendent of Ludlow Public Schools, Todd H. Gazda on behalf of the WMELC, and signed by Michael J. Kelliher, Chairman on behalf of the Ludlow School Committee; Todd H. Gazda, Superintendent of Schools; and Brian Bylicki on behalf of the Ludlow Education Association. (An email containing the same information was sent to Board members on Friday, January 16, 2015).
• The 3-page WMELC Position Statement expresses concerns about:
1. Amount, Pace and Cost of Unfunded Mandates
2. Validity, reliability and implementation of PARCC exam
3. Amount, Frequency and Cost of Standardized Testing
• WMELC Member Districts and Educational Collaboratives include:
• Agawam Public Schools
• Collaborative for Educational Services
• East Longmeadow Public Schools
• Hadley Public Schools
• Lower Pioneer Valley Educational Collaborative
• Ludlow Public Schools
• Monson Public Schools
• Palmer Public Schools
• Southwick Tolland Granville Regional School District
• West Springfield Public Schools

• A booklet, with Cover Letter, entitled "Fitchburg Public Schools Perspective" sent from the Office of the Superintendent (Fitchburg MA). The letter is signed by Andre Ravenelle, Superintendent of Schools. The booklet contains "letters of support, transcripts of testimony presented at the public hearing as well as a number of artifacts" believed to help give Board Members "a detailed, yet broad perspective of the work of the Fitchburg Public Schools."

Monks and Ripples

Back in my twenties, after attaining a First Degree Black Belt in Shim Gum Do Korean Zen Martial Arts, I moved into the monastery located on the outskirts of Boston. I lived with other residents and the Founding Master, Zen Master Chang Sik Kim, a Korean Zen Buddhist monk who taught us and other students at Shim Gwang Sa, the Mind Light Temple.

Shim Gwang Sa is a renovated 100+ year-old building, a former church. Students in the Residency Program have professional jobs or attend college classes during the day and maintain a daily morning and evening meditation and martial arts practice and weekly temple work schedule. During the nearly four years I lived there, the number of residents varied between nine and sixteen, and ages ranged from adults in their twenties and thirties, primarily, with a few folks in their forties.

None of us at Shim Gwang Sa aspired to monkshood. We took no vows of celibacy or poverty; we were training for good health and successful living. In ideal terms though, there was a lot we could learn from the monk: a monk always knows what he's supposed to do at any given time of the day and temple-life strove for this ideal.

In college, I had been introduced to the poems and writings of American Trappist monk Thomas Merton and German-language poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Merton's work, The Seven Storey Mountain, written during his first years in the monastery at Gethsemani, redefined contemplative life for many. Rilke had no desire to become a monk, but he was so moved by the monastic life he found when he traveled in Russia - and was particularly inspired by the archetype of the monk - that he wrote a series of poems called The Book of Hours, the title coming from the book from which monks chant the canonical hours.

I live my life in widening circles that reach out across the world. I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it. 

I circle around God, around the primordial tower. I've been circling for thousands of years and I still don't know: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song? 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Book of Hours (translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows)

To the monk, a canonical hour is more a presence in the day rather than our common understanding of a sixty-minute segment of it. We come closer to appreciating the monastic idea when reflecting on the seasons of the year: each season is defined less by exact start and end dates and more on qualitative aspects of time expressed in nature.

Before the calendar marked the beginning of Autumn last week, we already knew something was underway. One sensed a subtle shift in mood: the angle and quality of light and diminishing daylight betrayed the warm summer temperatures. I noted that some of the trees had given way to this shift with changing leaves, in evidence since August. It's the time of year when personal reflection comes more easily and naturally for me, too; I reflect on personal goals, hopes, dreams. It feels easier now that children are back in school than during our active summer.

Even in our busy schedules, we notice that different times of the day have unique qualities, as well. In monastic life, each hour issues a distinct challenge and calls for a response.

Living healthy lives means building in moments of daily vision, then letting our action flow from it. A Japanese proverb warns: 

Vision without action is a daydream.
Action without vision is a nightmare.

The over-arching clarity of our vision and action ultimately builds our days, our weeks, our lives. To the monk, life is about bringing together clarity of vision and action in each moment by moment. Vision alone, meditation alone, is incomplete contemplation. Completing the circle requires a melding of vision and action; all of us (not just monks!) are called to contemplation in this sense.