School Committee reverses vote, approves new WTA admissions policy

WESTFIELD — In a reversal of its vote from Oct 6, the School Committee on Oct. 20 unanimously approved with little discussion the new Westfield Technical Academy admissions policy that had failed by a vote of three in favor and four opposed at the previous meeting.

After the first vote, the School Committee agreed to put it on the agenda for reconsideration at Monday's meeting.

"They weren't voting against the policy we created, they were voting against the whole idea of lottery versus merit," said WTA Principal Bruce Hastings after the first meeting.

In introducing the revised policy on Oct. 6, Superintendent Stefan Czaporowski said the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education had gone against the recommendation of career technical education administrators across the state by requiring a lottery for admission.

In the former admissions policy, five factors for admission were considered, including attendance, discipline, academic referral from a guidance counselor, grades and a student's interest in career technical education. "We did interviews with each applicant to see what their interest was in coming," Hastings said. He said schools may still conduct interviews as part of the new policy, but students can't be graded on them.

In the new system, schools will have a choice of employing two different types of lottery; a straight lottery in which every applicant gets one name entered, and a weighted lottery with three different criteria; an attendance weight if a student had fewer than 27 absences to date in seventh and eighth grade; a discipline weight if they have no grievances against them per state law of possession of a dangerous weapon or assault against educational staff, and another weight for showing an interest in career technical education.

Hastings said right now WTA is considering only putting in an extra slip for attendance. "The way we're looking at it is if they're applying, they're showing interest."

Mayor Michael McCabe, who chairs the School Committee, said it was his vote that defeated the approval the first time around. He said he had been concerned about Westfield being able to continue to send kids out-of-district and receive kids in-district when WTA had shops that other districts didn't have.

"If we had adopted the new admissions policy, my worry was that we wouldn't be able to bring in kids or send them out-of-district, that the only way in the new process was to serve Westfield kids," he said. However, after looking into it, he realized that was not the case.

"We're still allowed to do whatever we were doing in the past," McCabe said.

The mayor said he was still concerned about the lessening of academic, disciplinary and attendance requirements. "In the long run, it's pretty much status quo. Once I learned the policy didn't have adverse effects, my vote was changed," he said.

"We have to be in compliance," said Czaporowski, adding that while the new admissions policy is not popular among career technical educators, the possibility of losing funding is a significant factor.

"For me, there should be some sort of qualifications to get into a tech school," Czaporowski said. He said attendance patterns and safety violations are of particular concern to him, because not coming to school every day or not acting safely in the shops might impact a student's ability to succeed, and keep other students out.

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