School worries about losing accreditation
Correction: Because of a reporting error, a June 17 story about Belmont High School's accreditation status gave an incorrect date for an upcoming New England Association of Schools and Colleges panel meeting. The meeting will be held June 24-25.
Does accreditation with the New England Association of Schools and Colleges really matter for a public high school?
Faced with a possible loss of that status, officials at Belmont High School have spent the past five years scurrying to address the accrediting agency's concerns about their 36-year-old building. And still some are worried the efforts may fall short of putting the school in the clear with the agency, also known as NEASC.
NEASC, which accredits 650 secondary schools around New England, put Belmont High on warning status in 2002 because of a number of building maintenance issues and an outdated science wing. At its meeting tomorrow, the agency will decide whether the school gets a passing grade, after reviewing a five-year report submitted by Belmont officials in March detailing the improvements they have made and their yet-to-be-funded renovation plans.
"The expectation was that [NEASC's concerns] would all be addressed by the five-year report," Belmont High School principal Michael Harvey said recently.
But Harvey nonetheless worries that the lack of secured funding for renovating the school would lower its standing with the agency. He said he guessed it was unlikely that Belmont High would lose accreditation, but he was not entirely optimistic. "My guess is we are looking at probation," he said.
Belmont High is not alone on NEASC's warning list; statewide, there are 125 others on similar status, including North Andover High School. Among schools in the area, Woburn High was just taken off the list in January, while Beverly High and Haverhill High are on probation.
Accreditation is based on an extensive peer review process, primarily examining "issues of academic equity," according to Pamela Gray-Bennett, director of the NEASC's commission on public secondary schools. In other words, a school's various departments -- art, science, English, mathematics, and so on -- should be about equal in strength, she said.
In Belmont, the high school has met many of NEASC's requirements, including amending its mission statement and creating more interdisciplinary courses. Administrators have created two renovation plans since receiving the warning. The first called for a major renovation of the entire building, at a cost of nearly $80 million.
The second, scaled-down version would cost about $20 million and would add a new science wing with 12 classrooms.
On May 15, the School Committee approved submission of the less costly plan to the Massachusetts School Building Authority, which will begin accepting new applications for state-funded school building projects on July 1 after a four-year moratorium.
Given the expected influx of applications, the scaled-down version seemed more likely to pass muster with the state, said School Committee member Scott Stratford. "We want to address the most pressing needs first," he said, echoing other officials concerned about the school's standing.
Harvey acknowledged the high school building is less than ideal. It was constructed in 1971, and its science labs and infrastructure have not been improved since. Harvey said he once tripped a circuit just by plugging electrical equipment into a socket in his office. "We don't have the infrastructure for the IT age," he said.
The science labs were built on a lecture model where students would sit stadium-style in lecture classrooms before breaking up into smaller groups to do their lab work. "It is not a model we use anymore," said Harvey. "Physically, we don't have the space to do it the old way."
Even so, Harvey is proud of the consistently high-achieving students who come out of Belmont High, citing 10 National Merit finalists among the school's population. SAT scores are consistently higher than both the state and national median, and 90 percent of students scored proficient or higher on the English and math portions of the 2006 MCAS scores.
"I still think our kids will do well," Harvey said.
For some in town, though, assurances from school administration are not enough.
"I'm really nervous as a parent," said Gretchen McClain, a 14-year resident of Belmont who has three children, one each in elementary, middle, and high school. "They are not investing in the schools. They keep cutting back, but they still want people to think the schools are great."
McClain said many of the issues facing the school are not addressed by the proposed $20 million renovation project, which she calls a Band-Aid.
McClain, whose oldest child is a freshman at the high school, said she worries that colleges will not look favorably on Belmont graduates should it lose its accreditation.
But it's a notion that is not keeping Belmont school officials up at night.
"As a practical matter, accreditation makes no difference," said Superintendent Peter Holland, pointing to other measurements such as high SAT and advanced placement scores and a college acceptance rate that hovers around 95 percent year after year.
"Clearly, these measure the quality of any school, and we are excelling," Holland said. The accreditation matter is "not a major issue."
Still, he said, he hopes NEASC's attention on the school will help move the problems with the 35-year-old building to the front of the town's agenda.
"Ultimately, what accreditation does is give you some leverage with the town," he said. "This is a political and financial problem that needs to be resolved."
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