Springfield Public Schools Superintendent Jennifer Gill is getting high marks for candor in the way she describes the dismal graduation rate, test scores and racial disparities of District 186. In her speech to the Springfield Citizens Club Sept. 26, the new schools chief demonstrated she understands the difficulties facing this urban school system with 15,000 students, and she won’t be distracted by the relative lack of problems in the bedroom communities surrounding it. Her “data-driven” straightforward approach should take Springfield schools from being her problem to being “our” problem – so that citizens will eventually take action for change. Jennifer Gill’s address to the Citizens Club is available online at http://youtu.be/HVJMfbKvgt8. –Fletcher Farrar, editor and publisher
This article appears in Oct 2-8, 2014.
