From today’s worcester telegram:
Whatever Mr. Reville intended by his Feb. 5 e-mail, influencing a charter decision on any grounds but the merits of a proposal is improper per se. Moreover, it is not the first time that Mr. Reville has done so. In 2008, as chairman of the BOE, Mr. Reville was instrumental in the rejection of the SABIS International charter school proposal for Brockton. Mr. Reville relied upon a 2005 letter from state education officials that cited SABIS’ Springfield school for special education deficiencies, resulting in the BOE rejecting the Brockton proposal over the favorable recommendation of then acting commissioner Jeffrey Nelhaus.
However, the deficiencies cited in the letter had been successfully addressed by SABIS two years earlier, in 2003; that same year, ironically, the Rennie Center, an educational think tank headed at the time by none other than Mr. Reville, had cited SABIS’ Springfield school as among the best urban schools in the state for closing achievement gaps between racial groups. The Springfield school, moreover, has since been named among the top 3 percent of high schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.
