By Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries and letters to the Editor of The Somerville Times belong solely to the authors and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville Times, its staff or publishers)

There’s no shortage of national news these days with the Presidential election kicking into high gear, but the biggest thing happening in Somerville this week is our kids are starting their new school year. My sons are now in grades 8, 6, 5 and 3 (my wife Nancy deserves a medal) and we’re going through the annual ritual of getting new clothes and school supplies while trying to switch our boys from summer mode to school mode. As a parent, this is one of the most hectic weeks of the year.

However, as a mayor and member of the school committee, what really excites me is the quality of the schools my sons get to attend. When I first became mayor back in 2004, I promised to make our city’s schools my top priority, and the transformation we have worked as a community to achieve since then has been nothing short of remarkable.

The evidence is system-wide, but take a look at the High School for an example. There, we have seen MCAS scores rise by leaps and bounds. Proficient and advanced scores in English/Language Arts at SHS have risen from 51% to 88%. They’ve risen from 52% to 78% in math and between 2008 and 2015 from 42% to 73% in science. Somerville High boasts a Level 1 designation according to the state (that means we have a top tier high school), and we rank in the top 12% of the state in Student Growth Percentile. Even more importantly, the number of Somerville High graduates going on to higher and further education has risen to 80%. Our kids are thriving academically and heading out into the world ready to compete with anyone. We continue to prove an urban school district can be the equal of any suburban district.

Yet we are not resting on our laurels. We are expanding the number of Advanced Placement courses at the High School. We are adding more SAT prep. We have brought in new technology district-wide and added an instructional technology specialist. We are enriching STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math) offerings in our schools. We have expanded the number of pre-k seats in the city. To increase our hands-on educational opportunities, we are expanding maker spaces throughout our school system.

Beyond that, we have added services and programs targeting many of our most vulnerable students. We have new classrooms for children who previously required out-of-district placements to accommodate their educational or physical needs. That ties in with expanded and enhanced special education services. In particular we’ve partnered with Lesley University to increase the number of instructors we have with special ed and ELL/ESL certification. What we had found was that many children needed services in both of those areas and it is difficult to find instructors who can do both. We also have increased mental health services in conjunction with Riverside Community Care and the Home for Little Wanderers.

One of the realities we face in our school system is that our student population largely comes from homes that make well below Somerville’s average household income. More than two-thirds of our students qualify for some type of meals assistance. In many cases we have students who have moved around a lot as their families have pursued jobs and stable housing. We often find those are kids who have unidentified needs.

To make sure that no child slips between the cracks in our educational system we have fostered stronger working relationships between our schools and our City Health and Human Services Department. We will be adding a new clinical youth specialist who will be working with new arrivals and English language learners to make sure we have a 360-degree understanding of the services each child needs to thrive in our schools. We have children with housing, food, family and medical issues and sometimes that transforms our teachers into de facto social workers when those kids aren’t receiving services elsewhere. We want to eliminate those gaps. So we are putting resources into addressing these challenges that occur outside the classroom to allow children to succeed inside the classroom.

We will continue to bring together our school and city administrators as part of our Community Cabinet, which focuses on how both arms of city government can work in unison to better our community. Many of the programs we have initiated address issues that have been identified by our SomerPromise program, which mines the data from our schools and identifies areas that need to be improved and challenges that need to be met so that every child in Somerville has a full opportunity to flourish.

Our schools are remarkable places that do extraordinary things. I know the commitment and hard work that has gone into making our schools the centers of excellence they have become. As a mayor, I’m humbled to work with so many talented people in a city whose action on improving its schools exceeds its rhetoric. As a parent, I’m just thrilled my boys get to go to these schools.