Panel to look at school models; Reconfigured grades possibile.

Byline: Jacqueline Reis

WORCESTER - One or more of the city's schools could have a new grade configuration and possibly a new governance model in coming years, but it is unlikely anything will be decided before a new superintendent takes office, the School Committee decided last night.

The committee voted to create a task force to consider reconfiguring one or more of the city's schools into a pre-kindergarten through Grade 8 school, a high school satellite program for Grades 6 through 8 or 7 and 8 similar to the shuttered Doherty Satellite Middle School program, or a Grades 7 through 12 or Grades 6 through 12 school. The task force would also consider whether such a school should be modeled on the Grades 7 through 12 University Park Campus School, which operates in cooperation with Clark University, or become a pilot school or a Horace Mann charter school, two other options that would keep any school under district oversight but give it more autonomy.

The committee asked interim Superintendent Deirdre J. Loughlin, whose first meeting was last night, to appoint the task force by mid-October, and they requested the committee conclude its background research by mid-February. Committee...