Focus, direction, clarity--these qualities are what members of the Cambridge School Committee say has been missing from the school district's educational philosophy.

But this past year, the uncertainties of teacher contract negotiations and debate over the restructuring of several schools in the district have been a continuing distraction from the district's long-term goals.

More than 100 10th-graders boycotted the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) tests--a state-mandated exam--last month, as well as dozens of fourth- and eighth-graders.

The merger of the Fletcher and Maynard elementary schools has been contentious and the restructuring of the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS) has also been disruptive, with committee members spending much of their time shepherding these complicated projects.

Now, school committee members say they have to scale back to a few goals, two years after they drew up 11 ambitious objectives for the school system--which ranged from making sure students pass algebra in eighth grade to teaching organizational, research and study skills.

"There's probably more stress than I'd hoped--few happy moments," says committee member Alfred B. Fantini. "There hasn't been much buy-in."

Now, the committee says it will merely monitor the merger and high school reform, but leave the schools' leaders to implement the details while it tackles more far-reaching educational questions.

Restructuring

Following the committee's unanimous vote to restructure CRLS on Feb. 3, major--and contentous--change in the Cambridge school district has been underway.

Currently, CRLS has five "houses" of unequal size that use widely varying teaching styles.

Next year, the houses will be replaced by five small "schools" of equal size, which will use similar teaching styles and create more self-contained groups of students and teachers in the high school of 2,000 students.

Teachers have already been distributed among the new schools. Three-quarters will have to pack up their classrooms so the building can be rearranged into the new schools. And over the summer, teachers will attend workshops on advising and on teaching illiterate high-school students how to read.

The end result, says CRLS Principal Paula M. Evans, who formulated the reform plan, will be more intimate schools where every student is known well by at least one teacher. Parents, teachers and students widely agree that CRLS at present is a place where some students flourish, but where many students flounder because they have no connection to school officials.

Evans says she is also trying to develop ways of helping students with reading difficulties catch up, such as having elementary school principals tell CRLS administrators which students need remedial classes.

"We're trying to get very straight information about what students are coming into high school with," she says.

Whatever the merits of the end result, the process is "excruciating," says Linda S. Lipkin, an English teacher in Pilot, one of the five CRLS houses.