Heat, dismissal schedules pose challenges

Despite some glitches surrounding air conditioning in general and dismissal schedules at some of the elementary schools, Superintendent of Schools Jeffrey Szymaniak gave the district’s opening day of the 2018-19 school year a grade of B-plus.

“I want to thank the police and fire departments from both towns who were giving high-fives to all middle school and elementary school kids,” Szymaniak said. “It was a great opening.”

The School Committee on Wednesday, Aug. 29 heard a review of the first day of school and a progress report on the new WHRHS scoreboard project.

There were some air-conditioning issues, even at the high school as the summer’s oppressive heat and humidity continued, according to Szymaniak, but he had Facilities Director Ernest Sandland purchase 60 80-bottle cases of water to distribute to the elementary schools and encouraged staff to keep students hydrated.

Szymaniak and Assistant Superintendent George Ferro toured all the schools on Tuesday, Aug. 28 to ensure they were ready for that evening’s open houses as well as Wednesday’s opener.

“Our facilities department is pretty awesome,” Szymaniak said. “We got emails from the three elementary principals saying [Sandland] got everything done, buildings looked great  … and I think parents were very excited about going to open house.”

Ferro was out directing traffic at the new inner drop-off loop at the high school and he and Szymaniak then “bounced around” from building to building to observe the opening.

When the dismissal issues cropped up at Indian Head Elementary, Szymaniak and Ferro went to the school to investigate the situation and get information out to parents “a little bit later than I wanted to, but” Hanson Police Chief Michael Miksch and resource officer William Frazier helped adjust the dismissal process.

Maquan School will officially be closed by Sept. 30, which permits time to hold yard sales of excess equipment on Tuesday, Sept. 18 for town departments to shop and on Friday, Sept. 22 for the general public.

Athletic Director Bob Rodgers announced that the new scoreboard is financed sufficiently with the aim for it to be installed for the season-opening game vs. Marshfield Friday night.

Rodgers took the opportunity to again stress that no taxpayer dollars are being spent on the project. The JJ Frisoli Foundation has donated $25,000 and will receive a double advertising panel on the scoreboard for the life of the unit. Mutual Bank and Richard Rosen have each contributed $10,000 for single panels for 10 years. Rosen will divide his panel between Rosen Realty and McGuiggan’s Pub. Two more $10,000 panels are still available and may be subdivided. Rodgers said he is in discussions with three companies that are “strong possibilities” for those spaces.

The final installation is now estimated at $110,000.

“It’s a much more complicated process than we envisioned when we started this,” he said. “But, with the scoreboard going up, I think a lot of people are going to see this and think the school must have tons of money.”

The project is being paid for outright through previous fundraising and gate receipts in addition to the donations and advertising sponsorships already received. Future fundraising will replenish those funds.

“I’m pretty optimistic about where this is headed,” Rodgers said, noting the board can be leased in a limited capacity for youth sports programs as well as post-WHRHS football game “fifth-quarter” movie screenings.

“We’re going to be able to sell advertising that will be meaningful advertising for the businesses in town,” he said. “Several restaurants” have already expressed interest.

Rodgers anticipates the scoreboard advertising will be an ongoing revenue source for the athletics department for years and can be offered to W-H clubs and organizations to sell advertising from which they can divide proceeds with the athletics department.

The School Committee also voted to accept advertising rates including “nonprofit shoutouts” for $25; 30-second video with audio for between  $100 to $400 depending on the sport and season and a digital full color display for between $25 to $100 per game or $200 to $250 per season. The committee will be updated prior to a re-vote on the advertising pricing during a meeting thhis coming June.

Special Ed PAC gears up for year

The district’s Special Education Parent Advisory Committee (SEPAC) has been required since the 1970s but last year Hanson residents Tina Stidstone and James Fitzgerald took a leading role in revitalizing it.

“The plan is to make the SEPAC something more than it ever has been,” Stidstone says. “My kids have been in the district since 2002 and I never got involved before.”

She said in the past, the special education director planned meetings for parents that showed up, but noted SEPACs are intended to be parent-run organizations. Stidstone and Fitzgerald are hopeful some of the programs they are planning attract more parents to those meetings and some special events.

“This past year I emailed and said ‘all right, I’m taking it as a personal goal to get this thing up and running,’” she said. “I think we’ve done OK. … My whole thought is I have no right to say anything if I don’t become part of something to make it better.”

They started with five parents at last year’s meet-and-greet to 23 at the last meeting of the year, but with more than 600 special needs children in the district, Stidstone would like to see more parents attending.

“I think a lot of people aren’t aware of it, don’t know what it is or what it’s for,” Fitzgerald said. “It was one of those things that was slightly on my radar and with some of the changes the district was making I wanted to have an avenue to talk to other parents.”

They are also concerned about the status of Assistant Superintendent of Pupil Services Kyle Riley, who is currently on personal leave. Retired Special Education Coordinator Mildred O’Callaghan has been serving in a consulting capacity for the past few months, according to Stidstone. Executive Assistant Lisa Forbes has also been working with the SEPAC.

SEPAC meetings are held from 6 to 8 p.m., the first and second Tuesday of the month in the WHRHS library. The group’s first meeting of the school year will be on Tuesday, Sept. 11 and is the meet-and-greet session with district administrators, they noted. Other programs will center on school transition and public safety topics. A basic rights meeting also has to be presented every year.

An October meeting will focus on transition of students to new schools with the closing of the Maquan School and a November meeting will feature members of police and fire departments to discuss “our kids in the community” the duo said.

“The biggest impact of all of it was on the special needs kids,” Stidstone said. Most of them were transferred to Whitman’s Duval School, where they don’t know any of the other students she said.

“We have to know what happened good and what happened bad,” she said. “This can’t be just a ‘bash the district session,’ this has to be for constructive feedback.”

Like parents of preschool pupils with older siblings in Hanson Schools, Hanson parents of special needs students attending Duval are still working out transportation arrangements.

Stidstone said members of the group asked for the meeting with public safety personnel.

“If you see my kid walking down the road and he’s stimming (the repetition of physical movements, sounds, or words, or the repetitive movement of objects common in individuals with developmental disabilities), how are you going to react?” she said. Providing profiles for first responders of special needs children for their information in the event of an emergency is another topic they’ve discussed.

“They don’t want to send their guys into a situation where they frighten a child,” she said of the fire chiefs in both towns who are very supportive of the November meeting.
In December, they plan a meeting with the district about emergency drills at school and how the alarms can cause distress.

“During lockdowns, they are supposed to stay quiet in a corner,” she added. “My son’s not going to stay quiet in a corner. What is being done for those kids?”

Fitzgerald said during a first day of school fire drill, his son was upset when it came time to go back into the school.

“Those meetings [in November and December] are really about safety,” he said.

Parents have also asked for day meetings, and that is being looked at as possible spring and fall sessions after preschool drop-offs, perhaps in the high school’s Courtyard Café.

They are also working to plan a SEPAC family picnic with first responders perhaps bringing some of their vehicles for the children to explore. Stidstone said she, for example, has tried to bring her son to community touch-a-truck events in the past but he was too overwhelmed by the crowds.

“This will be our kids only,” she said. “It’s not going to be public. The plan is to have a picnic with our families and meet a couple cops and firefighters in their gear so that they know if a firefighter comes [to the house] he’s not a monster.”

They are also trying to plan a resource fair for the parents of special needs kids later in the school year to address the major concern parents had in a survey Stidstone and Fitzgerald conducted last year.

Fitzgerald said they are also coordinating with SEPACs in other districts.

HANSON — There was some disagreement on how the discoloration happens, but the Water Department has been asked by its board of commissioners to open a gate at High and Main streets — which directs water toward the train station —for at least a week to determine if it will clear manganese and iron deposits from water mains along three streets in town.

The idea is to direct clean water from the tank toward Hanson’s Main, Reed and South streets, where continuing problems with discolored water at their homes along those streets motivated more than a dozen residents to attend a Board of Water Commissioners’ meeting on Wednesday, Aug. 22, demanding a solution.

Residents were asked to return in two weeks to let the board know if the opened gate helps improve their water quality. They say the water pressure has been fine — and some left the meeting more dissatisfied than when they arrived.

“When everything’s running during the daytime, there’s a lot of water moving through the pipe,” Commissioner Don Howard said. “When everybody shuts down their house and the faucets and goes to bed, the tank fills up … the sediment sets in [dips in] the pipe. The next day, when you start using the water, it turbulates it up and it runs into the pipe and I think that’s what’s happening.”

Flow vs pipes

Water Department Assistant Superintendent Gerald Davis said he believed the problem was more likely due to the 12-inch main from Main Street connecting to another 12-inch main on South Street via an eight-inch pipe along Reed Street. He also argued more frequent flushing on the mains would also help.

But Howard maintained the gates were the likely source of the problem.

Residents, some of whom are thinking about selling their homes, voiced frustration at the expense of replacing water heaters, filters and clothing ruined by the dark brown water.

Assessor Lee Gamache, of 819 Main Street, said the situation is already hurting the real estate market in Hanson.

“If it was just one incident, I think we’d understand,” she said.

Her husband Joe asked what, if any, long-term plan there is to address the problem.

“You talk about low water costs, well it’s costing us a lot, not just for water, but we have a new hot water heater [and we’re] probably going to have to replace it,” he said, adding that they have also had to replace clothing. “There’s no real warning so financially, it’s been a burden constantly replacing things because of it.”

A couple from Gorwin Drive said they feel the problem is “creeping” in their direction.

Joe Gamache supported closing the gate in conjunction with a maintenance program including more frequent pipe flushing until pipes can be replaced.

“We’ve got to try something because we’re not going to get … pipe replaced tomorrow like we all want,” he said. “We can revisit this in a year. If we don’t see any kind of improvement, you’re going to see a ‘For Sale’ sign in my yard.”

Howard said Hanson’s 100-year-old water system now consists of three different types of water pipes in the ground, much of them cast iron.

“That pipe is the same pipe that Brockton and several other area towns have in,” he said. “The problem with it is the manganese and iron builds up in the cast iron [pipes] over a period of years.”

New pipes installed are required to be cement-lined.

“If we could to that in all of our cast iron pipes in town, we’d eliminate a lot of our problems, but the Water Department doesn’t have the money,” he said. “So we’re trying to keep the water flowing.”

More frequent flushing of pipes is not possible because of mandatory Mass. DEP water conservation regulations, Davis said. Howard agreed, noting the only flushing done in the past five years was done this past spring to try to reduce the iron and manganese deposits.

“I’m hoping and planning that we can do it again this fall,” Howard said, noting sediment sits in the pipes until a heavy use emergency such as a fire or water main break disturbs it. The July 5 fire at JJ’s Pub and an Aug. 20 water main break on Andrew Lane both caused that to happen.

Work being done by the Brockton water department on Main Street Monday, Aug. 27 was to Brockton pipes and should have no effect on Hanson water, according to the Hanson Water Department.

“How to control it? I have no way of knowing, I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “I’ve worked with water since 1957. We don’t want to raise the price of water.”

Howard also said the Water Department is trying to keep water prices down, but residents attending the meeting said they would be willing to pay more for clear water and that they are already spending a lot to resolve problems the sediment causes.

They are already buying water.

“We buy so much water,” a woman said. “I won’t drink it or cook with it or give it to the pets.”

Some of the residents said they don’t even like to shower in it.

“I’ll pay more for clean water,” said a South Street resident who said he would not have bought his house had he been advised of the water issue. “We’re talking in circles here. What’s the issue? What’s the resolution? What’s the cost? What’s the time frame? That’s what I came here to hear.”

He had serious doubts that 9,000 voters in town would back higher bills to help 1,000 people having problems. Howard replied that it is hard to get a quorum of 100 voters at Town Meeting.

“We don’t want to pay anything for dirty water,” the resident said.

Commissioner Gil Amado said he was a member of the commission because, as a South Street resident, he is affected, too.

I’m frustrated myself,” Amado said. “I’m on this board to help make things better. The water has been better, but we’ve had so many issues … water follows the path of least resistance and, when it starts flowing, it’s taking whatever’s in that pipe with it.”

“With money it could be cleaned,” the South Street resident said.

Another resident said they need to hear a timetable, too.

“What we keep hearing is you have a plan, you have a plan, you have a plan, but there’s no definite date,” she said. “There’s no definite solution. It’s like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to work on it, but it’s going to take 20 years or it’s going to take 10 years.’”

Call with problems

In the meantime, Davis urged residents to call the Water Department when problems occur — no matter how often — instead of going on Facebook.

“People read on Facebook that someone doesn’t have water, everybody runs to their faucet and then they turn the water on,” he said. “Don’t do that! Because, if there’s a water main break, you’re bringing all the dirty water into your house.”

Howard said water should be turned off when there is a main break.

When animals depend on water during a break, Davis said owners should also call. During the last main break, Water Department staff members provided water to horses on a farm in the affected area.

When lines are flushed, he can also plan to do it where people have animals or are served by a cast iron line, the timing of the flushing can be adjusted.

“This year alone it’s been so minimal, only until we disturb the system,” Davis said.

“I don’t think people are calling,” another resident said.

“If we know where the major complaints are, we can target that area. … I don’t care if you call everyday.”

Howard initially said the pipe-replacement plan could take 20 years, but then backed away from that estimate.

When Hanson painted the inside of the water tank last summer, it cost about $335,000 to purchase water from Brockton during those three months. The Water Department budget is $1.5 million of that, another $35,000 was required in electricity costs to pump the Brockton water.

New wells being put in on East Washington Street will help a lot of the cost and discoloration problems, Howard said. A pipe replacement program will be introduced after a new water tank is put in.

A couple who moved into their 300 South St. home in 2006, however said they are already preparing to sell their house because of the ongoing water problems.

“I know a lot of people have had problems since the water tank project,” the woman said, noting they have had to replace three pressure leak valves in three years because of the sediment. “We’ve had it since 2006 on a regular basis and it has increased.”

The residents said they were still having problems three days after the water main break.

Davis said any fluctuation in pressure would make water dirty.

HANSON — Officials must do a better job of communicating with residents, especially younger people, Selectmen say.

The Board of Selectmen on Tuesday, Aug. 14, requested that Town Administrator Michael McCue determine methods for improving communication with the public and membership on town boards and committees.

The item was part of a continued review of McCue’s goals and timelines prompted by his request for clarification or feedback on some goals. He also sought more information on the goal for reducing costs and increasing revenues.

Selectman Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said she asked for the communication goal because she thought the town should be more active in making appearances on cable access programs or the WHCA community bulletin board and the Express in order to make sure people are aware of town meetings and board and committee vacancies. She said there should also be an effort to drive people to the town’s website.

“I know we’ve struggled with our social media presence, but we must find a way to get information out there where we’re going to reach people,” she said. “We need to engage younger people and we need to reach them where they’re at.”

FitzGerald also argued the effort is important because she wants to see the effort to fill vacancies on town boards and commissions be less difficult.

“I would really like to see such engagement that we’ve got a cross-section of all kinds of people on all these committees and boards so that we’re getting the best and the brightest and all kinds of ideas from across the spectrum,” she said. “The only way we can do that is to educate people.”

That includes a description of duties and estimated time commitment required of members.

McCue said FitzGerald-Kemmett’s explanation was very helpful and he is already mulling ideas.

FitzGerald-Kemmett also suggested some sort of deadline be attached to it to avoid having things put off. McCue said he would be willing to go on WHCA and discuss the needs of town boards and to submit some information to the Express.

Selectman Matt Dyer said he is also concerned how best to get information on the progress committees are making, and communicating needs, to the public on social media without violating the Open Meeting law.

“If we post it on social media is it public record because I’m on the board and now I’m using my official capacity to spread that information?” he asked. “I think if we get some clarification and guidelines on how to use social media to disburse this information, it would help.”

FitzGerald-Kemmett argued there should be a point person in Town Hall, whether it be the incoming IT director or someone else, to act as a conduit to getting information out to the public.

McCue suggested putting together a procedure for department heads to follow in achieving that.

McCue is continuing meetings with East Bridgewater to hire a shared IT director after a person the towns had hoped to bring on board had declined the offer.

Regarding costs and revenues, McCue said the town is “kind of doing that right now” in the auction of tax title properties.

But FitzGerald-Kemmett said it could also be as simple as an idea contest among town employees who may have ideas for more economical ways of doing their jobs.

“I would say that those conversations do take place to a certain degree, every month at our staff meetings,” McCue said, noting his idea was to see if the citizenry had any ideas.

Dyer suggested it could be as simple as placing a comment box or two around town. FitzGerald-Kemmett suggested something along the line of the Commonwealth Connect system Whitman uses where people can take a picture of a pothole or something else that concerns them and uploads it to the town site.

Selectmen also, in the board’s capacity as the body responsible for setting the Town Meeting warrant, voted to place a Housing Authority vacancy on the annual election ballot.

“This is a request and a requirement from the town clerk,” McCue said.

The town is also looking for volunteers to be appointed to the vacancy until the election, especially for those who also want to run for the office next spring.

WHITMAN — By his own admission, Richard Rosen may not be the best or the smartest beekeeper, but he is becoming the face of backyard beekeeping for people tuning into their local cable access stations from coast to coast as he learns more about it.

He has already inspired the 5-year-old daughter of Whitman-Hanson Community Access TV Executive Director Eric Dresser, who was captivated by seeing a guy in a bee suit.

Rosen has been fascinated by bees, and the idea of running his own hives, for a long time — and while the real estate developer knew honey production was no money-maker, he also knew it was important to try to save them.

“It’s fascinating is what it is,” he said of the life cycle of bees and their honey production. “It was something that I had thought about for years. I thought, kind of from the fringe, that it was pretty interesting.”

He has turned that fascination into a sideline at McGuiggan’s Pub, selling jarred honey, and now working on a drinks menu on which listed beverages will include his honey as an ingredient.

Rosen has also become something of a celebrity through the syndication of his cable access series “The Buzz Around Bees,” which is now seen in programming markets in 14 states, including California and New York. It is the first show WHCA-TV has ever syndicated.

Rosen has already experienced some face-to-face feedback from fans. While attending the Aug. 8 Whitman Police Night Out Against Crime, he said a person stepped up to talk to him about the show.

“There was passion in the person who was talking to me about what they learned from what we showed them,” Rosen said. “I think that’s really cool and it’s surprising how many people do say something to me that have seen the show. … It’s rewarding when people say things to you about what they have seen on the show.”

WHCA’s Access Operations Coordinator Kevin Tocci, who shares Rosen’s interest in bees, approached him about doing the show.

“The idea of what we do here is, if you see somebody who has a unique hobby —whether it’s bees, or gardening, painting, whatever it may be — to expand upon it,” Tocci said. “We’ve been successful here at getting people to take their hobby and make it into a TV program.”

Tocci noted that Rosen had done various other programs for WHCA over the years and is comfortable in front of the camera.

“When he told me he was getting bees I thought that would be a fantastic show,” Tocci said. “And we experienced some very interesting things … we not only experience that the hive had minted a new queen, we got to experience the marking process and [to] understand that.”

Going in, Rosen thought Tocci was talking about a single program. It’s now in its second season, with Rosen shifting attention from his own hives to those of other area beekeepers.

The show’s six-episode first season was an eventful one.

Rosen and his wife Kathy demonstrated introducing bees to the hive, how a new queen had been created in one hive, and how another was “robbed” of its honey by other bees.

“It’s difficult for me to explain just how crazy it is,” he said of the life of honeybees. “But the whole life of a honeybee — how they’re born and when they’re born, how long they live and what they do — it’s pretty fascinating.”

“The Buzz Around Bees” also seems to bridge different ages, Tocci said, as Dresser noted his daughter was intrigued when Tocci posted a photo on Instagram of himself wearing a beekeepers’ outfit for videotaping.

“What’s he wearing?” Dresser said his daughter asked. “I brought up Episode 1 and I showed her ‘The Buzz Around Bees’ and I had never seen her captivated by anything that’s not cartoons until that moment.”

But long before the TV show was even a suggestion, came the development of Rosen’s hobby beginning with learning more about honeybees.

“I started researching it and I read two books and watched a two-hour-and-20-minute DVD, and I still didn’t have any idea what I was doing when I was done,” he said.

Rosen also knew a couple beekeepers, whose experiences fueled his interest. One of those friends, who lives in Duxbury, finally inspired him to buy a couple hives and give beekeeping a try.

His Danecca Drive backyard now hosts seven hives as he has added to his apiary each year.

He stressed that he is still learning about bees himself — taking the eight-week bee school program offered by the Plymouth County Beekeepers’ Association three times so far.

“I’ve said this many times on the show, they have forgotten more about bees than I’ll ever know,” he said. “The old joke is, if you ask three beekeepers the same question, you’ll get five different answers.”

That old saw did not make him hesitate to bring on, in his role as program host, three beekeepers in his first season on the air” PCBA President Anne Rein of Hanson, as well as Bill Veazie and Glen Cornell of Whitman. The sixth and final show of the first season wrapped things up with a panel discussion of issues facing bee populations between Rosen, Rein and Cornell.

This year’s shows began with the bee pickup day in Plympton — in a garage with 9 million bees in packages of 10,000 bees each —and has included the most recently produced episode about sugar shaking to determine if mites have infested a hive and the different pollinators bees seek out. Last season included a tutorial on setting up oil traps for beetles that can take over a hive.

“Last year was not a good honey year, a lot of beekeepers had a tough time … basically because of the weather,” Rosen said of that season, in which he managed a fair yield despite his challenges.

The damage done to bee populations by weather, mites, beetles and pesticides are a very real concern.

With 85 percent of plant species on earth, and about 52 percent of the food products at your grocery store, requiring bees and other pollinators to exist, a 2013 Whole Foods Markets “Share the Buzz” demonstration of the statistics proved an eye-opener for Rosen. The store showed that one of every three bites of food is produced by honeybees and other pollinators by removing all products requiring pollination from its store shelves — 237 of 453 products including almost the entire produce department.

Between learning of that demonstration and his experience as a beekeeper, everything Rosen now plants in his yard benefits bees. That includes selecting plants that have not been treated with pesticides like neonicotinoid, which kill bees.

“This year, so far, it’s been a great year and six of the seven are doing well. One is doing OK, but I think it’s because of where I have them placed. I have a couple [hives] more in the shade and I’m finding they don’t particularly like the shade.”

A daily tablespoon of local honey, produced within a 25 mile radius of where one lives, is also said to be helpful for allergy sufferers.

“There are a lot of people that live by that,” he said. “I have people who come into McGuiggan’s to buy honey that are not drinkers, they’ve just heard we have true local honey and they want to buy it.”

Stings are the last thing to worry about, he said.

“Honey bees don’t want to sting you because they’re going to die after they sting you,” Rosen said. “They won’t unless you swat them. You tend to be afraid of bumble bees, because they’re so big — bumble bees will not bother you —but yellow jackets are bad guys and will sting.”