The School Committee on Wednesday, May 8 voted 9-0-1 to reaffirm the April 8 vote setting the operating assessments to Whitman at $19,135, 687 and Hanson at $14,974,735 for the regional school district fiscal 2025 budget.
Member Fred Small attended the meeting remotely via phone. He abstained from the vote.
“In Whitman, we have a fully funded budget … with the operating assessment that we had asked for after we certified the assessments for both communities,” Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak said. “However, I believe, in Whitman there will still be an override number on the ballot for May 18.”
Szymaniak explained to the Committee, that in Whitman, the Finance Committee had voted 8-0 against supporting the Select Board’s budget because they had an alternative funding source of free cash and stabilization for everything in the budget (Article 2).
“That wasn’t an opportunity for the taxpayers in Hanson, a this point,” he said. “If we don’t have a budget by July 1, I then go on a 1/12 budget based on the current fiscal 2024 budget, which is problematic for our budget … which will mean pink slips at this point.”
Whitman member Dawn Byers said she had spoken with Hanson Town Moderator Sean Kealy and was told that town’s free cash was in the bank at $1.4 million and its and stabilization account is $1.4 million, with the town only $372,141 off on the assessment for the school district.
Hanson officials said flatly on Tuesday, May 14, that the number was wrong [see story, page 1]
She said she did not support the override on Town Meeting floor because of how it was being presented to the voters, but that she supported the assessment she voted as a School Committee member.
Szymaniak noted that Hanson’s Town Meeting result was different, as an operating assessment of 5 percent was voted by the community and the override number was not voted affirmatively – which leaves the district with no budget, even though the override number is also still on the Hanson Town Election ballotfor May 18.
“I did contact our attorney today and asked which was binding … Town Meeting or the ballot,” Szymaniak said. On Wednesday, May 8, when that call was placed, the attorney was in his car on the way to court and asked Szymaniak to send the pertinent documents on Thursday, May 9. The district’s main question for their law firm is, which is binding – the ballot vote, or the vote of town meeting?
“He was not sure which supersedes,” Szymaniak said. “He didn’t have the law in front of him. … Basically, my recommendation is we don’t have a budget right now.”
If the override passes in Hanson, it could have an excess of $372,141 and they would have to figure out what they want to do with that, according to Szymaniak.
“Knowing these things, and before we have more conversation, my recommendation … is to keep the assessment as is,” said School Committee Chair Beth Stafford. “I don’t want to go over, we’ve already had one community approve it.”
Stafford recommended the committee keep the assessment as-is, because there has already been a lot of discussion and debate on it and Whitman has already passed it. She said school officials are also talking with Hanson, but they have indicated they would prefer to wait until after the May 18 election.
Vice Chair Christopher Scriven said he would like to see a detailed opinion of what Hanson’s Town Meeting vote actually means, because he understood it to be a formality to avoid a Town Meeting to appropriate the funds if the override is approved.
“Even if this was basically as a formality to avoid having to reconvene a Town Meeting to appropriate the funds, if the override’s approved because if that’s the case, it’s not an either-or, it’s that they both are binding,” Scriven said, noting that he wanted to ask school district counsel about Hanson’s ballot question.
Szymaniak said it had been explained to him that, since Whitman appropriated from a different funding source, made that void.
“Hanson hasn’t appropriated from another funding source, and that’s why I asked what’s binding,” he said.
“It won’t have been appropriated,” Stafford explained. “You have Town Meeting to appropriate that money so we would hope that it would be appropriated to us, but what are the chances?”
“This is an ongoing dialog right now,” Szymaniak said.
Member Hillary Kniffen, who attended Hanson’s Town Meeting, said that was not at all how the situation was explained to Hanson’s voters.
“The way that it was explained – essentially the takeaway from Town Meeting – was that the override vote on the ballot is moot,” she said. “The consensus was, ‘there is no school budget,’ ‘they don’t get more money,’ ‘there’s no override, hooray,’ ‘we voted it down.’”
She said that perception is important because people who would come out to vote for an override, think the issue is moot and added she felt the Hanson town counsel should communicate with School Committee counsel to determine the facts and communicate them to voters.
“For us on this committee to make decisions moving forward, I think that [believing] the override will pass and they’ll have extra money, I don’t think we should put our eggs in that basket,” Kniffen said.
Committee member Glen DiGravio, also of Hanson agreed.
“If the law is … we have no budget, so we have to reassess,” Szymaniak said. “It would be up to the committee to reassess, based on your feelings of one town actually appropriating a budget and one town not.”
He said that he placed the topic on the May 7 agenda because there is no budget because we don’t have a consensus between the two communities.
“The dangling chad out here is that we have two ballot questions of an override in both communities,” Szymaniak said. “My assumption, based on town meetings is that Whitman would probably vote no on the override because it’s always been appropriated.”
The School Committee could send the towns a budget and the towns would have to schedule a Town Meeting in that case. With 14 days needed to schedule a Town Meeting, Szymaniak said the committee could send the towns new assessments ahead of the May 18 Town Election and go from there.
Whitman Town Counsel, who Szymaniak said was very clear, said both towns have to approve a budget or there isn’t one. If the School Committee doesn’t increase the assessment, however, there would be no need for another Town Meeting in Whitman since everything has been settled outside of an override in that town.
What comes next?
Any increase in Whitman’s assessment would require Town Meeting action.
Szymaniak is concerned the override vote was voided because it went through another funding source – free cash.
“What’s binding? Is it the Town Meeting vote from Handon? Or is it the ballot which supersedes it?” he said.
“The town thinks that this is a done deal,” DiGravio said, agreeing with Kniffen. He asked what the next step would be.
While DeGravio said he was all for sending the same article back to Hanson, but he warned residents won’t be happy to see it return.
“They voted because they didn’t want to take it out of their bank account – their personal bank account – not some town bank account,” he said. “They don’t care about a town bank account.”
Szymaniak reiterated the process of reassessment and revoting, but added if the article fails again, it goes to a Super Town Meeting in which voters of both towns meet jointly.
Whitman member Dawn Byer said she supported sending the budget back for a revote because “that’s democracy.”
“Those citizens will have the opportunity to say no again,” she said.
Scriven also addressed speculation he heard all Town Meeting night and since, that people were critical of the committee for not doing enough to support an override.
“I think that’s fair,” he said. “We didn’t do anything.”
“We can encourage people to vote,” member Fred Small said. “We can’t tell them how to vote.”
Scriven said state ethics law provides more leeway to policy making officials to advocate for ballot questions.
He also asked, on the subject of re-assessing, does it negate everything the committee had done before, and is it forcing Whitman into another Town Meeting.
Szymaniak said that, because Hanson voted before Whitman, town counsel had time to explain that a return of the same assessment, or lower, would not require a town meeting in Whitman. A new town meeting would only be needed if a higher assessment was put forth.
During the meeting’s public comment period, Rosemary Connolly, a Whitman Finance Committee member running for a seat on the School Committee, spoke about the frequent use of the term “best practices” when the committee discusses budgeting.
She noted that the state Department of Local Services’ opinion on the prevailing wisdom against using free cash and non-recurring funds to balance budgets is “something very different.”
“They say you’re supposed to be going your school budget first,” she said. “We have a budgetary process, which I believe, caused this debacle and uneven assessment – we’re not supposed to be putting just a 5 percent or a percentage on anybody’s budget.”
She said doing that risked the school budget being reduces by about $1.5 million each year, restraint only applied to one school while the South Shore Tech budget increased by 11 percent with no challenge.
“I am deeply concerned about some of the rhetoric about best practices that is inaccurate,” she said, arguing the current budget put forth by select boards isolates working families. She said she appreciated the School Committee’s five-year plan as appropriate and thanked the committee for working with the Whitman Finance Committee.
Whitman absentee/early vote ballots are now available
Absentee/Early voting ballots for the May 18, 2024 annual Town Election are now available in the Whitman Town Clerk’s office. Voters that want to vote by absentee/early ballot for this Election are asked to fill out an application as soon as possible.
Anyone voting by absentee/early ballot by mail must fill out an application or send a letter to the Town Clerk with their signature by Monday May 13, 2024.
Early voting must be done by mail.
Absentee voting may be done in person at the Town Clerk’s office during normal business hours. You can absentee until noon on May 17, 2024.
Voters may vote absentee only if you are absent from the town during the hours the polls are open; physical disability; or religious belief. You can visit VoteinMa.com for application or information.
For more information, call Town Clerk Dawn Varley at 781-618-9710.
USPS/Girl Scouts hold Whitman food drive
The Girl Scouts will again assist the volunteers of the Whitman Food Pantry and St. Vincent de Paul of Holy Ghost parish in collecting food for the USPS/NALC Annual Food Drive on May 11, 2024.
We are excited to pursue reaching and surpassing last year’s collection total of 6,000 pounds of food!
And you can help!
Simply leave your non-perishable food item/s by your mailbox by 8 a.m. on Saturday, May 11 – and your mail carrier or one of the girl scouts or food pantry volunteers will collect your donation and deliver it to the food pantry! Take advantage of the buy one, get one (BOGO) or two-for-one sales at your grocery store now and save the extras for the food drive! THANK YOU, in advance for your generosity in helping our neighbors in need!
Looking for joy in ‘Mudville’
‘The outlook wasn’t brilliant’ as poet Earnest Lawrence Thayer put it in his classic baseball ode, Casey at the Bat,’ and there were mud puddles at first base and more umbrellas than bats for Whitman’s Annual Little League Parade, but spirits weren’t dampened as the teams made their way to the Whitman Park ball field for Opening Day ceremonies on Saturday, April 20. A player checks the rain situation during the ceremony, above. Here’s hoping for a sunny summer at the ballpark. See more photos, page 6.
Photos by Carol Livingstone
Unsung heroes
WHITMAN – Monday, April 15 was much more than Tax Day and Marathon Monday – in Major League Baseball stadiums and ballparks it was the 20th anniversary of Jackie Robinson Day, celebrating the first time Robinson stepped on the grass at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, N.Y., – 57 years before that to officially integrate America’s game.
But was Robinson the first African-American to play professional baseball?
Ted Reinsten, a Chronicle reporter for WCVB-TV, and author of “Before Brooklyn: The Unsung Heroes Who Helped Break Baseball’s Color Barrier” says the answer is kind of yes and no.
In a bit of fortuitous timing, Reinstein appeared at Whitman Public Library on Saturday, April 12 to discuss his book. The program was sponsored by the Friends of the Whitman Public Library.
“Libraries need good friends,” he said. “And this library has some good friends.”
With the start of Major League Baseball’s season only two weeks before his talk, and “the Red Sox are already almost in last place,” the timing couldn’t have been too much better.
“It’s been said that time begins on Opening Day and I often feel that way,” Reinstein said. “You get a whole new shot with spring – with everything, not just baseball.
He began with a basic question to prove how a major part of the Jackie Robinson story is not really well-known – after he broke the color barrier in 1947, who was the second Black Major Lague ballplayer?
One person guessed Larry Dobey, but while he is part of the story, his name was not the correct answer
“I’ve never had anybody get the right guess,” he said. That’s because – spoiler alert – it was Jacke Robinson and the failed guesses often come from people who know baseball history.
“It’s a bit of a trick question,” he said. “The second Black ballplayer was Jackie Robinson because Jackie Robinson did not do the thing you think he did. – Jackie Robinson did not integrate Major League Baseball. He re-integrated it.”
More than 60 years before, a Negro player named Moses Fleetwood Walker.
“That tells us we’re missing out on a central fact of what Jackie Robinson did and, by missing out on the central fact that he re-inegrated baseball takes nothing away from [him]. Do you know the year of inhuman hell he went through when he was breaking the Color Barrier?”
Death threats against him and his family were a daily part of his life.
But what the Jackie Robinson story does take away is the notoriety of Walker, who was the first and others who followed him in the game.
“One of the things with this book I was interested in was getting at how we learn history,” he said. “One of the things about doing this book was to get at a way … something that often happens with history, which is we may learn an event … and we often think, ‘I know what that is, I know what that’s about,’ and very often there’s a lot more context to the story.”
Whether it is how it is learned or it’s just a question of life getting in the way, some of those lessons are forgotten.
“In this case, its really unfortunate, because this is a case where we’re talking about really, the first civil rights victory of the 20th Century and the creation of a hero known around the world in Jackie Robinson,” Reinstein said. “And yet, he didn’t do this by himself.”
Others laid the groundwork for it.
It is also a story of how, in the years following the Civil War, baseball itself was an outlier.
“It was integrated,” Reinstein said. “It looked a little more like America. … And Moses Fleetwood Walker was a transformational player.”
He was not only the first of his race to play professional baseball player, he was a catcher who transformed how the position was played – and is played to this day. Teams used the position of catcher to stick the worst players up to then – they were just something of a human backstop.
Walker was different.
“He was fast, he was a great fielder, he was what we would call in baseball today, a five-tool player – he could play all five facets of the game,” Reinstein said. “He could run, he could hit, he could hit with power, he could field his position and he had a great arm. The last time the Red Sox had a player like that was a fellow named Mookie Betts, who they promptly got rid of and they’ve been in the toilet ever since. But don’t get me started.”
Walker was so good, he was signed by a Major League Baseball team in 1884 by the Toledo Blue Stockings of the National League.
From a social standpoint, he had been born to parents who had been born into slavery and the country was still recovering from the Civil War, but his talent for baseball could not be ignored.
But his career was short-lived because of the racism of another Major Leaguer – Adrian Constantine “Cap” Anson, the captain of the Chicago Cubs the time, and the first bona fide superstar of professional baseball.
“Cap Anson happened to be quite a vicious racist,” Reinstein said. “He was a bully and didn’t like the fact that his vaunted Cubs were starting the season against a team that fielded a Black ballplayer … [but] he used another word we don’t like to say.”
Anson played the game under protest and told Major League owners the Cubs would no longer take the field against any team that fielded a Black ballplayer. While the owners tried to ignore Anson, within two years, the owners had met and taken a secret meeting and vote and a majority decided there would be no more Black players signed and those already on teams could play out their contracts, but would not be resigned.
“The Color Barrier was now a reality,” Reinstein said.
In the years 1900-20, meanwhile, the Negro Leagues and barnstorming teams criss-crossing the country, often beat white Major Leaguers in exhibition games.
It would not be until after WWII, when the Black Press in America pressured that hypocrisy after Black soldiers, including those in units like the Tuskegee Airmen and the 761st Tank Battalion within Gen. George S. Patton’s III Army Corps fought heroically to defeat the racism of Nazi Germany. The 761st had once been commanded by –Jackie Robinson after an old knee injury kept him from going overseas with his men.
It was only a matter of the right owner finding the right player to withstand the racist taunts of fans and opposing players alike.
On April 15, 1947, it happened and Robinson strode to his position in the Ebbets Field outfield.
“Amid the din of cheering fans, and of exploding flashbulbs capturing it,” Reinstein wrote, “there were also two inaudible sounds – of a wall falling, and of cheering that could not be heard with the ear, only from the heart. It rose from those not present physically, but spiritually, those who could not be seen, but were there just the same.”
What made this a topic Reinstein wanted to pursue?
“Over time, I’m saying, ‘Who are these people?’” he said. “I think the part that was probably influential for me is that, even in my Chronicle work, I’ve always loved an underdog story. I mean, who doesn’t.”
This may have been one of the biggest underdog story out there.
While Ken Burns’ 1994 documentary “Baseball,” definitely primed the pump for some fans of the game to learn more about its history.
“[It] was the first time that a lot of people heard of who these people were,” he said.
What has been the most unusual question Reinstein gets on the book circuit about “Before Brooklyn?”
“It’s always neat and memorable when somebody asks me something that I had never been asked before,” he said, noting that this reported was only the second person to ask if he thought women would ever play Major League ball. He included a slide in his PowerPoint deck of Toni Stone, a Black woman who played for several men’s Negro League teams, including the Indianapolis Clowns after the first. “So much is trial and error with doing these talks,” he continued. “So many things are the result of somebody asking me something that I wasn’t prepared for.”
His next book, “Travels Through the Heart and Soul of New England,” is something he wanted to make sure he did while still at Chronicle, because it’s based on the most memorable people that I’ve met around New England, and I knew it would be easier to tackle it while he had access to the technology at the show.
Old Colony Elder Services marks 50 years
Old Colony Elder Services (OCES) is celebrating 50 Years of Care and Collaboration with a special luncheon and awards presentation on May 1, 2024, at Hotel 1620 Plymouth Harbor.
Established in 1974, OCES is the largest provider of in-home and community-based services for older adults and people living with disabilities in Plymouth County and surrounding areas in Massachusetts. The agency has offices in Brockton and Plymouth.
OCES’ 50th Anniversary Luncheon will be held at Hotel 1620 Plymouth Harbor, 180 Water Street in Plymouth, MA 02360 on May 1, 2024, 12:30-2:00 p.m. The luncheon will include an awards presentation; 95.9 WATD Radio Host Rob Hakala as the MC, Life Is Good Playmaker Project creator Steve Gross as the guest speaker; and an opportunity drawing. Civic and business leaders, vendors, and partner organizations, and health care professionals are invited to attend.OCES will present awards to outstanding individuals and organizations whose actions and/or leadership have exemplified Care and Collaboration.
The event is part of a campaign to raise $50,000 to expand OCES’ Behavioral Health and Wellness programs. OCES’ Elder Mental Health Outreach Team (EMHOT) provides behavioral health and wellness support to older adults and people with disabilities who may be isolated or encounter barriers limiting access to behavioral health care.
Thanks go to sponsors for their generous donations: Datalyst, LLC; Best of Care; The OCPC Ombudsman Program; Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts; Law Office of Paula Schlosser; Attentive Home Care, Inc.; Home Health Resources, Inc.; Brown & Brown of Massachusetts, LLC; Citrin Cooperman; Stonewell Care, LLC; Old Colony Planning Council (OCPC); Rockland Trust; Diman Laundry; isolved MP; South Coast Laundry, Inc.; and S&M Transportation.
RSVP by April 15, 2024 for OCES’ 50th Anniversary Luncheon. Registration is required.
For tickets to the event, visit ocesma.org and click on OCES’ 50th Event Page.
Fund-raising runners are matathoners, too
Over the past few months, folks out there may have seen me, and likely a lot of other folks in the area, running at various speeds for various reasons on the streets of Whitman. Me? I’m in the final days of training to run my fourth Boston Marathon, to raise money for Mass General Hospital’s Pediatric Cancer Center. I’m a “charity runner,” which means I earn my place on the course not by speed, but by raising funds. Yesterday, someone on one of the runner’s internet boards asked whether anyone was experiencing derision for being a “charity” runner, as opposed to someone who “qualified” by running.
Well, yeah. I get negative messages about not being qualified… about not being a real runner… about being too fat to do this, and a few folks have gone so far as to say that my, and others of my ilk, running marathons is diminishing the value of the accomplishment for the “real” runners. I brush it off; it happens often enough that I kind of expect it… but I also censor myself a lot, because the underlying feeling with a good number of folks in the running community is, well, I don’t belong.
I’m not saying this comes from the elite runners. It’s more from the “everyday” folks, who have somehow taken it upon themselves to gatekeep the roads as somewhere that a person like me will never belong, regardless of what I do to get there.
Look, I know who I am. I DO own a mirror. I know that I’m likely never going to be a person who finishes a marathon in 2.5 hours, or 3, or even 4 or 5. I know that I’m “buying my way in” to marathon courses by raising money, as opposed to “earning” my way. I’m good with that.
I know some folks who have the financial means to stroke a check for the $7500.00 Boston Athletic Association charity fundraising requirement to get a bib for the run. I know folks who bust their [butt] and struggle and qualify to run because of their sheer physical and mental ability. Every single one of these runners counts, though, and here’s why: Whether you complete a mile in 6 minutes, or 10 minutes, or 14 minutes, it’s the exact same 5,280 feet.
So, sure, the hateful exclusionary stuff bothers me, but I eat it (see what I did there?). It’s exhausting, but when I’m exhausted, physically or mentally or emotionally, in the quiet and solitude of my runs, I call to mind the reason why I will keep showing up:
- My fat old body can still move, and it can do hard things.
- Not every athlete has to fit the mold of looking “athletic” or like a “runner.”
- Even if I finish last, my medal is the same as the folks who are already having a drink at the bar when they drape it around my neck.
And most importantly, every single step I take, in training or on race day, is done to help kids and families who could give a tinker’s damn about how old, or fat, or slow, or old fat and slow, the guy is who helped them out.
I’m old. I’m fat. I’m slow. I run for charity.
School panel voices budget concerns
When it came time for the School Committee to discuss budget cuts outlined to meet town financial needs, member David Forth forcefully argued that there was nothing to discuss, and everything for students to lose [see related story].
“What we are looking to do is promote student achievement,” he said. “So, by doing this, by reducing our assessments, by cutting these jobs, we are once again bailing the community out [from] their lack of responsibility and they want to blame the schools … when, really, they are not doing their jobs.”
He said there has been a pattern of the towns failing to invest state funds, as far back as education reform in 1993, to help themselves catch up to where they needed to be in contributions to the schools’ funding formula, while the state did.
“[There has been] a lack of investment in our community that has put us in this situation, whether it is the Great Recession, the opioid epidemic, a pandemic, generations of students are suffering,” Forth said that officials’ actions speak louder than words when services and jobs are cut. “I mean, look at me. … I’m glad to be here, but it should be a little bit disgusting that a student feels they have to run to bring change and, furthermore, that the community that elects them feels they have a better opportunity to bring change than the people who are currently sitting in that seat.”
Pounding the table he implored the committee to make a responsible decision for students.
“That’s our contituents,” he said. “Let’s represent them, let’s respect them. Let’s care about them.”
Member Glen DiGravio said he appreciated Forth’s impassioned plea on behalf of students.
“I hear everything you guys are saying,” he said, also mentioning Dawn Byers’ concerns about class size and Hillary Kniffen’s about programs W-H doesn’t have that other towns do have. “David, I love your passion and I love that you care so much about the kids.”
But, DiGravio noted, they are not elected only by the parents of students, but by elder couples on fixed budgets and residents trying to make mortgage payments.
Member Fred Small had led off the discussion recalling a comment he had made the previous November: “If we want to fix it, we have to fix it right,” he said. “If we needed an override, we needed to have it structured so that it’s not a Band-Aid.”
But he argued that as the budget is now structured, if the town select boards and finance committees have a separate line for an override for the schools’ portion, it is a Band-Aid and the school district is back in the same position without adding the product or the programs it should be doing and let the taxpayers decide.
“They’re the ones footing the bill and its up to us to make the case [that] this is what we should have, this is what we need to have,” he said, ticking off offering such as languages in the middle schools and the robotics program. “But if we’re going to do it, we need to do it right.”
He said his big fear is that people will feel they’ve given the schools money and they’re done for five years.
“The problem isn’t the towns,” he said. “The problem is the state – it’s the way they fund Chapter 70. … It’s a horrible, horrible situation that we’re stuck in.”
Forth said that, while Small made a lot of great points, and reminded the Committee that March 2021 was the only time during his tenure in office that its members unanimously supported the budget after Superintendent of Schools Jeff Szymaniak argued that, in the wake of the pandemic as the responsible move. A couple of weeks later, he said, Szymaniak asked “for the sake of partnership” that the committee reduce its assessments by $775,000.
“We took those mental health services – the interventionists – and rolled it into what, at that point in time was ESSER [Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief] II,” Forth said. “State aid, basically.”
That vote failed 6-2-1, and the assessment passed the following week by and 8-2 vote, which Forth opposed because he did not like the idea of using one-time funding to finance the operating budget, knowing the schools would need those positions long-term.
“One of the concerns at that time was that we were putting a Band-Aid on the budget,” Forth recalled.
Last year, the committee voted to roll $500,000 from excess and deficiency over into the budget – another move with which he disagreed.
“I did not show up for that meeting, because it was to my knowledge, and we’ve talked about this publicly that a predetermined deal was made on what that figure should be,” Forth said. “Out of protest, I did not show up to that particular meeting.”
He also took issue with the habit of select boards in particular, to refer to “school overrides” when talking about finances.
“The way I see that is poor public policy on their end and a lack of accountability, because when you’re looking at the excess levy capacity – the 2 ½ that they do not utilize fully – over the last decade, they left – the town of Whitman, in particular – left $4.1 million on the table,” Forth charged. “Even if they collected half of that, we would not be in the position that we are now.”
In 2016, not collecting to capacity led to devastating cuts, and in 2019, 19.2 jobs were cut, leaving teachers crying in hallways and motivating students at the high school to get involved, sending out a district email.
Forth said that none of the School Committee members responded to that email, but a parent did and spoke with the students about the levy, giving the students information they used in interviewing teachers throughout the district.
“The teachers told me they were going on Google to develop their curriculum,” he said. “How quickly we forget it was just a few years ago that teachers did not have the tools they needed to succeed at the earlies levels, building the foundation blocks for our most important assets, our youth – our students.”
While School Committee members are elected by taxpayers and people “old enough to vote,” their constituents are actually the students, Forth said, echoing information underscored to school officials and committee members attended a recent Mass. Association of School Committees meeting.
Forth also spoke about the Madden Report, which is the basis for Whitman’s current budgeting philosophy, and is being adopted in Hanson as well. That report had urged an operational override for Whitman in 2020 or 2021, but that was not done. That override was designed to adequately fund all town departments.
Hanson is not dealing with the need for a $5 million operational override recommendation for the same purpose.
“Next year, when we kick this down the road again, you’ll have no one to blame but yourselves,” Forth said.
Vice Chair Christophe Scriven agreed with Small that it does not make sense to go to an override when “we’re providing a less than level-service budget.”
“It doesn’t make any sense to me to cut this budget and then go and try to fund it through an override,” Scriven said.
“We have difficult decisions to make,” Committee member Dawn Byers said, asking whether the budget aligns with the School Committee’s goals and strategic plan, recalling a report from the previous week when the panel learned that high-quality curriculum had not been invested in from 2001 to 2018.
“We are now faced with going backwards,” she said, noting that when the high school was built in 2005, it was shiny and new but the cracks on the inside – curriculum shortcomings in particular – on the inside were not seen.
She said she also has questions about the budget in terms of finding savings and class size inequity across the district.
“I really want to understand what I’m voting on and what the impact is going to be on the students,” she said, specifically citing which teachers are retiring or facing layoffs.
Assistant Superintendent George Ferro said every principal is responsible for educating students the best that they can, but said the district faces a unique situation with the two middle schools. The staff at Hanson Middle School has teachers in transition – either at the end of their careers or just starting.
That allows a principal, despite the school’s dwindling population, to have veteran teachers teaching more than one subject to reduce class size in grade six. In seventh and eighth grade, split team teaching allows mixing faculty members to also lower class size.
In Whitman, there are high enough student numbers that there are two full teaching teams at every grade.
Scriven noted the committee hires and entrusts a superintendent to work with his staff to make the best decisions they can for the students.
“We aren’t privy, nor should we be, to every individual factor that goes into their decisions,” he said. “We should absolutely continue to advocate for students and the district in general, but we need to understand that we’re not superintendents, or assistant superintendents, we’re School Committee members – and we’re one of a group of 10 and we have to keep that in mind.”
Hillary Kniffen said she finds it dangerous to pit departments against each other, particularly departments that services people who don’t have a voice – which are the kids.
“That’s who we’re representing,” she said. “That’s who we serve.”
She said no teachers were hired to teach with ESSER funds, which were used to fund positions to support kids in the wake of the pandemic that the schools were legally required to hire anyway.
“We’re not asking for an exorbitant budget,” she said. “We don’t have anything extra in our budget to cut.”
Midyear data shows educational growth
Assistant Superintendent George Ferro and Director of Equity and MTSS Dr. Nicole Semas-Schneeweis reviewed the district’s midyear assessment data during the Wednesday, March13 School Committee meeting.
“I can happily say every class, every section we’re doing better in,” he said of the growth areas. “Please remember that as we talk about budgets, as we talk about things that say, ‘What have we accomplished? What did should we do? Is it because of whether it’s an ESSER issue or not.’ This is education, this is what we do and we’re proud of what we do.”
Reading and math assessments include intervention.
“We’re seeing improvement [in reading] from fall to winter,” Said Semas-Schneeweis of the first full year of a new reading curriculum. Ferro said the same trends were apparent in math.
“The trends are there,” Ferro agreed. “The trends are improving. … spending money to help students learn is not frivolous, it is a moral imperative that we should be doing.”
He said regression recovery in W-H following COVID is “moving faster and farther” than on a state or national basis. While there are students who are behind in both reading and math, there are also students who are on grade level.
“Improvement is improvement, and that’s what’s important,” Stafford said.
Committee member Dawn Byers said that should be better reinforced on data sheets, where color graphs show learners in the red zone are three grades below where they should be, yellow is one grade below and green outlines the degree to which a student is at grade level.
“Let’s keep that in mind,” she said.
“We’ve always had kids who struggled, maybe not this level of struggle because we weren’t in a pandemic, but we didn’t have the data to know for sure who they were or what they needed,” Semas-Schneeweis said. “This data points out exacly.”
Going forward Ferro cited the need for reviewing software as a resource compared to its price, that is expensive; continued participation in DESE’s Instructional Prioritization Institute to close gaps for struggling learners and writing support for all levels.
During the Public Forum, Hanson resident Frank Milisi posed a question about the regional agreement in hopes of helping to alleviate the budget situation.
“I’m not sure it’s legal, I haven’t checked with [town] counsel or the state, but is it possible, in the school regional agreement to assign a set increase to the school budget every year that the towns would be guaranteed to have to fund every year,?” he asked.
He provided the example of a 5-percent increase to the majority town written into the school agreement.
“At that point, the school would know exactly the increase that it’s getting in its budget, the towns would know how to budget for that 5-percent increase of the majority town” he said. “It would provide two things: less angst around budget season … and a way to project into the future revenues that are needed to fund the school and town departments and kind of alleviate the budget situation in both towns.”
Szymaniak noted the regional agreement is under review right now and that suggestion could be brought up between the two towns and counsel.
Hanson Legion hosts St. Patrick’s Day dinner
If St. Patrick’s Day means a corned beef and cabbage dinner for you, Hanson’s American Legion should be in your plans.
The Legion is holding a free traditional corned beef and cabbage dinner from 2 to 4 p.m.
“People can stay longer, if they like,” said Commander David George, “We’re going to do a 50-50 raffle, there’ll be all Irish music, we’ll do some games with the dart board and we’ll do some door prizes, including a prize for the most creative Irish attire. George said the renovated hall, will have the upper-level bar open during the event.
“We might have a contest for best-dressed or something like that,” he laughed.
Guiness will also be available at the cash bar, but the meal is no-cost.
While there is no cost, those interested in attending should register at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/846948986217?aff=oddtdtcreator by email at davidgeorge02341@gmail.com, Facebook.com/hansonamericanlegion or sign up at the Legion hall, so they will know how much food to prepare. Right now, George said between 65 and 70 people have already signed up.
Guests may dine-in or take meals to-go.
“We’re just trying to do something good for the community,” George said, noting they are not limiting the event to veterans. “It’s open to anybody that wants to come.”
The Legion is also offering the hall for events, and now offers scratch ticket sales through the Mass. Lottery, as well as KENO, access to an ATM and juke boxes during hall rentals. A meat raffle was a sell-out event, Friday, March 1, with a much youner crowd than in years past, George said, noting many attendees stayed after the raffle to socialize.
“It’s the new American Legion,” George said, noting that a lot of the organizations newer members are from the Iraq/Afghanistan post-911 wars. “We’ve got a lot of young guys that have joined.”
For more information on the event, call George at 781-316-7605.
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