Just short. 

It’s what the Whitman-Hanson Regional High football team came up as against Silver Lake on Friday, Oct. 8. 

Down 13-6 with six seconds remaining, the Panthers were stuck on fourth-and-goal by the Lakers. 

Senior Jake Guiliani gave W-H a 6-0 lead in the second with a rushing TD, but it didn’t last as Silver Lake scored the next 13. 

Senior Collin Briggs added four catches for 60 yards in the loss. On defense, the linebacker combination of Guiliani and junior Evan Casey combined for 15 tackles and senior Malcolm Alcorn-Crowder racked up with two sacks and two tackles for loss. Junior Sam Pace added an interception.

W-H is now 0-5 and will travel to 4-1 Marshfield tomorrow, Friday, Oct. 15 for a 7 p.m. kickoff. 

— Nathan Rollins

 WHITMAN — Fire Chief Timothy Clancy and the Whitman Fire Department urge all residents to “Learn the Sounds of Fire Safety” and to follow several basic tips to help protect their loved ones during Fire Prevention Week, which is being recognized this year from Oct. 3 to 9.

Fire Prevention Week is organized by the National Fire Protection Association, and has been recognized for over 90 years. The goal of Fire Prevention Week is to educate the public about simple but important ways they can keep themselves and those they live with safe.

This year’s theme of “Learn the Sounds of Fire Safety” focuses on beeps, chirps and other noises coming from your smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, and how knowing what they mean could save your life.

“Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms are important lifesaving devices that need to be properly maintained,” Clancy said, urging everyone to recognize these common sounds to help better understand smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.

• A continuous set of three loud beeps — beep, beep, beep — means smoke or fire. Get out, call 9-1-1, and stay out.

•A single chirp every 30 or 60 seconds means the battery is low and must be changed.

• All smoke alarms must be replaced after 10 years.

• Chirping that continues after the battery has been replaced means the alarm is at the end of its life and the unit must be replaced.

The NFPA offers the following tips for those who are deaf or hard of hearing:

• Purchase smoke and CO alarms that include strobe lights that flash to alert people when the smoke alarm sounds. 

• Pillow or bed shakers can also be purchased and linked to smoke and CO alarms to awaken people from their sleep. These work by shaking the pillow or bed when the alarm sounds. 

• The use of a low-frequency alarm can also wake a sleeping person with mild to severe hearing loss.

WHITMAN — The Whitman Middle School Feasibility Study Committee approved a final request for services for the owner/project manager on the Whitman Middle School building project reported during its Sept. 21 meeting.

It will now be advertised in the central register and in the local newspaper.

The Mass. School Building Authority had returned it’s comments on the district’s request that day, Feasibility Study Committee Chairman Fred Small said.

The committee also discussed the need for managing the flow of funds and invoices between the town of Whitman and the school district. Thus far, the only invoices being handled are for newspaper advertising, but the move is a way of getting ahead of things.

They voted to have a process under which the district would pay invoices up front, sending them to Whitman for the town to reimburse the district, as school capital projects are now paid. They also voted to create a five-person subcommittee to handle invoices, and requiring that payments be made in five business days. Payments would require two signatures for approval and release of payments.

“It got us thinking that we ought to have a process in which the monies flow,” Small said of the need for such a process. “The monies are held by the town of Whitman, the school district would get the invoice, present it to the town and the town will pay the school district — the school district will pay the vendor. I think that’s a pretty easy way of doing things.”

Small pointed to the larger staff at the school district to be able to facilitate invoicing.

“It’s also a nice check and balance, because the monies do have to flow through Whitman as well,” he said. “I just think we should have the ability to sign off on them before they go to the town or before they get paid.”

School District Business Manager John Stanbrook said invoices typically are turned around within 30 days.

Committee member Randy LaMattina, a selectman, suggested a smaller warrant subcommittee be appointed for signing off on payments.

Small suggested taking the School Committee’s approach of having three committee members sign warrants, with the balance of the committee voting on them at the following meeting.

But, on Superintendent of Schools Jeffrey Szymaniak’s suggestion that the warrants be uploaded to Google Drive so committee members can review them, Small suggested that approvals be made after invoices are placed in Google Drive, asking for questions or objections be emailed. Since the building study committee is not legally required to sign off on payment warrants with a formal vote, as the School Committee is bound to do.

Assistant Superintendent George Ferro said it is still wise to form a small subcommittee to review questions and objections.

“We’re only talking feasibility,” LaMattina said. “There really shouldn’t be a tremendous amount of invoices. We’d have to have a different process during the building phase.”

“Once we’re in the building phase, it has to be a totally different dialog,” Szymaniak said.

The opening of the 2021-22 school year on Wednesday, Sept. 1 had “no real issues,” Superintendent of Schools Jeffrey Szymaniak reported to the School Committee on Wednesday, Sept. 15.

“There were lots of happy eyes,” he said. “You couldn’t see smiles, but, with kids, you could tell how excited they were to be in school, same with teachers.”

While there were “a couple hiccups” with transportation, nothing critical as far as opening, he said.

Szymaniak also touched on the COVID protocol, it’s effect on the first days of the school year and “where we’re at right now.”

Schools throughout the state are under a mask mandate until Oct. 1, depending on a vaccine percentage of 80 percent.

“It’s frustrating for me, and reporting to the committee, that’s the extent of the information that I have to share with you about the vaccine mandate and what 80 percent is,” he said. “There are a lot of us guessing, to say is it by school? By district? Is it by teachers? Is it by community? We don’t have that information.”

Hanson figures put 38 percent of the town’s 12-to-15-year-olds vaccinated and 61 percent of 16-to-19-year-olds. In Whitman, 47 percent of 12-to-15-year-olds and 58 percent of 16-to-19-year-olds are fully vaccinated.

Both Whitman and Hanson have encouraged people to get vaccinated. A vaccine for children under age 12 is supposed to become available sometime in October, but what that exactly means and where it can be dispensed has not been provided.

“If the commissioner [of education] holds true to 80 percent, we’re not taking the masks off at this point,” Szymaniak said.

“I’m extremely frustrated because I don’t have any information to share with the community,” he said.

He said he has been asked by residents if the mandate is linked to school funding. Without directly addressing that, he said 50 percent of school funding comes from the state and it is important to follow the COVID mandates.

Szymaniak said the School District is not seeing transmissions between kids at the schools. But there is an increase in the COVID positivity rate in both communities.

Mass. DPH numbers indicate that there have been two positive cases at the high school since Sept. 1, Whitman Middle School had three, Hanson Middle School has had four cases. Six other students in Hanson tested positive before the start of school.

Duval Elementary had three positive cases since Sept.1, Indian Head and Conley had none and the preschool had two.

Szymaniak also spoke about COVID testing.

“We were ready to go with tests Day One, and we didn’t have them,” he said. “They came in last week.”

The training that Lead Nurse Lisa Tobin was supposed to attend was canceled, so she is trying to self-train virtually.

He said the “Test and Stay” program — which administers five tests in the nurse’s office over five consecutive days — only tests students if they are in close contact within school.

“If you play Pop Warner [football] and come to school, I can’t test you,” Szymaniak said, noting the confusion surrounding the Test and Stay program.

He said mask protocol is being adhered to without incident and, the few situations at the high school have involved the need to remind students to pull the mask up over their noses.

Masks are provided to students that need them.

A severe shortage of bus drivers, limit the available buses for sports.

“We’re lucky we’re getting bus drivers to drive our kids to school,” Szymaniak said. “After school [activities] and field trips are going to be severely limited by the amount of drivers that are there.”

Class size

More parents are either opting to homeschool or take advantage of school choice, although the number is down from last year’s pandemic.

Compared to 2019, when there were 35 homeschool pupils and 58 school choice students coming into the district. In 2020-21, during the peak of the pandemic, there were 93 homeschool students and 50 school choice; In 2021-22 Szymaniak is up to 65 homeschooled and 50 school choice students coming in and 36 going out.

“We’re still choicing kids in from all over the South Shore, which is a good thing,” he said. “[Students going to other school districts] is something we’re going to dig in deeper.”

He noted that enrollment is decreasing across the district with Hanson enrollment leveling off at about 100 students per grade below grade five. In Whitman, it seems to level off at grade six at between 150 and 160 per grade.

“This committee has worked extremely hard and diligently to try to lower class size in the district,” Szymaniak said. “I’m pleased that, in our elementary schools we have some really good balance, especially in our earlier grades.”

At Duval, top class sizes range from 16-18, Indian Head is around 20-23. The middle schools average class sizes is about 20 and the high school is around 20, except for foreign languages, which average close to 30.

Public Comment

John Galvin, of High Street in Whitman, expressed concern about a “significant” transfer of $3.7 million in line item transfers voted at the previous School Committee meeting to balance the fiscal 2021 budget.

“Last year, at this time, you also took a similar vote [of $3.1 million] … to balance the budget of fiscal year ’20,” he said. “This year, $3.7 million is over 6 percent of the budget, so that means that, at the end of the year, this committee re-appropriated 6 percent of the budget.”

Glavin said he sent an analysis comparing the two transfers to the committee and administration.

“What I found was simply mind-bending,” Galvin said. “The amount of line items in one year that had a significant deficit, the next year had a significant overage. Some of the line items were $1 million from one year to the other.”

He said a new subcommittee on budgets is forming and the hiring of a new business manager is still ahead, but he said he hopes it is time the committee really takes a look at how they prepare the budget, “starting from the gound up.”

HANSON — Residents voiced concerns ranging from water problems — including potential pollutants from nearby landfill— to traffic density and parking at the Tuesday, Aug. 31 public hearing at the Zoning Board of Appeals.

Resident Timothy Qualter, of 528 Spring St., said during the public question and comment section of the meeting that, while many of his questions had already been addressed at the meeting, he brought up two failed perk tests on the property in the past.

He alleged that Webby Engineering took a depth of five extra feet of soil to test, before deciding the land was buildable.

“What it does not encompass is our backyards and houses,” Qualter said, noting that he has a vernal pond at his house in the spring. A neighbor has knee-deep water on his property after a heavy rain and yet another resident near by has to keep a sump pump running continuously to keep up with water.

“This is in a flood area,” he said. “We have an ongoing water problem now and a septic system is going to go in there? What’s going to come out of that? … It’s going to be in our basements.”

Water in basements is one of the biggest concerns for abutters, he said.

ZBA Chairman Kevin Perkins asked when the perk tests failed and Qualter replied  that it had been in the 1990s. Perkins pointed to Title V septic regulations, which went into effect in 1995, but Qualter countered that the added weight of more soil added to the site during prep work countered the effects of Title V.

Qualter also pointed to contaminants such as boric acid and other carcinogenics, were originally found in test wells going back to 1993 and asked what more recent test date showed. He said his wife and several other Spring Street residents have battled cancer for which they blame the groundwater contamination.

“I really think there’s something in this area that has to be addressed that’s not being addressed,” Qualter said.

“I think a lot of what you said is speculative,” Perkins said, drawing Qualter’s ire as he demanded to know why the cancer connection he sees is speculative.

“This board has done its due diligence and gotten information from local engineers, local people, about both of your concerns,” Perkins said, responding to Qualter saying he’s lived on the street since 1974. “If that is your concern, why do you still live there?”

“I think that’s a very rude thing to say,” another member of the audience interjected to the loud agreement of several members of the audience.

Perkins gaveled for order, saying the meeting could be ended if order was not restored, and asking engineers to comment about groundwater contamination and water table issues.

Water mottling, how it stains the soil at high points was not taken into consideration in the 1970s, when perk tests were done for houses of that era, Cushing Trails attorney Michael O’Shaughnessy said.

Another area resident said his house has the same water problems as Qualter, and also pointed to the five feet of soil added to the development site as the cause of excess water being forced out of the ground into basements.

“I lost my washing machine, my dryer, two freezers — whose going to pay for that? Who’s going to buy my house?” the man asked. “The town?”

Qualter has asked for a current evaluation of any contaminants in the area and why the lowest part, subject to flooding, has been selected for a leaching field.

Consultant Bill Kenny of River Hawk Environmental said the DEP has a couple locations included on the post-closure landfill monitoring close to the project area.

“The results of monitoring those didn’t reveal boric acid,” he said. “They’re monitoring for volitile organic compounds, a variety of metals, sodium, nitrates, cyanide sulfide, chloride [among others] and nothing was outside of acceptable limits for the DEP in those southern-most landfill areas.”

There were higher numbers in the more northern area.

Joe Pignola, of the Mass. Housing Partnership, was asked if it would be overstepping to ask for more soil and groundwater samples from the landfill area that abuts the Cushing Trails project.

“The most I would advise the board would be to engage an environmental engineer of equal qualifications [to those who have already conducted those tests] to verify what needs verifying,” Pigola said. He said banks financing the project would likely also require such tests.

Town Counsel Jay Talerman said he had not seen the study already conducted, and echoed Pignola’s statement that additional peer review studies would be done during the process.

“We would not duplicate what DEP would do, but we do have the essential obligation to review issues that could affect public health and safety,” he said.

Christopher Costello, of 446 Spring St., asked if there was a buildable buffer zone beyond which construction is not permitted near a landfill. He asked if the results of site tests could be published to better inform the public.

The DEP has determined no setback applies in this case, O’Shaughnessy said.

Another resident asked if the number of permitted residents per unit had been calculated. Perkins said septic regulations are calculated based on bedroom numbers and the septic regulations will be designed based on 88 bedrooms.

The woman asked how the number of tenants would be policed.

“We can’t speculate that someone is going to have 16 kids living in a two-bedroom house,” Perkins said to the woman’s concern.

Locating extra parking at the development’s entrance, and the noise that could come with it, was another concern by area residents.

“That just made sense as far as the site layout goes,” O’Shaughnessy said, noting the added spots were at the request of the ZBA. “We looked at other spots and we just didn’t think it was conducive to add other spots throughout the site that would work.”

Parking relocations will be re-examined, however.

Another resident was concerned about whether the private road/driveway of the development is wide enough at 20 feet of driving surface, for emergency access and snow removal. Perkins said the fire department had not expressed a concern, but the driveway issue would be reviewed. Perkins also said fire officials had said street names were a concern because of the similarity to other streets in towns. Street names are being reconsidered.

Christine Cohen 493 Spring St., said the traffic study was done during COVID and asked if another study would be done. Perkins said he understands her concerns and noted peer reviews have been done, and said the issue would be reviewed again.

The ZBA supported doing another peer review of the environmental study in light of residents’ concerns.

HANSON — The Board of Selectmen is seeking legal counsel to review two of the three citizen’s petitions for the Oct. 4 special Town Meeting brought forth by Brook Street resident Frank Melisi, after they discussed the articles with him Tuesday, Aug. 24.

The petitions would require that: elected town officials reside in town  — similar to one Selectmen are seeking for appointed officials — another to support local business and a third to permit retail marijuana sales in town in order to increase the town’s commercial tax base. Melisi said he has been gathering signatures for his petitions outside Shaw’s supermarket nearly every day for a month, garnering more than 320 signatures from the hours he gathered them alone.

They then voted to engage legal counsel to work on the marijuana warrants to make them legally sufficient to present on the May 2022 warrant and ballot, if so indicated by legal research. Melisi indicated that he would be willing to pass over his residency article at Town Meeting in favor of the board’s article.

Selectman Laura FitzGerald-Kemmett said the Select Board’s petition was aimed at “any board or committee.”

“We didn’t differentiate between elected and appointed,” she said.

Selectmen Chairman Matt Dyer also reminded residents that there are certain times when expertise is required and, if a board or committee member has recently moved out of town amid a project requiring that expertise, the town may want the leeway to retain them until the project is completed.

“It would never be intended for it to be a permanent situation,” agreed FitzGerald-Kemmett, noting she does not feel particularly strongly about it one way or the other. Dyer also pointed to the requirement in Meilsi’s petition that those residents be registered voters, recalling his service while in high school as a 17-year-old member of the Energy Committee.

“I wouldn’t want to shut out the younger generation that does want to get involved,” he said of his question on how residency is determined. He suggested a concerned person who is 15 or 16 might want to serve.

“It doesn’t mean you have to vote, you just have to register to vote,” said Melisi, pointing to state law that allows 17-year-olds to register to vote.

FitzGerald-Kemmett saw some validity in Melisi’s argument.

“I would want to think that somebody who wants to serve on a town board or committee is already engaged enough that they would have registered to vote, to the extent they’re eligible,” she said.

Town Counsel Kate Feodoroff said people who move within the state have something akin to a grace period in which they can still vote in their former community before they have to reregister in a new town. She said Hanson could consider making that form of residency immediate when a person moves in or out of town.

“I like to keep it simple, to just have it that a person has to live in the town of Hanson to serve on a board or committee,” Selectman Joe Weeks said.

FitzGerald-Kemmett said she liked Melisi’s approach which would leave that determination with the Town Clerk.

“That’s fine, that’s part of the job,” said Town Clerk Elizabeth Sloan, noting that she would favor a waiver for non-residents to serve on search committees, such as with the Police Department, where the chief or another officer would be non-residents.

“I didn’t intend this to be amendment-proof,” Melisi said, holding up the petition papers. “This is the first citizen’s petition I’ve ever done. This one’s the second. This one’s the third.”

Dyer and Sloan pointed out that any amendments to the petitions would be made on the Town Meeting floor.

Selectman Jim Hickey argued that youth involvement was all well and good, but “I do not want that person voting on any committee,” he said. “I just think they don’t have the life experience to vote on some committee at 15 or 16.”

Hickey also said he could see retaining those board or committee members who move while they are in the middle of a project, otherwise they would have enough to do with where they are going than with what’s going on in Hanson.

Dyer suggested a time limit for those situations, suggesting 90 days as an example.

“We’ve got [Baseball] Hall of Famers and Olympians in this town,” Weeks said. “I’m sure we can find a way to have a great amount of talent for these committees without having to make exceptions for something.”

Resident Christine Cohen suggested committee members sign a disclosure if they move and, if they fail to do so and are found out, it should be grounds for immediate removal from a board or commission.

“This citizen’s petition is what it is, you won’t be amending this,” Feodoroff said. “What you would be amending would be your article for your own competing articles.”

Melisi said he would rather Selectmen take their petition up and, whether or not it is amended, have Town Meeting vote on it. He said he would be willing to have his passed over.

Regarding the marijuana petition, Melisi said he was not happy with the voting options open to Hanson residents regarding the school budget at the May Town Meeting — a $1.8 million override.

“I looked for some ways we could bring some revenue back into the town without me starting a business in town, which I am not in a position to do,” he said. “The obvious thing for me, since we already have a good working relationship with Impressed LLC, is to put back on the ballot for 2022 retail marijuana.”

He stressed that he has not spoken with the owner of Impressed LLC, but the petitions he sponsored are aimed to help the town improve its revenue outlook.

“It’s an obvious moneymaker,” Melisi said of the law’s provision that towns may impose a 3-percent tax on retail marijuana sales. While he put a lot of work into the petitions, he admitted he is not a lawyer and Town Counsel has the expertise to go by.

“I’m not trying to put drugs on the street,” he said. “From what I understand, these facilities are a lot more secure and a lot more [stringent] in verification of ID that liquor stores. I’m just looking for a way to bring revenue to the town.”

He said he would be willing to have it passed over if the Select Board draws up it’s own article.

“I can tell you one reason right now why this thing is going to go down in flames,” Feodoroff said, pointing to Melisi’s petition concerning marijuana sales applicability in all zones of Hanson, including residential. The town has limited such business to the industrial park on Commercial Way off Route 27. “There are some problematic areas in here,” she said.

The time frame for the petition process for a zoning issue is also too tight, according to Feodoroff.

“If the board would get this going for the 2022 election, then I would definitely pass over this article,” Melisi said. “I want as many people as humanly possible to be informed and have a debate on this. I don’t want it to be rushed through in a month and a half.”

Melisi also said he was looking for assistance from the board in fine-tuning the petition. Dyer said he was willing to work with him, if he moved to pass it over, for presentation at the next town meeting, if necessary.

Hickey, who voted with the board to place it on the warrant, said it would be the only positive vote he would ever cast on the petition.

“I am not going to hinder you from doing this, but I am 100-percent not going to support it,” Hickey said. “I’ve said, right from the start, when this first came up that I’m against retail marijuana in the town of Hanson.”

“I’m not telling anyone to vote for this, I’m asking to have a debate about this,” Melisi said. “When I opened my tax bill from last quarter, I almost threw up. … I have interest in the money of it.”

Another citizen petition certified by Sloan which would give Selectmen the power to remove all members of the Zoning Board of Appeals at the first board meeting following the Town Meeting.

Feodoroff said the petition does acknowledge that it is a nonbinding resolution and is only advisory.

“I think there’s a question as to whether or not it’s legal because there’s another bylaw in place that doesn’t allow removal except for cause,” she said.

“I am embarrassed that it took a group of citizens coming to us with a citizen’s petition to remove ZBA members, when we’ve gotten a number of complaints and we have been hamstrung and stopped as a board from discussing it,” FitzGerald-Kemmett said, stressing she was not expressing an opinion on the matter.

The School Committee presented its strategic plan working group presentations at the Wednesday, Aug. 18 meeting.

Public comment was sought in advance of the meeting and was not scheduled for the meeting itself, out of fairness to the large number of people who submitted comment in advance.

“We’ve received as much public comment as I’ve ever seen, being part of a School Committee, in advance of this meeting,” Chairman Christopher Howard said.

A number of meetings were held throughout the summer, working with the district’s leadership team and administration, to review the district’s strategic plan to identify what their priorities, as a group, should be.

“I can tell you they were here bright and early on the day after a holiday,” Howard said of the group with which he worked. “I can tell you they were here several other times, and I know other groups were here several other times. … This is a volunteer effort.”

Howard described the presentations as “point in time” shares of information, as the work is far from being completed.

Each of the three groups — one-to-one laptop initiative,  K-8 related arts curriculum and early childhood education — were given about 15 minutes in which to make their presentation, with time allotted for a brief question and answer time after each one. He also encouraged the public to send written thoughts, comments and questions about the presentations.

Howard explained that a lot of what the other two working groups were looking at depend on the district’s technology capabilities.

Assistant Superintendent George Ferro’s team — which included Steve Bois, Mike Jones and Beth Stafford — kicked things off with their presentation on a one-to-one laptop initiative. The group had two formal meetings and several subsequent meetings with the group, district IT or administrative teams, as information was gathered.

“We might be a little bit different than the other two groups, because we are actually going to enact this initiative for the start of this school year,” Ferro said. “Where we left off last year with COVID and so many Chromebooks out [with families], we had to find out if this was doable.”

They had to inventory the devices and make sure they could provide equipment to students and teachers.

Stafford said that, while COVID was a terrible thing, the pandemic showed what was needed for today’s education, who had it and who didn’t and how it could be provided for students who lacked access to technology.

Those students were loaned Chromebooks and internet access during last school year.

“What it has led to is that we’re able this year to provide for grades three to 12, a one-on-one Chromebook for each child to go home and to be responsible for to bring to school for the coming year,” she said. Kindergarten to grade two classess will have access to half sets of devices in the classroom.

Ferro said students in grades three to 12 will receive a loan agreement form and will, when parents return the signed form, receive a charger and a Chromebook, including care instruction for students and how to use it in instruction for teachers.

Bois said a grant will also allow the retirement or repurposing of some devices.

Ferro said the at-home learning funding is from a non-competitive federal grant must be awarded, and is administered by the FCC.

“If you have aging devices, or you have students with no connectivity, or you have students with not enough devices in the home … they can be provided with a Chromebook for at-home use,” Ferro said. The district’s aging software made them eligible for the devices they sought. Almost half the district’s more than 3,500 devices age out next year, with the goal to replace 1/6 of the stock each year.

They are working within the district and through federal funds to start a cycle of funding the estimated $270,000 per year that renewal goal with require.

“This is the new curriculum textbook in a very closed way,” Ferro said.

Heather Kniffen presented a review of the K-8 related arts curriculum group’s work. She, Christopher Sciriven, Superintendent Jeff Szymaniak and Michelle Bourgelas served on the group.

“We’re talking about long-term implementation, Kniffen said. “This is not something that we, like the tech group, would be able to work on this year. This is definitely a multi-year project.”

The goal is to engage students and make them look forward to going to school — something that now declines in middle school years — through choices of subject and equity between middle schools in each town.

“The sooner that children are exposed to different cultures and different languages, the more empathetic they become and better human beings, because they understand people,” Kniffen said of the curriculum’s benefits. She added that music and art have behavioral benefits.

A Life Skills class option, described as a Home Economics 2.0 class, is also being discussed, Szymaniak said.

“You might be learning Home Ec. Stuff, you might be learning CPR, you might learn how to change a tire, what a checkbook is — all the types of things that parents talk about ‘I wish my kid knew,’ give them an opportunity to experience some of that in middle school, so as they matriculate to the high school, they have some idea of some of those life skills” he said.

Technical skills, including robotics, are also included.

Challenges to incorporating the program include hiring qualified teachers, intricacies of a middle school schedule, available instructional time and not viewing it as a Band-Aid approach.

Some immediate action steps being taken include determining student interest.

“I’m psyched about this endeavor,” Scriven said. “Particularly in getting kids to want to come to school.”

Szymaniak acknowledged that the scheduling issue is a hurdle, but added the district has time to do that work.

“The key piece here is foreign language should be an academic course,” he said.

Dawn Byers reviewed the work she, Fred Small and David Forth did regarding early childhood education.

Their recommendations are to implement access to high-quality, no-tuition full-day kindergarten in the 2022-23 school year and — in the long-term, to form an Early Childhood Education Committee to focus on and support the short-term goal as well as expansion of universal early childhood education to 3- and 4-year-olds. Questions for administration were regarding: building/classroom space; staffing; transportation; engagement with town leadership, community and families; and financial costs.

She introduced the presentation with a trailer for the film “No Small Matter” about the challenges low-income parents, especially, are having providing their children with the best start on education with children’s earliest years.

Forth reviewed the districts current offerings of half and full-day tuition-based preschool and kindergarten. Preschool tuition costs between about $1,3000 and $6,500 with enrollment limited to 80 students. Kindergarten tuition is $3,200 for the full-day program with 238 pupils. There is no charge for half-day kindergarten.

The state average for full-day kindergarten is 98 percent, with 62 percent of Whitman kindergarten pupils attending full-day classes.

Six of seven surrounding communities offer no-tuition full-day kindergarten. Hanover charges $3,750.

Small lauded Byers’ leadership of the group before discussing its goals.

“Ms Byers did a yeoman’s share of the work here,” he said.

The goal is to share the benefits of, and create a pathway for, high-quality early childhood education for Whitman and Hanson’s 3- to-to-5-year-old pupils with a long-term vision of universal high-quality, no-tuition preschool and pre-kindergarten.

Byers said there are educational, equity and economic benefits of high-quality early childhood education. That includes a greater contribution to society as adults.

Asked about the cost, Szymaniak said his charge to the group was to come up with the reasons to support such a program.

“I didn’t want the folks to get bogged down with the dollars and cents,” he said. “This is a ‘Why?’ Why to we need to do this? You’ve given me the why, I can give you the ‘How?’”

“And the how much?” Howard said.

Howard also welcomed Whitman’s recently-appointed member Beth Stafford. The former Whitman Middle School teacher was appointed by the town’s Selectmen to fill a vacancy when Dan Cullity resigned for family matters.

“If we’re starting our children young, and we’re putting everyone on the same playing field, we’re investing in prevention, not in remediation,” Small said. “When that student’s in third grade, we don’t have to have those reading specialists.”

Teachers won’t have to be spending time in first grade trying to catch the 38 percent of half-day kindergarteners with those who attended full-day K.

“That’s a cost-savings, and that’s a direct benefit,” he said.

Whitman residents of all ages have fond memories of summer concerts at the bandstand in the park, Council on Aging programs, Youth Library events and more, all funded with grants from the Whitman Cultural Council (WCC). Unfortunately, in person events and concerts were cancelled in 2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Also, a lack of volunteers on the Council prevented residents who were involved from meeting in person to plan events as they didn’t have the quorum necessary (four out of seven members) to approve grant funds from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.  However, things are looking better! Outdoor restrictions have been lifted and the WCC is thrilled to have five new volunteer members appointed by Selectmen since June 8.

Since the end of June, the Council has met several times and is in the process, that is guided by the state, of approving FY21 grant funds to artists and organizations who applied last year.  Our goal is to schedule programs, shows and events as soon as possible, based on availability of the performers.

The Council is also in the process of creating grant funding priorities for 2022.  In order to do this, we are collecting feedback from residents in a Community Input Survey. We would like to hear from you about the cultural events and programs that you would be interested in attending in our community.  A link to the online survey is posted on the homepage of the town website: whitman-ma.gov and paper copies are available at the Whitman Council on Aging, Public Library and outside the Town Clerk’s office at Town Hall.  The survey is open until Aug.17.

Follow us on Facebook (facebook.com/WhitmanCulturalCouncil), Twitter @CouncilWhitman and Instagram (WhitmanCulturalCouncil) to get the latest news and updates! For more information, email: culturalcouncil@whitman-ma.gov.

 The Massachusetts Cultural Council (massculturalcouncil.org) is the largest grassroots cultural funding network in the nation. The Local Cultural Council (LCC) Program enriches the cultural life of all cities and towns in Massachusetts. Led by municipally appointed volunteers, LCCs award over $4 million every year, supporting 6,000 cultural programs that include everything from field trips to lectures, festivals, and dance performances.

The WCC is a local agency supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. Current Members appointed by the Whitman BOS are: Erin Johnson, Anthony Taylor, Dawn Byers, Tina Vassil, Julia Nanigian, Will Haran and Julianna Dunn.