J. Pierce
Good evening. Today is Thursday, March 27, 2014, it is 6:30 p.m., and this is the regular meeting of the Arlington School Committee. My name is Judson Pierce and I am proud to chair this thoughtful Committee one last time.
Before we get started I wanted to recognize the tragedy that occurred in our fine City of Boston last evening. Two brave men were killed in the line of duty: Boston firefighters Michael Kennedy and Lieutenant Edward Walsh. Let us always remember how these brave men and women, our first responders, put their lives on the line for all of us every day. I’d like for each of us to hug our loved ones tonight or call them on the phone and say that you love them. May we have a moment of silence for Michael Kennedy and Edward Walsh and may their memories be for a blessing.
Friends, tonight I echo what I said in my first remarks as Chair on April 9th of last year. I am proud to say that our schools are strong and are preparing our children for a college education and employment.
The credit goes around. To our administration, to my colleagues, to the teachers and staff and to our community. We each, in some way, have contributed to our town’s ongoing success as we strive to educate the whole child, each and every child:
Bill, you have done so much in your 3 years on the Committee including initiating the Kindergarten Review Committee that eventually led to the elimination of the Kindergarten fee.
Cindy, you have done so much in your role as budget chair and spoke early and often to our town leaders and to the community about the pressures on our budget due to increased enrollment.
Jeff and Paul you are our senior members. Your historical memory and experience in the fields of education and policy are at the heart of this committee.
Kirsi, you have done so much in the way of analytics and asking the right questions and the right times and staying on top of the high school and Stratton facilities, the Middle School math scores and most recently your hard work on the Statement of Interest for a high school rebuild.
Leba, I will get to you later. I thank all of my colleagues for their hard work.
“Too many cooks in the kitchen”
This is why I take exception to the article in Monday’s Boston Globe by James Vaznis wherein he quoted Mitchell Chester, the state commissioner of elementary and secondary education, who said. “There’s no question we need to accelerate our progress to go from good to great.” If I hear “go from good to great” one more time I think I will need a cup of tea to settle down.
Though Mr. Chester was rebutting the accusation that employers were asserting that Massachusetts schools were not producing students who were employable, as I understand his point the solution was more state and educational leaders forcing regulation. That there exists a need to put their imprint on education policy to keep up with other countries.
The expression “too many cooks in the kitchen” comes to mind. I believe this is what we have going on in education policy today. Too many folks in Washington D.C. building their next election victory on the issue of “education.” Too many folks here in our commonwealth justifying their job status by saying we need to break what is not broken and to the detriment of our teachers, our students and their families.
I have recently started watching the new Netflix hit series “House of Cards.” I am only four episodes in but so far education policy is made the center piece of the President’s first 100 days. But in this series, at least so far, the president has no idea how to fix education. Nor do the members of Congress.
They all just believe that it is the issue that can get people behind as everyone cares about children. Indeed, you see horse trading around center pieces of ed reform such as the period of time to conduct teacher evaluations, and give backs and trade offs on charter vs public schools. If this fictional depiction is even remotely true, and I have no reason to believe it is not based on reality, it is deplorable.
I have spoken with our AEA President Linda Hanson on this broad topic, and we agree. Teachers care about things such as small class size, IT support/troubleshooting, clean classrooms, emotional/social support for children, and photocopy machines that work. Mr. Chester, and our leaders I ask you: can we do these things well first and save the “going from good to great bit for another century please?” I think what we are all achieving is great. We see evidence of that every day in our nine schools. I wonder, do they?
We as a School Committee, as we enter into our annual goal-setting time, and our annual reorganization must recognize our part in this too. I do not mean at all to absolve us and blame it all on our two Hills (beacon and capitol) we must remain mindful not to further increase the number of cooks in an already overcrowded kitchen and keep it as simple as possible. What choices we make, what assessments are implemented that we are holding teachers responsible for, all have a consequence. The surprise is that it is often not what we wanted to have happen.
A bittersweet day
On another note, today is a bittersweet day. I am leaving the job as Chair, thank you for allowing me to serve in that capacity. It is also a bittersweet meeting for us as we say “see you soon” to member Leba Heigham. I first met Leba in 2008. I was impressed by her energy, knowledge, and experience in education. I admired her willingness to serve the community as a School Committee member and she won election in her first race. I knew she’d be tough to beat. And she was.
But how fortunate I was to steal her campaign manager Mark away from her (she referred to it as a bro-mance), and follow in her footsteps two years later. I worked with her on policies and procedures, budget and saw her amazing resiliency and foresight in moving us to redistricting: certainly a very controversial issue for many school boards but one that was necessary and so far successful. Leba, thank you very much for your service and friendship.
I’d like to invite the folks around this table to say a few words and I see that we have other guests here tonight that may wish to as well.
This statement was published Friday, March 28, 2014.
