BoE Unanimously Votes to Close WRE
March 16, 2010
After what was apparently a planned maneuver on behalf of the BoE by packing the early part of the meeting with miscellaneous items, the vote to close WRE took place at approximately 10:45 PM and most of the packed house that was there at the start of the meeting was well out the door long before. It took shouts from the audience for the BoE Members to even have a 10 minute discussion of the measure before voting. Board Member Donna Marsh O’Connor brought up the measure and all members were ready to vote before a LIVES member yelled out stating that they just spent 45 minutes discussion small cuts in the athletic budget yet couldn’t give the school closing the same attention.
Begrudgingly, members walked through canned statistics to please those still in the audience, before they voted unanimously to close WRE. It saddens us here at LIVES because this Board has lost sight of their role in the education process and most importantly who they serve – the voters. Many LIVES members have been in attendance at all of the BoE meetings beginning with the budget presentation on February 8th and were witnesses to well over 12 hours of public commentary about the budget, proposed school closings and the academies plan. Through that entire process voters’ questions were routinely ignored, well over 70% of them, and those few that were answered were either answered with a broad brush or misdirected in the response.
In those long hours of public comments not once did one BoE member defend the person at the microphone by telling whomever was answering the question that either they did not answer the question posed or that a given question in the voter’s comments was not address.
What was even more disturbing was the fact that the multitude of conversations, comments and opinions that were expressed by all board members in those referenced 12 hours; on very few occasions were the voters, teachers or students mentioned or given consideration in the discussion. We heard ad nauseum about the role of the Superintendent, the District Administrative Team and the Board members.
Yet what was devoid in their conversations and apparent in their lack of attention paid to the overwhelming majority of those who expressed their opinions during those 12 long hours of comments was the simple fact that they have lost sight of why they are there and for whom.
According to By-law 1120:
