Newton School Committee members “were briefed privately at city hall once in the fall of 2012 as the override package was being finalized,” then School Committee member Geoff Espstein divulged on Village 14 yesterday.
Setti lead out with 10 minutes on how important technology was and I was pretty happy that perhaps we might get technology fixed with the $1.5M/year it needed – a genuine recurring item suitable for an operating override.
It was clear from that briefing that some fixing was going to done at Zervas but no indication ofa $40M mega project.
Although Epstein tried to back off this claim when asked about it by Alderman Ted Hess Mahan a few minutes later, such a meeting would, as Hess Mahan noted, be a violation of Massachusetts Open Meeting Law.
It’s a serious enough infraction that I’d hope one of our local reporters might investigate.
You didn’t mention the ‘serial meetings’ with non-quorum groups that Geoff described. And why aren’t you berating Geoff for not complaining about THAT while he was on SC? 😉
Agree, it’s a good topic to look into, especially since it’s Sunshine Week in the news biz.
Here goes the President of the Newton-Needham Chamber of Commerce stirring up more trouble!
Here are some facts.
These are briefing sessions. In this case, the Mayor simply laid out his thinking on the override package. I remember being impressed that technology was so important in the presentation.
I remember one other briefing with the prior Mayor conducted in a similar manner.
I also remember a briefing when there was a records request made for SC emails. That was done with the city solicitor’s office.
It would be best to contact the SC leadership and the Mayor as they set these meetings up.
I simply attended and listened.
I don’t know what this ‘backing off’ is.
Presumably the Mayor briefed the aldermen but I don’t know what format that took. I assume he invited the aldermen in groups into his office to brief them.
Ted might illuminate.
In my view, it would generally be better practice for the override package to be discussed in a regular SC meeting, so we could have a real discussion.
The briefing format allows no discussion to be had at all and in fact the override package changed quite a bit from the briefing picture.
From the AG website to find the information.
“What meetings are covered by the Open Meeting Law?
With certain exceptions, all meetings of a public body must be open to the public. A meeting is generally defined as “a deliberation by a public body with respect to any matter within the body’s jurisdiction.”
“These four questions will help determine whether a communication constitutes a meeting subject to the law:
1) is the communication between members of a public body;
2) does the communication constitute a deliberation;
3) does the communication involve a matter within the body’s jurisdiction; and
4) does the communication fall within an exception listed in the law.”
As you will note above,
1.) Geoff was clear that no deliberations took place
2.) An override falls within the jurisdiction of the Board of Aldermen, not the School Committee
Here is an excerpt from the law that establishes jurisdiction with regard to an override:
“The local appropriating authority of any city or town which is subject to the provisions of paragraph may, by a two-thirds vote, seek voter approval to assess taxes in excess of the amount allowed pursuant to said paragraph by a specified amount.”
Here is the definition of the “local appropriating authority” from the law with regard to overrides:
“Local appropriating authority”, in a town, the board of selectmen; in a city, the council, with the mayor’s approval when required by law; in a municipality having a town council form of government, the town council.”
We’re talking about a School Committee that’s oblivious to the fact they are systemically torturing thousands of high school students every single day, and in the process contributing to depression that sometimes results in teen suicide. When I weigh the importance of that accusation against the content of this story, I really don’t give a darn if they all had a secret meeting in Setti’s basement and plotted to take over the world. These SC members continue to play Russian Roulette with the lives of children, by keeping early morning start times that deprive high school students of adequate sleep. The evidence is clear that sleep deprivation, [a staple of torture], is linked to depression, and that teens are particularly susceptible. We have both a depression problem and suicide crisis among our high schoolers, yet the School Committee continues to fiddle. How many teen suicides do we need to see before the School Committee wakes up, and makes the one across the board change that would immediately reduce stress levels for our high school students?
It’s the kind of thing that could have been video taped and put on Youtube. The concern isn’t always deliberations, it’s exposure to whether leadership is trying to influence instead of educate.
Lucky for Geoff, he didn’t say if he got a can of soda. Cashews??
Nothing to see here. Move along. No quorum, no foul.
Email, social media and blogs involve trickier issues, and it is not always entirely clear what is or is n0t okay. The easy case is when a quorum of a public body discusses public business by email. Everything else is in a somewhat gray area. The best way to avoid violating the Open Meeting Law is to resist the urge to hit “reply all” when one of your colleagues states their (obviously fallacious!) opinion on city business.
A meeting with the law department to discuss a public records request probably falls within one of the exceptions where a public body can meet in executive session.
@Ted: I’d agree with you EXCEPT Geoff’s comments here contradict Geoff’s comment here.
Yesterday Epstein says they broke into “non-quorum” groups. Today he says it was one meeting. If it’s one meeting, then one could look at Jane’s argument about whether or not there were deliberations but first we need to establish if the darn thing even happened.
So here’s a question for Geoff Epstein (and Geoff do your best to avoid your natural habit to blame me or political insiders and please just answer the question):
Was it one “briefing” with the SC and the mayor? Or was it “non-quorum groups”?
Or to put it a different way: were you telling the truth today or yesterday?
Greg – The second part of my post related to the open meeting law and jurisdiction. The BOA has jurisdiction over the matter in question – overrides – not the SC.
Greg,
Its’ pretty clear.
Groups of 2 to 3 SC members met separately with the Mayor to be briefed by the Mayor on the developing form of the override package. A quorum is 5, so a quorum was never present.
These were briefings so there was no discussion.
Ted is right and his is good advice to follow if one is interested in the issue.
Every time I blog it seems like the Grand Inquisitor Reibman emerges from a thicket to empty his quiver and then withdraw, to scurry further ahead on the trail to deploy his semantic traps for more toxophilite engagement.
But blog on I will and the truth of what is really happening here in the woods of Newton will clearly emerge.
Anyone notice Newton was marked as an up an coming restaurant town this week? Such focus has a snowball effect…. but there needs to be focus Has the SC ever discussed finances over at Shake Shack?
Sorry, the reference was to this week’s Globe piece on Newton’s new restaurants
Greg, I was taken aback by Geoff’s first comment until he clarified that less than a quorum was present. There’s no reason to ride him out on a rail for this one.
@ Greg, Please stop trying to divert attention from substantive issues that truly affect people’s children , the quality of education in Newton and the quality of life in Newton in general via simplistic and (seemingly increasingly personal) attacks on Geoff Epstein.
@ Mike Striar. High School starting times have nothing to do with this thread, nor did they have any relevance to previous threads. They do, however, have relevance to another, larger concept: what other school districts have been able to accomplish over the past 10 years that Newton has not. Brookline High ALREADY starts later than Brookline elementary schools. No act of God required, just strong and talented leadership. Larger issue: all the things that Brookline does better than Newton, from offering elementary world languages and gifted and talented programs to real full day kindergarten ,far better communications about facilities issues and systemically enriched after school programming. Even a citizen-run override committee that is openly questioning continued participation in METCO. Key message to SC: toss the head up the keister “we’re Newton” mentality, create a checklist of what Brookline is already doing as far as programming that impacts children, go on auto pilot and just make it so. You don’t have to think. You don’t have to create a committee. Just look at what Brookline is doing and do it.
@Karen– Excellent comments about Brookline. I completely agree.
Here’s the thing… When I see thousands of our high school students effectively being tortured everyday, all because our School Committee is oblivious and incompetent, I am compelled to speak up. That’s just who I am. And in light of the tragic events we’ve witnessed at our high schools in the past year, you better believe I’m going to turn up the volume even louder on this issue. I believe changing the early morning start times at our high schools is the single most important issue facing NPS today. And if the School Committee is not intellectually or creatively capable enough to figure out how to make that change, it certainly calls into question all their other decisions as well.
I also agree about Brookline.
They in many respects are a very good community to emulate.
They are ahead of us in best practices generally.
Here you go, Greg – this is where you can file a complaint if you believe that there has been a violation of the open meeting laws. Now, ordinarily you have to file within 30 days of the date the violation allegedly occurred, but there’s a little exception for the late discovery of a violation. Even then, you only have 30 days to so tick-tock – times a-wasting if you are genuinely concerned about serious infractions of the public meeting laws.
http://www.mass.gov/ago/government-resources/open-meeting-law/open-meeting-law-complaint-process.html
Late to the conversation:
Thanks to Mike Striar for continuing to raise the issue of later start times for high school kids and to KarenN for some important fact-raising. My youngest is a 10th grader now. All 3 of my kids enjoyed school but it became difficult to rouse them around the time they started the 9th grade. It wouldn’t and doesn’t matter if they sleep 8, 9, 10 or 15 hours or went to bed at 3 in the afternoon. Seriously. It is a major effort prying their eyelids open at this early hour, something that wasn’t an issue when they were in elementary school.
They are simply not built to perform school work at these early hours.
We have basic clocks that change as we get older.
If my comment continues the highjacking of this thread from its original premise so be it. These are the important issues.
I’m concerned with the overuse of the term “best practices” for a variety of reasons, but most importantly, one person’s best practice may very well be another’s disaster.
Brookline provides an excellent example of how the term can be quite meaningless in reality. The Brookline elementary model are all K-8th schools. For some students this is a significant advantage, but for many other students, the set up works very poorly. For all students, it increases the total enrollment of the individual schools. Four schools have over 600, and one of those four has over 800 students. Is a K-8 model a best practice? For some, but certainly not all.
BTW, Brookline is planning a $90m expansion of one of its elementary schools to accommodate the surge in enrollment.
Best practices is a commonly accepted term. They are evidence based, not some random idiosyncratic approach.
Brookline is an example of how the term has real meaning.
When they have an issue, it is thoroughly discussed at all levels in the community so that a consensus is reached. They are well ahead of Newton in this best practice.
They passed an operating override focused on improving education, which we have yet to do. They convinced the community of the merit of a longer school day and also of the advantages of teaching Mandarin and Spanish from K on. Their language approach is way ahead of ours.
Their forthright discussion of the METCO program also shows that they will discuss everything.
If the program still has value, they’ll keep it. No doubt part of their conversation will deal with the fact that METCO students are classified into SPED at twice the rate of the rest of the population just as they are in Newton. They may well institute reforms on their SPED classification practices for low income students, which would provide some guidance for our identical problem in Newton.
My older son went through the Brookline school system and K-8 works well by and large.
Brookline is getting hit by a population tsunami. It just keeps on coming. We are on the same coastline and would do well to plan for much larger population increases than we currently are.
If we followed the way Brookline works to achieve best practices, our community and especially our kids would benefit significantly.
Much of what you say, Geoff, is in the realm of opinion. The Metco issue, rather than encouraging a full discussion, caused outrage in much of the community due to a process many saw as rigged.
As for changes that constitute best practices, the devil is in the details: as an example, the B’line school day was lengthened because it had the shortest day of any community in Mass. The override brought the length of the school day up to the standards most communities already have. That is an important piece of data that has not been included in this discussion
Commonly accepted terms are frequently buzzwords, catchall phrases that allow one to avoid a deeper investigation of an issue. You say that your older son went through the Brookline school system and the K-8 model worked well for him. Because it worked for your son, then it’s a best practice? That’s not data – that’s anecdotal evidence from your family. Is the world language curriculum an effective one, such as the immersion program that Milton has? What’s the curriculum, how many minutes per week are devoted to the program? What was taken out of the curriculum to accommodate the program? I’m not opposed to world languages at the elementary level, but I want to know the program makes effective use of time and resources.
I taught in B’line for 12 years. It, like Newton, is an excellent school system. Neither is perfect, but what is “best” about both systems is that the staff at each level works hard to improve the educational experiences of all students and the parent community is thoroughly engaged in the school system and their children’s education.
OK, Jane. But to claim that best practices don’t exist, is to be leading people up the garden path.
They do and they are what we should aim for.
The K-8 System that Brookline has is not perfect and it did not just serve my older son. It has served Brookline well. And they are much more in continuous improvement mode that we are.
Here are some of the ways Brookline has been ahead of Newton:
– It introduced foreign languages into K and above with an operating override. It argued for more money for a specific educational betterment and the community agreed.
– It is able to raise the METCO issue, as it is now and discuss it. Our SC leadership has said it wishes to do this, but it has not happened. The last substantive METCO report was done under Jim Marini.
– Their education foundation funded an engineering stream for high school students well ahead of us and funded staff positions to go with it.It has had an especially clear effect in encouraging girls to engage in engineering.
– see Karen Nacht’s comments above for more
But the most important difference I see between Brookline and Newton is that they have engaged their community much more effectively in discussing real problems they have a solutions which they might deploy.
We have Newton North in our past and Zervas in our current view. Both projects don’t meet the basic requirements for citizen engagement.
That’s where we need to take a lesson from Brookline’s playbook. Brookline is not perfect by any measure, but they sure are better in this area than us.
Concerning that Open Meeting Law violation, here’s what we learned:
http://newton.wickedlocal.com/article/20140324/NEWS/140328027
Thanks Emily. I’ve started a new thread here.
The grass is always greener…