- Wednesday March 20th - HEART Committee meeting @ 6:30pm in Northfield
Town Hall. Discussion of school choice surveys, committee future
- Friday March 22nd - *Joint Committee on Education
<https://malegislature.gov/Committees/Joint/J14>* hearing @ 10am in the
Gardner Auditorium at the State House. see below
- Thursday March 28th - Special School Committee meeting @ 7:00 pm at
PVRS. Main topic: *discussion and possible vote on closing the Leyden
and Warwick elementary schools*. All residents concerned about the
possible closure of Warwick Community School are encouraged to come.
Because citizen comments are likely to be limited, please consider writing
a letter in advance expressing your thoughts to the School Committee. Their
email addresses
A key reason that the Warwick Community School may be closed in the near
future is due to the state's under-funding of school district's like ours.
On March 8th during our State Senator Jo Comerford's Warwick visit, she
told residents about efforts to re-vamp the funding formula; both houses of
the MA legislature have agreed that deliberation on education funding
should be fast-tracked. On March 22nd at 10am in the Gardner Auditorium at
the State House, the *Joint Committee on Education
<https://malegislature.gov/Committees/Joint/J14>*will hold its first hearing on
Governor Baker’s Chapter 70 Update bill
<https://malegislature.gov/Bills/191/H70>, Senator Chang Diaz’s PROMISE bill
<https://malegislature.gov/Bills/191/SD101>, and Representative Paul
Tucker’s Chapter 70 Update bill
<https://malegislature.gov/Bills/191/H576> (click
the previous links for full texts of the bills). Follow the following links
for news articles Governor Baker's bill
<https://www.mass.gov/news/governor-baker-unveils-school-finance-proposal-to-fully-fund-the-foundation-budget>
and
Senator Chang Diaz's bill
<https://www.senatorchangdiaz.com/education-promise-act>.
Senator Comerford's aide Elena Cohen <Elena.Cohen@xxxxxxxxxxxx> sent the
following information and thoughts:
We know that it’s going to take significant community pressure to see the
changes we need in the school funding formula as well as in the bottom line
dollar amount allocated. *It will be important for the Education Committee
to hear the specific ways that insufficient state funding affects your
schools. *Your unique experiences and anecdotes have a powerful impact.
Please consider sharing your individual experience if you, your schools,
and/or your towns decide to provide written testimony or testify in person.
People wanting to testify in person do not need to sign up in advance, but
should sign in when they arrive at Gardner Auditorium and plan to speak for
3 minutes (written testimony can be longer). You do not need to arrive
right at 10:00 am to sign up to testify; you can sign up whenever you
arrive but should keep in mind that the later in the hearing you sign up,
the longer the list will be.
1. The MTA has created a toolkit with draft resolutions, letters, and
fact sheets. These materials can be found here:
https://massteacher.org/current-initiatives/fund-our-future/resolutions
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__massteacher.org_current-2Dinitiatives_fund-2Dour-2Dfuture_resolutions&d=DwMFaQ&c=lDF7oMaPKXpkYvev9V-fVahWL0QWnGCCAfCDz1Bns_w&r=-gwUlRonmw1FS-92YZm1bqSZ1LCjZFjABzfk1EeJSl8&m=z1DMImM64sd0Zs9nqfSNhyhOeMaPon5rnaoL_D4jV90&s=3mRbfSa3wvT6D5pE63P5GE61vPrA5ePVjY602XkGu40&e=>
https://massteacher.org/current-initiatives/fund-our-future/resolutions
<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__massteacher.org_current-2Dinitiatives_fund-2Dour-2Dfuture_resolutions&d=DwMFaQ&c=lDF7oMaPKXpkYvev9V-fVahWL0QWnGCCAfCDz1Bns_w&r=-gwUlRonmw1FS-92YZm1bqSZ1LCjZFjABzfk1EeJSl8&m=z1DMImM64sd0Zs9nqfSNhyhOeMaPon5rnaoL_D4jV90&s=3mRbfSa3wvT6D5pE63P5GE61vPrA5ePVjY602XkGu40&e=>
2. We can bring your written testimony to the hearing and make sure that
committee members receive your remarks. Feel free to send those to our
State House office (address below) or email them directly to
jo.comerford@xxxxxxxxxxxx.
3. If you’re on twitter, please tag @Jo_Comerford so Jo can re-tweet and
offer targeted amplification. Similarly, Jo is happy to re-post articles,
pictures, videos, and local calls-to-action via facebook. You can email
links to jo.comerford@xxxxxxxxxxxx.
*Please consider activating your wider community - students, families,
teachers, PTOs, municipal leaders to generate postcards, letters, banners -
we can imagine nothing more powerful than our senate team lugging in sacks
of mail demonstrating the overwhelming community support for getting
education funding right this time.*
Two people who are going to this hearing are School Committee members Jessica
Marshall <MarshallJ@xxxxxxxxxxxx> from Warwick and Karen O'Neil
<ONeilK@xxxxxxxxxxxx> from Leyden. Their email addresses are linked for
carpooling contact.
Tom Wyatt
<https://drive.google.com/u/0/settings/storage?hl=en>
<https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/terms/>
<https://www.google.com/intl/en/policies/privacy/>
<https://www.google.com/gmail/about/policy/>
