Annual Town Election

Monday, March 5th, is the date to vote in the annual Town election. Polls are open from 7:00 AM to 8:00 PM. Find precinct and polling locations HERE.

All of the town-wide seats for Town Moderator (Deborah Brown), Board of Selectman (Jill Hai), School Committee (Kathleen Lenihan & Deepika Sawhney), and Planning Board (Ginna Johnson & Richard Canale) are not contested races, but that is no reason not to vote for them. They are well-prepared and excellent choices for the seats they are running for and our Town will be well-served by them. Join me in thanking them for stepping up to serve.

The contested races are happening further down the ballot, in the seats for Town Meeting within the precincts. In our Precinct 1, there are eight candidates for seven seats.* Some of the names of those I’m recommending are further down the ballot, so please be sure to look for them (specimen ballot HERE):

• Joel A. Adler
• Sandhya Beebee
• Sudhir Ranjan
• Mary Ann Stewart
• Judith L. Zabin

Yours truly has been in Town Meeting for the past 12 years. It has been a privilege to represent our neighborhood. I have endeavored to keep you and our neighbors updated and engaged on Town matters via face-to-face meet ups, this blog, posts to our neighborhood lists, and facebook. I ask for your vote to return me for another 3-year term.

Two newcomers deserve your attention: Sandy Beebee (Page Road) and Sudhir Ranjan (Emerson Gardens). I have spent some time getting to know them and believe both would be terrific additions.

• Sandy is a parent of younger children. She was Harrington PTA president for two years, part of the Lexington Parents Advocacy Group, and she has recently been appointed to the Capital Expenditures Committee by our Town Moderator. As an elected rep to Town Meeting, she will be able to vote on Town Meeting Articles, including the capital articles she has been focused on as a member of the CEC.

• Sudhir is eager to represent his community. He is a parent of a 7th grader at Clarke and a senior at LHS who is headed to college in the fall. He is a scientist here in Lexington. He wants to participate in Town affairs in a non-partisan manner, in an effort to enhance overall community development. He also wants to be sure we have looked at all possible options to save money before any tax increase is requested.

The last two candidates I recommend have been in Town Meeting for many years: Joel Adler and Judy Zabin. They are terrific and bring a wealth of knowledge. I recommend that you vote to return them to Town Meeting for another 3-year term.

*You may vote for as few as you like, but no more than seven representatives to Town Meeting. The seven candidates with the highest number of votes will serve as our elected representatives from Precinct 1.

Yes for Lexington

Due to a "a glitch in the system further up the food chain", the letter of support for the Yes for Lexington Campaign signed by former members of the Lexington School Committee didn't make it into last week's Minuteman newspaper. Please remember to vote this Monday, December 4 -- and I hope you will support these projects.

November 19, 2017

To the Editor:

As former members of the Lexington School Committee, we have advocated for all children in our public schools. In each decade there are challenges that our town must work through to assure excellent and equitable education.

We have seen a steady rise in the student population over the last 6 years.

The School Committee has studied capacity at every school to determine gaps, and evaluated short-term and long-term construction solutions.  They also changed the policy on school assignment, allowing the administration to optimize available seats town-wide. Although some in town believe that money can be saved by increasing class sizes, they are mistaken. This idea has been examined and rejected by school committees for more than a decade because it assigns students to schools based simply on space availability without considering the myriad other factors involved in student assignment. No school committee has been prepared to sacrifice individual students' education to some theoretical vision of maximum efficiency.

Meanwhile, the current School Committee has worked with all relevant committees to monitor conditions at all school facilities and update the school portion of Lexington’s Master Plan.

The projects on the ballot are a result of this planning process, and include a new site for the public preschool “Lexington Children’s Place - LCP” and a new Hastings.

LCP is where our youngest children with special needs have gotten their start at a fair chance for an appropriate education for the last 20 years, despite being moved to multiple facilities. Relocating LCP will free space at Harrington elementary and help alleviate elementary overcrowding.

The new Hastings will also alleviate system-wide overcrowding.

We endorse all three questions, as the schools rely on the Fire Department for public safety.

We urge you to vote Yes! on all three questions Monday, December 4.

Bonnie Brodner, Trodden Path

Scott Burson, Cary Avenue

Helen Cohen, Patterson Road

Rod Cole, School Street

Margaret Coppe, Barrymeade Drive

Judy Crocker, Currier Court

Tom Griffiths, Massachusetts Avenue

Bill Hurley, Young Street

Florence Koplow, Brent Road

Judy Leader, Fairfield Drive

Barrie Peltz, Jackson Court

Mary Ann Stewart, Rawson [Avenue]

Wrap Up: Bridge, Bowman, and Estabrook Elementary Schools

In 2010, the Town of Lexington Public Facilities took advantage of an indoor air quality test offered by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Results revealed that in two schools (Jonas Clarke Middle School and Estabrook Elementary School), concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls (known as PCBs) were higher than normal.

Locating the source of PCBs then took considerable sleuthing and further testing. At Clarke, PCBs were found only in window caulking; mitigation was relatively simple to do: remove the caulk, encapsulate the surrounding building masonry, and recaulk windows with non-PCB material.

At Estabrook though, it was an entirely different matter.

Eventually, PCBs were found in all of the floor and ceiling mastic, as well as the window caulk, and in the mastic used to affix both interior and exterior decorative wall panels.

In January of 2012, Lexington voters approved a debt exclusion override to appropriate funds for extraordinary repairs to the Bridge and Bowman Elementary Schools and for replacement of the Estabrook School. Later that spring, at Special Town Meeting on April 2, 2012, Town Meeting voted to appropriate money for those repairs. In August, the School Committee was invited to see the new boiler room - an extended space at one far corner of each school. (Bridge and Bowman are identical buildings.)

I snapped the exciting images of the new boiler room (below), complete with shiny new pipes. The new boilers are much more efficient and slightly larger than a standard kitchen refrigerator. Compare that to the previous boilers, which when removed, provided space for two classrooms! 

               

The truly exciting moment came when the Estabrook elementary School opened its new doors to students in February 2014. This past October 2014 there was an official ribbon cutting and celebration for the new Estabrook Elementary School. (All photos by yours truly. Read more about the Estabrook Elementary School Project, including beautiful images of the new school on the DiNisco Design Partnership website).

The new Estabrook Elementary School

Estabrook student assembly ...

...a full house!

L-R: Parent Leader Karen Griffiths, Estabrook PTA co-president;
DiNisco Design Partnership Principal Architect Ken DiNisco;
DiNisco Design Partnership Project Lead Donna DiNisco

Estabrook Principal Sandra Trach welcomes
state and local dignitaries
to Ribbon Cutting & Assembly
(L to R: State Treasurer Steve Grossman;
MSBA Executive Director Jack McCarthy;
Lexington School Committee Chair Margaret Coppe;
Selectman Chair Joe Pato;
LPS Superintendent Dr.Paul Ash)

Dr. Paul Ash

Principal Trach with guests

School Leaders @Social Media

More and more people are using platforms like twitter, facebook, and LinkedIn to engage, inform, educate, and network.

• I set up my facebook page early in October 2011 in anticipation of my 2012 re-election to the Lexington School Committee (feel free to visit and "Like"...)

• I joined twitter in February 2011 (tweets at right...). If one thinks of twitter as a microblog, then this blog elaborates on thoughts, ideas, and scenes I have tweeted about.

• I beefed up my LinkedIn profile after attending a women's leadership conference - I've tried to maintain and build connections ever since.

So, it was with interest that I responded to a query sent to American School Board Journal subscribers last year about using social media - and would I be interested in talking to someone from ASBJ about it?

A small part of my conversation with ASBJ senior editor Lawrence Hardy is featured in the February edition of ASBJ and may be accessed HERE. I was pleased to contribute to the topic and agree that there is a tremendous opportunity to positively promote the work of schools and districts - and to engage with the international community on important education and humanitarian issues of our time.

SC Meeting Agenda

The meeting is the first of several on the school's FY14 budget. I haven't been successful  live-blogging our meetings yet - I think it may have something to do with the draw on my phone as a hot spot...if I cannot manage it at the meeting, I will post on Wednesday or Thursday.

LEXINGTON SCHOOL COMMITTEE MEETING

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Lexington Town Office Building, Selectmen’s Meeting Room

1625 Massachusetts Avenue

7:30 PM Call to Order and Welcome:

Public Comment – (Written comments to be presented to the School Committee; oral presentations not to exceed three minutes.)

7:40 PM Superintendent’s Announcements: 

7:45 PM Members’ Reports / Members’ Concerns: 

8:00 PM Agenda:

1.  Four- and Ten-Year Enrollment Forecasts (30 minutes)

2.  Superintendent’s FY14 Recommended Budget (45 minutes)

3.  LPS Facility Master Plan Update (45 minutes)

4.  Vote to Approve School Committee Minutes of November 13, 2012 (2 minutes)

5.  Vote to Approve School Committee Minutes of December 4, 2012 (2 minutes)

6.  Vote to Approve and Not Release School Committee Executive Session Minutes of November 27, 2012 (2 minutes)

7.  Vote to Approve and Not Release School Committee Executive Session Minutes of December 18, 2012 (2 minutes)

The next meeting of the School Committee is scheduled for Tuesday, January 15, 2013, at 7:30 p.m. in the Town Office Building, Selectmen’s Meeting Room, 1625 Massachusetts Avenue.

All agenda items and the order of items are approximate and subject to change.