Questions what hardship is being faced by not passing referendum last fall

Vox Pop

Dear Mr. Sullivan; Regarding your Spring 2021 Medford Area Public Schools newsletter we received in the mail last week; It is very impressive, duly noted and appreciated, that the Medford schools stayed operating five days a week for face-to-face interactions with students during the school year. This gave the MAPSD community members something to be very proud of. You deserve credit for that achievement. Thank you.

That being said, unfortunately, much of the rest of the newsletter regarding the referendum “do over” is concerning. There is no real urgency in anything you say to justify passing the “do over” referendum next month. Your emphasis seems to focus on things that do not really matter. What matters to us is what if any hardship(s) our students had to endure because the referendum failed last November. It really does not matter that the Board voted unanimously to have the do over. To be fair to all of us, especially the 3,558 who voted “No” last November and to the Board members that expressed some reservations about the “do over,” you probably should have left this out of your Newsletter. Same thing when you say it was voted down by “only 174 votes.” This did not help your cause. All it did was to completely disenfranchise the 3,558 MAPSD community members that voted against it. This is especially true when you consider there was a record turnout this past election. If it had passed by only 174 votes, would those that voted against it be able to have a “do over?” We know the answer to that is, no, they would not. I could not believe what I was reading when you said you think we should pass the do over because last November, over 80% of referendums passed. Why do you think that is something we should consider? Are you suggesting that the MAPSD community members need to get on the band wagon so to speak and be like everybody else and approve a referendum for our school district? Do you perceive passing a school referendum to be a “trendy” thing for a school district to do these days? You must realize by now, most voters in the MAPSD do not think that way. Your referendum was in the 20% that failed. This should strongly suggest to you that you need to continue making things work the way you have been doing. I apologize for keeping on with what I feel are “negatives” in your Newsletter, but I feel I should also share with you that your reference to the 80 member committee you formed does not influence any voter to pass the do over. It did make up about 1% of those that voted last November, which is a pretty good representation of the MAPSD community, but for it to make a difference to actual voters, the 80 committee members would have had to been randomly selected and be representative of the “whole” MAPSD community. The committee’s consensus seems to be directly in line with your proposals. There does not seem to have been any meaningful compromises made, just the appearance of some minor changes to make it seem as though the MAPSD community members had some “say so” in the proposal for the referendum. Your “interest rates are at all time lows” comment to try to convince us to vote in favor of the do over makes you look very desperate. It seems like you are really having a hard time justifying that actual benefits to our students the referendum would have provided if it had passed. You seem to suggest that we should consider this in our decision because you think sooner or later you will get the referendum passed and if we want to save ourselves some money, we should just pass it in April and get it over with. It almost seems like a threat. Is that what you are implying here? If that is the case, then why are you even having a referendum? One last thing regarding the Newsletter, the “We’re coming back” comment on the front page has definitely generated a lot of discussion in the MAPSD community. It seems to be perceived as an “in your face” pressure tactic to intimidate MAPSD community members to get it right this time and vote the referendum in. If you meant that comment to be humorous, well, this isn’t a laughing matter. The MAPSD community takes the educational needs of our children very seriously. We understand you are not happy that the referendum failed last fall, but if you are serious about wanting the “do over” to succeed next month, you might want to consider some sort of public apology to the 3,558 MAPSD community members that may be offended by that comment.

What ever happened to the “community” survey you sent all of us prior to last fall’s referendum? I believe that was sent to all in the MAPSD community. Why aren’t you referencing those results in your newsletter? Seems like that would have been a pretty good indicator of how we all felt about the referendum being necessary or not, even though the wording you used for most of the questions and multiple choice answers seemed to be skewed so any answer we selected could be misconstrued to show support for a referendum and it was still voted down. Were the results of that survey reflective of the results of the vote last November?

One last “concern” that does not originate from your last Newsletter. Why do you have MAPSD Board members listed on your web site as MAPSD staff? The Board members were elected by MAPSD community members. They are elected officials, charged with overseeing activities/ actions of the MAPSD. Identifying them as members of your staff is very deceiving. It suggests that Board members are supervised by you, which would be a conflict of interest. The reality of the matter is they supervise you. Granted they are also listed separately on your web site, but when they allowed you to identify themselves as your staff and even be mixed in within your staff listing, it suggests that you are their supervisor. Your function is to act as an advisor to the MAPSD Board of Directors. You answer to them, which in turn means you answer to the MAPSD community members as a whole. Not just some of us. All of us.

The emphasis in your newsletter should have been to help us understand how our children have suffered because the referendum failed. We need to hear from you what good things, the educational benefits our children would have experienced, if the referendum would have passed last November. There is very little in the Newsletter that emphasizes the need for the referendum. If you and the Board are serious that the benefits in this referendum are necessary and will benefit our children, then you might want to consider another media approach to all of us, that identifies specific benefits the referendum will provide our students and how our children are suffering because it failed. If you do not, I fear your Newsletter may be the final nail in the referendum’s coffin.

— Kenneth R. Rismeyer, Medford