Dear Readers,

It was unfortunate that last evening’s School Committee meeting was neither taped for cable broadcast nor attended by any of our newspaper reporters.

Chair Barbara Whidden opened the meeting with a statement that she had indeed been informed, in May, by Dr. Marini, about the NEASC warning. She said that he expressed a desire to meet with NEASC officials to review and ascertain the accuracy of the report before discussing the warning publicly. She gave him permission to proceed. Both Chairman Whidden and Dr. Marini said that, in retrospect, perhaps they should have announced the news first.

I am taking a very practical approach to this news:

1. Regardless of when the warning news was announced, or by whom, the plan of action would not have changed. Dr. Scuzzarella and her team have been working double-time to improve the North Andover High School academic experience with little to no additional funding.

2. I am relieved; it is far more reassuring to me to know that the open and honest relationship between Dr. Marini and our School Committee Chair is intact. I may have disagreed with their decision to delay release of the warning news – but the end result has not changed.

3. I am encouraged that elected officials - on both sides of our town government - are steadily learning to trust in the importance of an informed public vs. a reactionary public. Providing honest answers, upfront, breeds respect and understanding, even when the going gets rough. North Andover local government has moved light years ahead just in the past year and a half – changing the way we do business is never easy or quick – but I see us taking giant steps forward.

As for the NEASC warning, I am having a bit of an epiphany – I’m beginning to think that NEASC has some major explaining to do, and I’ll explain why. NAU and the Andover/North Andover League of Women Voters have teamed up to co-sponsor a Municipal Conference/Forum event on October 1st in our High School Auditorium. You’ll see the flyer shortly – attendees will include elected local and state leaders from over 50 comparable communities and the topic is “Mid-sized Municipalities: Do We Have a Voice in the Massachusetts Economy? Is Anyone Listening?” Michael Widmer, President of the Massachusetts Taxpayer’s Association is one of our featured speakers. Part of our prep work includes pulling together email distribution information from all of those communities. It’s tedious work [because we have to visit every town’s website and search out the data], but it’s been enlightening work.

I’m learning that:

1. North Andover’s elected, appointed and employed leaders are wonderfully accessible to the general public compared to other communities. It’s no wonder that our Town received an award this year for the depth of both document info and contact info available online to citizens.

2. Many, many Massachusetts communities with really good school systems – some in the excellent category – are on NEASC warning status and have been for some time.

3. Check out the link for the Norton School Committee at http://www.nortonschoolcommittee.org/ . If you read their home page statement about their accreditation warning statement, it reads as though it were written for North Andover. Warning status given for academic issues already corrected for? Sounds familiar…

My conclusion: “Somebody” [Eagle-Trib? Globe?] needs to do some investigative reporting. Accreditation is important – NEASC is the only national Assoc. that does the accreditation – but how many or what percentage of Massachusetts high schools are currently on warning status? If the number is significant, it dilutes the impact of the warning. If warnings are issued for cookie-cutter academic reasons that public high schools can not address with the financial resources available to them, we need to know that.

I asked our School Committee and Dr. Marini to post our NEASC warning information publicly on the schools’ website [they said it is currently available at the Stevens Memorial Library].

If accountability is what we want, Chairman Whidden and Dr. Marini met the challenge. If accreditation is what we want, we are fully accredited and the warning status is being addressed in a prompt, reasonable manner. If great schools are what we want, we’re there, and we continue to set the bar higher every day. The challenges we face are not one iota particular to just North Andover – it’s how we face them that makes the difference. I am confident we’re more than equipped to do the job right.

Sincerely,
Sandy Gleed

After applying the 'happy talk' translator, I see:

1. Hiding important information from the public is OK if you mean well.

2. Accountability means eventually admitting your actions after fudging for a while.

3. NEASC is a scam.

4. All is well, nothing to see hear, please move along.

I'm glad the principal and the superintendent are innocent of the cover-up charges and we can restore our faith in these individuals to do the right thing.

Further, the superintendent gets loyalty points for taking the heat until the SC Chairman finally confessed to having been informed in May.

For the other SC members - what did they know and when did they know it?

For several years, we've been force fed the idea that accreditation is really important - that colleges look at this stuff, we shut down the high school for four days (or was it four half days) to help prepare the reports, and school committee members run for office saying their highest priority is keeping the accreditation. Then, when we get an accreditation warning, we don't hear a peep about it from, apparently, the school committee because its no big deal.

Who accredits the accreditors? If I were king, my first accreditation metric would be standardized test scores - english and math. If we can't pass those, forget about anything else.

Best wishes,
ahbgone

I emailed Dr. Marini today and let him know I thought he was a stand up guy for taking all the public heat especially since he had reported the NEASC issue to his boss...the SC chair.

Contrary to the innuendo up on the Valley Patriot web site that a conspiracy was at play in why the SC meeting was not televised last Thursday. I contacted the folks at Cable Access and here is their response:

Bill,

My apologies, we had schedule management problems and missed meeting on the 4th. I am the new Executive Director at NACAM and I understand the relevance of these meetings to the community. We have been implementing a scheduling database to avoid these types of errors and track and build our volunteer membership.
I notified the superintendents office this morning when I found out we missed the meeting.

Thank you for your inquiry and be assured that there should be coverage from now on.


Brian Fraser


North Andover CAM
P 978-687-6570
F 978-691-5465 This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it



Bill Kelly

Bill,

I don't often disagree with you but on this issue I do. I am on the email list for SC agendas from central office. NACAM was sent an agenda.

The bigger issue is not the innuendo of the Valley Patriot, which I believe is on target, but the fact that Mrs. Whidden let Dr. marini take all the public heat and even defended him in the E-T article without ever mentioning she had approved his request to speak with NEASC, the fact that Mrs. Whidden failed to inform the public in a more reasonable time frame, the fact that Mrs. Whidden allowed her fellow SC members Chris ALlen and Chuck Ormsby to attack me for my concern about who knew what and when.

I think the NACAM issue pales in comparison. It was fortuitous timing for Mrs. Whidden to make her announcement when no cameras or reporters were around. Perhaps she owes the public, the other SC members and Dr Marini a more public apology.

Hi Bill - It was me that let Brian know this morning that the cable station missed last week's school committee meeting, and he was sincerely concerned. He was aware that they had missed the last Board of Selectmen's meeting, but he did not know about missing last week's SC meeting. There was no conspiracy here - just a combination of being new to the job, being short-staffed at this time of year (volunteers are usually students), and needing to update communication avenues between our town departments and our cable station.

Brian is the new director, taking over from Ellie Pye. He joined the station in August. I very much enjoyed meeting him this morning, sitting down to talk, and hearing about the really great plans he has for better organizing the services his station provides. He has some great plans for opening up membership and volunteer training as well. As President of North Andover United, Inc., I'm really looking forward to working with him to bringing broadcasts of important local government gatherings to the public - both from within and outside of our town borders. First up is coverage of the forum NAU is co-hosting with the League of Women Voters on October 1st at NAHS. Stay tuned for more info! Senator Bruce Tarr signed on to speak, in addition to Michael Widmer, President of Massachusetts Taxpayers Assoc. We'll be sending out detailed info within the week.

Sincerely,
Sandy Gleed

I don't often disagree with Sandy either but again NACAM is not the issue. Though I do wish Brian well!

The concern I have is that 2 members of the public, Sandy and Bill, called NACAM. The SC did not call.

I again go back to the Dan Murphy phrase...We do our business in public, ugly or not. It should be the responsibility of the SC/SA to call and confirm meetings with NACAM.

I think that Mrs. Whidden flirts with the spirit of the open mtg law. She skirts a violation. Below is the excerpt from open mtg law. She is an elected official who is obligated to the public not the request of the school admin. she is charged with over seeing.

"It is essential to a democratic form of government that the public have broad access to the decisions made by its elected officials and to the way in which the decisions are reached." "The open meeting law is designed to eliminate much of the secrecy surrounding the deliberations and decisions on which public policy is based." "The people must be able to go beyond and behind the decisions reached and be apprised of the pros and cons involved if they are to make sound judgments on questions of policy and to select their representatives intelligently."

I find it hard to move forward in a positive way when the same mistakes of the past are made over and over again. I was told to apologize to the Sc for suggesting any of them would be involved in keeping secrets from the public. Funny thing, no one from the SC has apologized to me for taking me to task on issue I was correct about!

This certainly explains why Barbara Whidden picked that particular meeting to make her announcement, (no conspiracy I'm sure... NOT in North Andover) I am just confused as to why a SINGLE member of the committee (who has absolutely NO authority when acting alone, even as chairman) would take it upon herself to make a decision without(?) approval of the committee, conceal it from the public (and we assume the rest of the committee)? So far, not ONE member of the committee has done a SINGLE thing to hold Marini or Whidden accountable. Why is she still chairman? It will be interesting to see if the Eagle Tribune even covers this or if committee members have an ounce of testicular fortitude to hold ANYONE accountable? Anyone who does not demand accountability should resign immediately!

I think the Eagle Tribune is waiting for someone to throw them a life preserver so I have very little faith that they will finish the final chapter in the story they started.

If people in this community want accountability on this issue, they need pressure other SC members or go to a school comm meeting and ask questions during public participation.