The following letter to the editor was submitted by Lisa Lazare, the executive director of Educators For Excellence Massachusetts. The views expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Andover News. You can learn more about our policy on opinion and commentary on our Mission and Policies page.
Re: APS May Cut 30+ Positions To Close Budget Gap (Jan 16)
With the end of Covid federal relief dollars looming, staff reductions are a very real possibility for districts throughout Massachusetts, Andover Public Schools are no exception. Because Massachusetts is one of only 13 states that allows “last in, first out” –or LIFO– layoff policies, any recent strides to increase teacher diversity in districts may be for naught.
Due to recent state investments in diversifying the teacher workforce, teachers of color are more than twice as likely to be in their first three years of teaching than their white peers, despite teachers of color only accounting for 10% of the workforce. Eliminating these educators due to seniority as the only measure will be doing a disservice to students throughout the district.
Massachusetts must act immediately in implementing policies that protect our diverse teaching workforce and their proven impact on student success. H. 583/S. 340: An Act So All Students Thrive, would require districts to consider other factors–including working within a high-needs school, or speaking another language–in addition to seniority when determining layoffs due to budgets.
The Legislature must take action to protect its investments in a diverse teaching workforce.
Lisa Lazare
Executive Director
E4E Massachusetts
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The recent rejection by three members of the Select Board by their voting to ignore the outcome of the vote at Special Town Meeting where Town Meeting overwhelmingly voted to put on the ballot at our Town elections in March a non-binding vote on whether the Town should keep or replace in some fashion the current “Open Town Meeting” form of town governance is the height of arrogance by those three members since three people were able to have the Select Board ignore the overwhelming vote at Town Meeting two months ago. The fact that three people had the power to ignore the outcome of that Town Meeting vote is demonstrable evidence that the Open Town Meeting form of government may have been a representative form of town governance when Andover was a small fraction of its current size back in the 19th Century, but fails to be a genuinely representative form of Town governance when we are a town that’s bigger than most cities in Massachusetts. And to rely on that Town Governance Committee to justify ignoring how Town Meeting voted to put this important question on the ballot in March is further evidence that that Committee was more interested in maintaining the unrepresentative status quo than in proposing vital changes needed to deliver representative Town governance for a Town our size. The Governance committee even failed to recommend giving voters the right and a proposed mechanism to petition for a recall vote on an elected official prior to the end of an elected official’s term if a sufficient number of voters feel that a recall before the end of the term of an elected official is justified, a mechanism that thousands of communities nationwide have when a sufficient number of voters in those communities feel that a recall of an elected official is justified. The Andover Governance Committee ended up merely rubber stamping the status quo, a status quo that our most recent Town Meeting overwhelmingly said is not working. That three members of the Select Board were able to block putting on the Town elections ballot what Town Meeting overwhelmingly said it wanted on the March elections ballot confirms why this came up for a vote at our most recent Town Meeting a couple of months ago: that most people in Town do not believe that our current form of Town Governance is a genuinely representative form of local governance.
My submitted comments were supposed to be linked to the article about the three members of the Select Board ignoring the overwhelming vote at our recent Special Town Meeting to have a vote regarding Town governance on the March Town elections ballot, not linked to the article on the School Department budget.