Letter to Community: Care About Our Schools? Please Read...

Dear Medfield Community,

I wish it weren't true, but as someone who has attended School Committee hearings and meetings for nearly a decade, my expectations for this year's budget hearing and meeting are low.

Why? Fundamentally, what I've witnessed and documented is a School Committee that has abdicated its legal responsibilities to Medfield citizens, and most importantly, its students.

A significant and timely example: Tonight, Jan. 26 following the 7 p.m. budget hearing (please tune in or attend), School Committee is poised to review and approve a new public comment policy BEHD-E that outlines specific guidelines that will be followed at its meetings (it serves as a supplement to the main policy also proposed).

While virtually all of the proposed policy wording is acceptable, the second sentence in this paragraph is highly problematic:

"The Chair of the Committee works with the Superintendent to formulate the meeting agendas.
Together they will determine whether or not to place an item on the agenda, and if the item is to be taken up they will also determine when to place an item on the agenda and all parameters to be required of the presenter."

The law is clear, and has been reinforced by Massachusetts Association of School Committees (MASC) and school boards across the country: School committee meetings belong to the committee, and not the superintendent.

While it is perfectly acceptable, desired and expected for superintendents to need their own agenda items, in no way should any superintendent have approval or veto authority over requests by citizens or school committee members seeking to put a topic on a committee agenda, and a superintendent should not dictate the timing of an agenda item or define presenter parameters. (Documentation: MASC model policy and "Role of the Chair" training.)

The final decision on agenda items, including topics, sequencing and speaker parameters, rests with School Committee chairs. No school committee -- and school policy -- should ever relinquish that authority.

So why is Medfield School Committee allowing the proposed policy wording to move forward?

In this author's opinion, especially as a regular meeting attendee and school volunteer since the late 1990s, our Medfield School Committee appears to believe (incorrectly) that the Education Reform Act of 1993 has stripped it of all responsibilities and given it to the superintendent of schools.

How has this played out? Despite Medfield School Committee retaining and executing its legal authority over policy, budgets and budget planning, strategic direction, superintendent contract, use of school attorney, district communications, facility governance, certain hiring decisions, it has allowed its authority to be bypassed in these and other areas. The end result is a committee that fails to adequately represent Medfield families, taxpayers and students.

School budget policy is a timely example, especially with a proposed 5.65% increase.

Our Medfield school budget process and the Jan. 26, 2023 hearing, are especially timely examples of a disregarded policy.

It is Medfield School Committee's responsibility to ensure that its own budget planning policy (DBD) is followed, and specifically that it will strive to:

"Engage in thorough advance planning, with staff and community involvement, in order to develop budgets and guide expenditures in a manner that will achieve the greatest educational returns and contributions to the educational program in relation to dollars expended."

• So what are we trying to achieve with the 2023-2024 school budget?
• What are our district goals and objectives for the next school year?
• How has the community been actively engaged in the process of helping to determine district priorities?

One public hearing with a line-item spreadsheet with numbers few will understand, and a 10-page PowerPoint slide presentation, does not comply with our Budget Planning Policy. Our public hearing documents also don't represent best practices conveyed by Massachusetts Association of School Business Officials (MASBO) and endorsed by MASC. Lastly, other school districts are multiple steps ahead of Medfield with budget education and transparency.

(In contrast, this author celebrates efforts by our Town Administrator to seek out, receive and execute a Commonwealth "Best Practices" grant that helps the town provide a more comprehensive overview of the annual budget, long-term financial planning, and as a result, improved transparency.)

Looking at the current school budget calendar developed by the superintendent, unlike most other school districts and even our own Board of Selectmen who have spent many weeks honing in on town goals for the year, there has been no similar goal-setting effort by Medfield School Committee for fiscal year 2024.

Community engagement is needed

Do the citizens of Medfield care about any of this? Will our School Committee and superintendent continue to expect taxpayer voters to show up at town meeting forced to vote on a school budget after so little effort has been expended to educate them about the numbers?

We deserve better than being handed a request for a 5.65% school budget increase with only bare-bones information AND at the same time an effort is underway to diminish citizen voices.

I sincerely hope more Medfield citizens will pay closer attention to what is happening in our schools for both the benefit of our children, and the best use of our tax dollars.

(Medfield residents interested in keeping up with town issues, news and events can subscribe to the free weekly Medfield Insider delivered every Monday morning.)