Melrose School Committee Meeting Kickstarts Crucial Stretch

MELROSE, MA — With five months to go until the superintendent retires and 17 months to go until the Beebe School is available, not to mention the FY21 budget around the corner, the School Committee is set to embark on a critical stretch that will shape the entire district for the foreseeable future.

The School Committee, which meets Tuesday night for the first time this year, has a lot of decisions to make, many of which intersect. Officials are using it as an opportunity to establish a long-term plan for the entire district.

"Our consideration going forward will not be limited to just potential uses for the Beebe School but ... we intend to look more comprehensively at all of our facilities and the potential uses thereof, K-12, district-wide, with a long-term view toward managing our growing student population and our capacity for accommodating same," School Committee Chair Ed O'Connell told Patch in an email.

O'Connell made it clear that the School Committee learned from the public backlash regarding the Beebe School process, scheduling public forums for the Beebe and, for the first time, Saturday "office hours" to bring the public in on any big-picture item the School Committee is working on.

Two major developments in recent months afforded the School Committee the opportunity to make big changes.

One was Superintendent Cyndy Taymore announcing her retirement in November. The School Committee will on Tuesday consider three proposals submitted by potential search consultants to find the next superintendent.

The other is the discovery that the Beebe School won't be available for the district to use until the 2021-22 school year. The School Committee had been working under the impression that the current occupants would be gone at the end of this school year, but the SEEM Collaborative informed the School Committee in late December that it was able to find a new home and break the lease.

>>>Letter: There Are More Options For The Beebe School

The Beebe and the superintendent search will be intertwined. While the primary Beebe options presented by the School Committee came from Taymore, O'Connell said the Beebe process will go a long way in informing the search for a superintendent, rather than selecting a superintendent to make the decision on the Beebe.

"In many ways, having the 'Beebe process' and the Superintendent search process running concurrently over the next several months will be invaluable in affording our community an unprecedented opportunity to set forth a comprehensive vision for our schools, in terms of educational programming, facilities planning, and administrative leadership," O'Connell said.

The Beebe decision will certainly open up from what it was at the end of 2019. O'Connell has been adamant that all options are on the table for all facilities and programs, at the Beebe and beyond. The public can keep up to date in the School Committee's rolling agenda.