Brookline Woman Files Civil Rights Complaint Against Schools

BROOKLINE, MA —As Town Meeting members get ready to vote about more funding on the ninth School project at the Baldwin site, a flurry of last minute legal activity has popped up.

Residents unhappy with the district's choices are taking the town to court in an attempt to delay action on the Baldwin site. In response, another resident has filed her own civil rights complaint in an effort to encourage Town Meeting members not to delay.

Brookline parent Linda Monach filed a Civil Rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education this week and a complaint with the state’s Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The official complaints accuse the district of violating state and federal requirements for special education services as Brookline school officials have attempted to seek solutions to overcrowding throughout the district.

Monach said she was filed the complaints because she was concerned about a delay to the Baldwin project and how that might delay the districts efforts to ease crowding, according to an email she sent to Town Meeting members on Dec. 3.

“Given the lawsuit that has been filed by neighbors who live by Baldwin School and want to block the expansion of the school, I am concerned that Town Meeting will fail to support this necessary step in solving the substandard space problem that exists in our schools,” Monach wrote in an email sent to Town Meeting members. “Further delays and more indecision will continue to under-serve our at-risk children.”

For years, Brookline has been working to find and select a location to build a ninth K-8 school in town to address enrollment increases in schools.

Many times the School Committee members and the superintendent have noted that the town might soon also need a tenth school and also began to work on increasing capacity at the high school.

"I do not want to cause greater harm to [Brookline Public Schools], but I keep coming back to what is right for our children,” she wrote. “I have spent ten years in Brookline watching the schools get ever more crowded and the spaces for special education less and less appropriate. I can’t keep waiting and hoping that the town will do the right thing.”

The ninth school process has been a contentious one, with nearly every site proposal meeting resistance from residents, usually nearby. But it has been largely supported and the town voted to fund the process through tax increases.

Then both the School Committee and the Select Boards voted to move ahead with a project that would build on the former site of the old Baldwin school, and Town Meeting voted to fund it.

Town Meeting members are slated to vote on finances related to the Baldwin and Driscoll projects during special Town Meeting on Dec. 13.

Previously:

• Residents File Lawsuit Against Brookline Over School Site
• Brookline Could Soon Add Land To Baldwin Ninth School Site

• Brookline Ninth School Search: What's On The List In 2018
• Brookline Passes Budget Money For Baldwin Ninth School Site
• After a firefighter shuts down Baldwin School input meeting, mixed

Photo by Jenna Fisher/Patch Staff