Vote For The Three Women Candidates For School Committee

Election season is upon us and in Hamilton and Wenham there are four candidates vying for three seats on the HWRSD School Committee (SC)...three women and one man.

Rather than rate who SHOULD be elected to that board, it's simpler to discuss who SHOULD NOT be elected...afterall, there will only be one losing candidate.

Let me suggest who should be NOT be elected: The sole candidate that previously served on the School Committee.

If time teaches us anything, it's that people, barring perhaps those with life threatening illness or loss, do not tend to change...despite claims to the opposite.

The former School Committee member seeking re-election to the committee garnered the least number of votes of any of the candidates in his last re-election bid...even less that the "non votes" for the position.

Why?  Because he is an obstructionist who has been aggressively unwilling to compromise on important issues...and in a manner that can only be described as unprofessionally rude and condescending.

For example, at a SC meeting held on April 7th, 2011, this former member said, during the discussion of what to do with excess funds discovered in the district's budget that deservedly needed to be returned to the taxpayers:

"I don't see any reason to give it back... I've been around long enough to see the district get screwed when it tried to help out the towns and I'm not willing to put that foot forward."

This former member also supported and voted for every single override (10 of them) between 1998 and 2008.  Those overrides, as everyone now knows, are not one time events...taxpayers pay the override amounts every single year...forever, plus the Proposition 2.5% increase the towns tack on to the levy each year. Since 1998, those 10 overrides have cost the taxpayers more the $75 million! The last time this individual ran for SC, he announced that his greatest accomplishment was the passage of overrides.

We have not had an override since 2008, thanks in large part to the efforts of Enough Is Enough (EiE), the organization credited with breaking the school district "budgeting by override" that this candidate so strongly supported during the years he was on the committee.

Now, despite his embarrassing loss the last time he ran, this candidate had this to say at the League of Women Voter's Candidates Night on March 6th concerning why he should be elected:

"I believe that the School Committee, because of their youth and inexperience, needs somebody like me to say, 'Now wait a minute folks. That's not the way it's done and here's the way it should be done and here's the reason why.'"

Arrogant, right? Does that sound like the kind of person you want representing you in such an important position?  Can you understand why some members of the SC were not even willing to sign his nomination papers?  And why others did so reluctantly?

There's a reason this candidate was not re-elected two years ago.  There's a reason why he received the least number of votes in that election.  There's a reason why other members of the School Committee do not wish to have him return to his bully pulpit.

But don't let just my opinion convince you.  Think about what the candidate said, IN HIS OWN WORDS, in his opening remarks during the LWV's forum:

"I got un-elected two years ago... Deservedly so.  I was exhausted.  I wasn't contributing, and it was time to get me off."

Let's keep it that way and support the progress we have made since Richard Boroff was "un-elected" two years ago.  There is no longer a place on the School Committee for rudeness, obstinence and obstructionism.

Please vote for the other three candidates (the three women) on April 11, 2013.

Respectfully submitted,

Jay Burnham
Hamilton