Elementary School Proposal - We Deserve Better

Dear Medfield Residents,

I’ve lived in town long enough to remember when Dale vs. Wheelock was a highly anticipated annual basketball tournament between the town’s two competing elementary schools that brought the town together in spirited, friendly fashion. It was fun fuel for all of us students on both sides, helped forge the competitive spirit that led to later athletic success when we competed together as a town, and to this day still sparks enjoyable debate among those of us lucky enough to have participated. The true animosity was saved for the football game against Dover-Sherborn on Thanksgiving Day. Sadly, that’s not the case today. I’ve seen a significant number of major projects completed in town, from the building of the "new" Route 27 in the 1970s to the middle school/high school project (finally completed after being delayed by its own failed vote, once the project aligned itself with the desires of the town’s voters) to the new Public Works and Public Safety buildings, to the Town Master Plan and the disposition of the Medfield State Hospital property, among others. One of the things I’ve always cherished about Medfield is its community focus, with consensus building, discussion, debate, and negotiated agreement driving most projects. We seem to have lost that quality over the past number of years and over some of the past few projects. Perhaps a changing population, new outlooks, and even the current national political zeitgeist have contributed to this negative change. Whatever the cause, it’s time to get things moving back in the right direction.

In 41 years as a registered voter in town, I’ve never spoken out about a public issue, primarily because there’s been no need. I’ve trusted the people we’ve elected and appointed to carry out the wishes of the town and its voters, and by and large, they’ve done so until recently. Has every project gone the way I’ve wanted, and have I gotten everything I’ve ever desired from every project in town? No, but I’ve been more than happy to live with the compromises negotiated to achieve outcomes desired by the majority, with reasonability and mutually desired and acceptable outcomes generally the goal. The current project to wrongfully relocate the Dale Street School to an inappropriate Elm Street location has strayed as far from those goals and values as to be unacceptable and has caused untenable dissension and animosity that is hopefully not beyond repair. I can’t remain silent on the topic any longer while watching town values that I cherish disappear. We deserve better.

Let’s compare this school project to some of the others, starting with dissimilarity. In comparison to two far more complex and important projects, the Townwide Master Plan and the disposition of the MSH property, this project has been an abject failure in community engagement, and that’s not due to the community’s attempts to be engaged. It’s due to the project’s mismanagement.

The school project is arguably the least complicated of the three being compared. Both other projects were unique, far more complex, far more wide-ranging and hold far more import. The Plan sets our course for the next number of decades while the MSH project stands to be perhaps the largest development project the Town has ever seen, with critical decisions made and yet to be made regarding its progress. On the other hand, Ralph Wheelock was the first Schoolmaster back in 1655, we built our first schoolhouse in 1666 at the current site of Nosh & Grog and all we’re trying to achieve here is the replacement of the facility of one of five outstanding schools in town, balanced against the townspeople’s stated wishes.

The collaborative efforts of the Master Plan and MSH, with public outreach, consensus building meetings, and encouraged community involvement has led to success on both fronts; the attempt to bulldoze a school at the Elm Street location has not included any of those facets and is frankly doomed to fail. Hopefully, input such as this will be heeded in the next effort where it was ignored in this one to improve the process needed to secure passage of an important new facility.

I am intentionally using the word “facility” rather than “school” because we’re talking about replacing the building. Much marketing has been done about the “21st Century School” to be built on Elm Street, complete with butterfly houses and log stump chairs. As we all know, the school is based on the teachers, school personnel, and curriculum. The building merely houses the educational experience. The building’s location, however, has a great impact on the town overall, not just the educational experience, and is the issue under debate here. An extraordinary school can be built at either location, as stated by the School Building Committee itself. An extraordinary school suiting the needs of everyone in town can ONLY be built at the Dale Street location. That’s where Medfield will achieve its “21st Century School.” The location that has served as an excellent school location for 80 years will continue to do so, with a shining new facility providing outstanding education well into the 21st century. This is the outcome many voters wish we had available to vote on at the upcoming Special Town Meeting; the unfortunate delay in reaching this outcome will be a result of the SBC ignoring the wishes of the town and its voters.

Now let’s look at other recent projects that exhibit many similarities to this school project, specifically the Public Works and Public Safety buildings. Two needed facilities, to be sure, however, these are examples of what happens when we as townspeople take our eye off the ball and let project drivers do essentially as they please. Both are oversized and excessive to our needs as a town; both were overpriced. Both were passed by the voters but essentially went unmonitored through completion, and now are regarded by many if not most voters as ‘bigger than we needed’ at best, and ‘ridiculous and unnecessary wastes of money’ at worst.

Both of those projects and the process used to complete them, by the way, were driven by the current chair of the Permanent Planning and Building Committee, Mike Quinlan, who just so happens to also be the chair of the School Building Committee and is attempting to use the same approach and process to ignore the town’s stated desire to replace Dale Street School and instead relocate it to Elm Street against the wishes of the town’s voters. When Mike was asked why those projects turned out so large and expensive, his reply was “you should have come to the meetings” where the projects were discussed and planned. Following Mike’s advice, the community has attempted to be engaged on the school project, only to be rebuffed by the process and tactics employed to silence the concerned public and manufacture the predetermined outcome of an Elm Street location. Let’s examine that process.

First, the unauthorized change in location from the Dale Street School’s location on Adams Street as specified in the 2018 Warrant which was passed to authorize a feasibility study. While Mr. Quinlan has arrogantly dismissed the address being included in the warrant as language required by the MSBA, I would counter that if the warrant had included the Elm Street location as the intended site, that warrant would never have passed at Town Meeting and we would not be here today. Such an important change should have been brought before the town for a vote PRIOR to being submitted to the MSBA. Instead, the SBC misappropriated the authority to make the change, proposed it, and got group-think bobblehead yes votes from the School Committee and Select Board.

This process and the chosen site violated many tenets of the Master Plan and ignored the stated wishes of the voters in town as expressed in a townwide survey as well as by the passage of Town Meeting Article 29, requesting that the site selection be revisited. Even after this townwide vote, the SBC stubbornly decided to ignore the input, market harder, and propose the Elm Street site. Many people, myself included, believe that the site was preselected, even before the 2018 warrant passed; an example supporting this is the fact that the location was inappropriately discussed in at least one public meeting in 2017 as the intended site by the school superintendent. As an aside, now that the remaining feasibility study monies have been wasted on marketing efforts for the project, who pays the feasibility study bills that are being rung up now once this project gets voted down at Special Town Meeting?

Another process flaw has been the inappropriate influence of the school superintendent. Mr. Marsden is a town employee, paid quite nicely in our tax dollars for leading our school system. That’s a large responsibility for a significant amount of our tax dollars as his budget. However, he is not a town resident, doesn’t pay taxes here, has no vote in town, and yet has played an oversized and inappropriate role in the school project, to the extent that he has manipulated a voting seat on the SBC to advance a project in which he has a personal and professional stake not necessarily aligned with the town’s interests. This man should not have a vote on any capital expenditure of my tax dollars outside of the school budget for which he’s authorized. During his tenure, school budgets have consistently gone up yet school ratings have consistently gone down; by any measure, it certainly appears that the 6.1% override which was passed has been a waste of money. He has inappropriately used the school’s email system to attempt to influence voters. He has ignored maintenance of the Dale Street facility since 2015. An opinion held by many in town is that the Elm Street site is simply intended to appease Mr. Marsden. This is a man who showed up to his last performance review with the town with an article about how difficult it is for towns to find a new superintendent. These antics and this type of self-importance aren’t needed in this town or on this project. Frankly, if the one thing that comes out of the failed vote on the Elm Street location is the acknowledgment of the need for a new Superintendent, it won’t have been a complete failure.

Finally, the entire process has been siloed and non-participatory, with all of the blame speciously being placed on COVID. Did the pandemic make this project more difficult? Certainly, but the blame should rightly be placed on the process used and the people conducting it, not on a worldwide health crisis. The information flow has been haphazard and last minute, with document drops of hundreds of pages happening the day before a meeting or same day, agendas not being posted in a timely fashion, and meeting minutes being posted sporadically being only some of the many missteps. Requests made, particularly surrounding provision of an appropriate and appropriately-costed Dale Street option, have been ignored. There even has been an inappropriate, bombastic outburst at Town Meeting where SBC and Select Board member Marcucci castigated townspeople and the effort to bring community involvement to this project, the most embarrassing episode I have ever witnessed from a town public official. That man rendered himself useless to this town at that moment.

This project has absolutely not been an example of the participatory democratic self-governance that Moderator Scott McDermott praised at our last town meeting. Hopefully, these issues will be taken into consideration and a new approach will be taken when the next attempt to replace the Dale Street school occurs. We deserve better.

Sincerely,

George P. Gallagher