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The advise to sue the city for the $6 million was brilliant. You have to remember that at the time the school committee also instituted a 20% co-pay across the board to every employee, including teachers who were under contract. It proved to the unions we were willing to go to court. As a school committee member at the time, I didn't expect to win the lawsuit against the city for the $6 million. That would have put us in the same situation as East Providence and would have allowed us to go into all the contracts and change them completely (having proven in court that we didn't have the funds and we had done everything possible to get the funds.) The union knew that if we went to court and proved this they would have had to abide by the changes. The lawsuit against the city wasn't to get money form the city as much as it was a way to get the unions to the table for concessions. This resulted in a favorable contract for the schools with the WISE union who had not had a contract in 5 years. It created peace and gained the schools millions. It also led to the healthcare agreements with the teachers that eventually lead to millions in concessions. The suit against the city for $6 million lead to the school committee being to get nearly $4+ millions in concessions.

You don't know the issue with the superintendent so you can only speculate that it was mishandled. But think about it like this. He made $165,000, his contract was paid out in full to go away (and not sue for violating a contract). The Director of Special Ed took over for a small stipend costing the schools an additional $15K approximately. This director became the new superintendent the following year and a new Director was not hired so the schools are saving the full cost of this position. I don't agree that they didn't do a search for a superintendent, I think this person is doing a good job, but in the end over 2 years, they saved approximately $150, 000 in salary by having the previous superintendent go away and not filling the special education director position.

I did not vote to hire the previous superintendent, he was hired before I arrived. I did not vote to extend his contract in 2010, I wanted someone else at that time but was outvoted. I did not vote to extend his contract in 2012 this time I had enough votes to not extend his contract. I also voted to put him on leave and signed the contract to have him go away. I saw a great positive change inside the schools after he left. I saw forward thinking rather than reactions to issues. You always want someone in charge who is proactive rather than reactive.

I was on the committee for 4 years and when you have a good committee, the committee works well and doesn't need as much guidance. With an inexperienced committee (we have 2 new members, and 2 who were on for only 2 years) they need more guidance. Chris Friel, Lucille Mota-Costa, Paul Cannistra, and Beth Furtado were all great school committee members and we accomplished a lot during a short period of time. Terri Mederos and Eugene Nadeau learned a lot from 2010-2012 and worked hard. Everyone needs guidance from time to time.

I don't agree with every point of view Rosemary Healey has but she works very hard and doesn't make the decisions. She always presented 2 or more legal scenarios to the committee and it was the committees choice. She would present choices she said she was or wasn't in favor of and would say why, but it was ultimately the committees choice. It is not an easy job to be on a committee that is willing to not rubber stamp everything, I never saw anyone when I was n the committee rubber stamp anything.

From: Committee to consider school cuts

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