By Kimberly Mavroides
After nearly three years of studies, discussions and campaigns, it feels like we are no closer to successfully completing a school project than we were before this whole building process began. With critical meetings and deadlines fast approaching, the School Committee has stated publicly that their preferred project is still one combined school at the Doyon site, even though a recent town vote fell well short of the required 2/3 majority needed for it to pass. We were told to think of the vote as a referendum on a large school at Doyon, so the level of support would be a litmus test of the overall feeling on the project itself.
This plan to build the largest elementary school in Essex County has struggled to find support at any single location. At each and every turn it has faced opposition from particular segments of our community who are asked to give an extra and unequal sacrifice. After the lack of support for one school at Bialek and Winthrop by abutters and others, those sites were taken off of the table. The proposed single school at Doyon has and will see continued opposition because of the deep feeling of loss experienced by Winthrop families. How is the lack of support for the Doyon site any different? Now they are the ones being singled out for extra sacrifice, being asked to give up something dear to them, a community school which is currently a deep and meaningful part of their lives. In many cases, the Winthrop location was the very reason they have invested in their homes.
What this proposal asks Winthrop families to do, in a matter of a few months, is support a plan that takes their cherished, beloved neighborhood school and bulldozes it down to nothing. Parents who came together to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for their playground and spend hundreds of hours each year volunteering at school are being asked to rumberstamp the shutdown of the school where their energy and passion have been for years. Closed forever. Their efforts and memories quite literally bulldozed.
I ask you to really stop and think about that, placing yourself in these families’ shoes. Whether or not it aligns with your opinion, is that a plan likely to receive widespread support by these families by the November Town Meeting?
This version of the project does not just add a big new school to the community, it takes something very significant away. To dismantle and remove a cherished entity from a vibrant community should only be done with overwhelming public support, which in this case is clearly absent as demonstrated in the recent special Town Meeting.
What will happen if a precedent is set by the School Committee for boards to fund projects that are voted down at Town Meeting? Is disregarding a town vote likely to result in trust and support from the public as the School Committee attempts to move this project forward? Or is the more likely result a further divide of the town?
Our town plan has strayed significantly from its original version. The intention of both grants, one for Winthrop and one for Doyon, were to improve the physical conditions of our schools, to preserve and enhance our two cultures, not destroy them. It so happened that the Winthrop grant, but not the Doyon grant, was awarded in 2014. However, these grants can be submitted yearly. Yet no one chose to resubmit and possibly win a grant for Doyon ever since 2014. How can you even blame Doyon families for wanting a guarantee that the school project touch their children, too? At this point every family has been promised an upgraded facility, and it is important that we honor that promise and give both neighborhood schools what they deserve.
Instead, the only plan on the table at this moment is a plan that divides our community into opposing factions. What began as a high point of unity in 2014, when we all voted to fund the million dollar Winthrop feasibility study at Town Meeting, has devolved into division, contempt and a sea of orange and yellow signs.
This is not a sustainable way for our town to continue with this process. We cannot just keep plunking more signs in our yards, viciously incinerating one another on social media and gleefully tearing down our own friends and neighbors, thinking the worst of people instead of the best.
A compromise position must exist, and we must spend the time to develop it and build consensus around it. We cannot continue to pit various communities against one another, fighting tooth and nail until one final, contentious vote in November after which none of us speak to our neighbors again. Our children deserve better than this, and it is up to us to give it to them.
We are at a fork in the road. If we do not move forward in the right way which honors public opinion, this is something that will have a lasting negative impact on our town for years. It will continue to divide us, when this process should be uniting us in support of an amazing opportunity for our children.
It is the responsibility of the School Committee, in concert with other town boards, parents, non-parents and Ipswich educators, to develop a plan that bridges this chasm and can allow our fractured community to come together. I, for one, think that they are more than capable of ameliorating the current divide, setting aside emotion and proceeding with a new plan that will meet the goals of our community. These are very smart, compassionate and caring people and they are up to the task.
Let’s support them, and each other. Let’s work together and become united in support for a plan of compromise that everyone can feel good about. Let’s get back to being neighbors.