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I’m the queen of 20/20 hindsight and last night at our second budget hearing I had one of those moments. Ann Brady, a behavior modification specialist at the Rogers School, spoke to us about the collective and personal loss of closing her school (a vote we took on Saturday) and how no one had bothered to thank Principal Tim McGillicuddy or his staff for their years of service and commitment to educating our children. Since joining the school committee five years ago, I have seen firsthand the strong community that is the Rogers School, from the students exuberant cheering of their principal and model behavior at assemblies to the pride on the faces of their teachers and administrators. That energy is not easy to measure, but you feel it when you are in its presence and you know it is real and making a difference in the lives of children. I have also seen it demonstrated at the Rogers School in the standard ways we measure success: improved MCAS scores, improved attendance, and steady numbers of students trying (and getting into) the infamously difficult Latin Lyceum at LHS. So, late as this is, I want to publicly thank the entire Rogers School community—the administrators, teachers, staff, students and parents—for the care and effort they put into making it a thriving educational community. And I want to publicly apologize for having to vote to close their school and for this belated gesture of appreciation. It is an unfair loss for them, I know, and for all of us.