The importance of subcommittees
When the Personnel Subcommittee met in January to discuss the formation of the Superintendent Search Committee, the power of the subcommittee was revealed. While all of the school committee members and many members of the public attended and were allowed to speak, only three people (subcommittee members Conway, Faticanti and Martin) made the important decisions relating to the composition of the Search Committee. Not for the first time, I thought how important it is that people know what subcommittees there are, who is on them, and what issues they are planning to address. Therefore, I was really glad to see that the School Committee voted to continue televising the LHS subcommittee meetings and hope that they will eventually expand that effort to all of the subcommittees.
Subcommittees are created and appointed by the Mayor, another example of the hidden power of this supposedly ceremonial position. There are currently 16 school subcommittees, two of which are ad hoc and one which is a joint subcommittee with the city council; to see the current list and make-up of these subcommittees, visit our new page under School Committee.