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We may not be law enforcers, but we are the eyes and ears of our community. I was driving home this morning when I noticed a multiple-car fender bender on the Lord Overpass. Although it appeared no one was hurt, three women (one of whom was elderly) were involved in a shouting match. I heard a shrieking “You’re nothin’ but a B_tch!” and at that point, I decided not to stop and see if they needed help. Instead, I called the police on their non-emergency phone line: 978-937-3200. It reminded me of other times I’ve called the police to report an activity: one Sunday afternoon two men got into a fist fight at Tyler Park (over dog waste); another time, a group of teens were having a yelling standoff in the park. Years ago, I took a safety course and learned how much the police rely on observant citizens to stop crimes and capture criminals. Be aware of your surroundings. Notice if there’s an unknown car in your neighborhood, a lurking stranger, a door left open, or anything suspicious, and take a few minutes to notify the police if you think it’s warranted. They always welcome the information, and when they need to respond, they do it quickly.

Tonight, Lowell High School’s senior prom will be held at the Memorial Auditorium beginning at 6:30. If it’s anything like past proms, it will include hundreds of beautiful, stylishly dressed young people out in droves to celebrate the culmination of their education in the Lowell Public Schools. If you’re near downtown at that time, swing by to catch a glimpse of our youngsters as they promenade into the auditorium dressed in their finest. You won’t be disappointed, as it is truly inspiring to see the diversity, creativity and sheer exuberance  of our youth.  School administrators, teachers and police officers will be on hand to wish the youngsters well and do what they can to insure the festivities are fun, safe, and free of alcohol or drugs. If you haven’t had the drugs and alcohol talk with your own teens recently, do it again. This week’s Boston Globe includes all-too-common heartbreaking accounts of young lives lost or ruined due to a lethal mix of teens and alcohol, such as the Lynn boy, who struck and killed a woman after his prom—despite extensive efforts to curtail drinking from school administrators, and this one about the woman who speaks at area schools about the tragedy of losing her teenage daughter after she wandered away during an underage drinking party.  Speaking of underage drinking, the May meeting of the Friends of LHS had an eye-opening presentation about the risks to parents when underage drinking occurs in their homes either deliberately or inadvertently—whether or not anyone gets hurt. Underage drinking is against the law, and parents will be prosecuted and held accountable if it happens in their homes. Also, as the Lynn example shows, even when adults do all they can, the ultimate decision rests on the teen, and that is why the most important change is one of attitude towards alcohol, and the adult’s role is to model appropriate behavior along with giving lectures about responsibility.

I am embarrassed to admit that, until tonight, I had never seen the movie The Killing Fields and I hearby apologize to my Cambodian friends for this lapse. (I did read Spaulding Gray’s book about making the movie, “Swimming to Cambodia”, and I saw the great, locally-produced documentary film, “Monkey Dance” by Julie Mallozi which delves into the lives of Cambodian-American teens and their relationships with their parents, the generation that survived the genocide, escaping as one Mother poignantly say, “to a place where we don’t understand anything.” In any case, if you haven’t seen The Killing Fields, do so, and have your older teens watch it as well. This intense film about the American bombing and subsequent Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia in the late seventies will break your heart and sear your conscience. As the privileged ones are evacuated and the Cambodians left to their fate, little children waving cheerfully to the departing limos and helicopters, I was reminded of similar footage from Hotel Rwanda (is there a more chilling sight than young, lawless men with guns?). When will we change; why do these depredations continue? Throughout it all is the dreamy, pastoral beauty of the countryside, like a watercolor painting, even amid the wreckage.

Concern and community outrage continues to build as the Lowell School Committee meets tonight in council chambers at 7 pm to receive the proposed budget for FY 10. (Hearings on the budget will begin next Wednesday at City Hall, at 7 pm.) There are no motions from committee members but a number of important reports from the Finance, Transportation, and Facilities Subcommittees that begin to lay out the administration’s plans for slashing staff and programs to meet the expected $8 million budget shortfall. At the last school committee meeting, supporters for the school lunch program spoke passionately about keeping their program, which costs the district about $775,000 out of the local budget. Expect to see members from the Rogers School community tonight, expressing their despair at the possibility of closing their school to save $3.2 million. With $8 million in cuts required, there will be lots more programs, staff, and distressed people before this budget is completed. How to manage these difficult decisions? It requires keeping a laser-beam focus on what’s best for the students district wide, and trying as much as possible to mitigate the negative impact of cuts this deep with decisions that make the most sense overall. (If you can’t make it downtown tonight, the meeting will be televised live on cable channel 10. You can also get information on replays or on-demand streaming video at LTC’s website.)

With more bad news on the fiscal front and the Lowell Public Schools likely facing $8 million in cuts next year, the Facilities Subcommittee and other members met last night to discuss closing schools to save money. The administration proposed a new plan (Plan B) to close the Rogers Middle School, moving the strand of Portuguese-speaking students and their teachers to the Butler School, and dispersing the remaining students to middle schools throughout the district where space is available. The plan will save the district $3.2 million up front with additional savings in reduced rental fees possible by moving the Family Literacy Center, Adult Education, and portions of Central Office to the vacated Rogers School site. Since some middle schools are currently under enrolled, closing the Rogers School will not have a major impact on class sizes, which typically run about 25 students at the middle-school level. (Previously, the administration had proposed a plan to close the Moody School, sending those elementary students to the Bartlett Community Partnership School while moving the Bartlett middle-school students to the Stoklosa School, and using the old Moody building for administrative offices. That plan would have saved the district about $1.2 million.) According to the administration, Plan B not only saves more money, but it also displaces less students, and provides the district with a better site for offices, family literacy, and adult education as well as a centralized location in the city. The full committee will consider this cost-saving recommendation, among others, during Budget Hearings, which begin May 27 in Council Chambers at 7 pm. Closing the Rogers School—a thriving community of caring educators, students and families—is but one painful step in a long road of recommended cuts required to educate our students with $8 million less in revenue next year.  

Budget cuts, swine flu, city elections – these are trying times and it’s more important than ever that parents stay involved and speak out in support of public education. Please add your voice to that of other concerned parents by joining the Citywide Parent Council . The CPC mission is to empower parents to make a difference in the education of all Lowell’s school children. The last meeting of the year is tonight, 7:00 pm, at the East End Club. The agenda will include a year-end wrap-up, elections and planning for next year.

Warren Shaw’s op-ed for an appointed school board in yesterday’s Sun claims a failure in our “system of governance” because of the “current crisis on the Lowell School Committee.” That argument is not only flawed and unfair, it’s undemocratic. The radio host, farmer, and former Dracut selectman argues against elected school committees because he claims Lowell’s board is ineffective:  According to Shaw, one member’s alleged criminal actions puts a whole board in crisis. Shaw also claims elected members can’t negotiate well because they may live near their employees, and centralized control is better because it is less adversarial. Perhaps Mr. Shaw would support appointed legislators next? Many state and federal legislators face judicial scrutiny, get elected by their neighbors, and are adversarial. Yes, our system of governance is at times messy, inefficient, contentious and flawed. (How else to explain eight years of Bush?) But to suggest the solution is cutting voters out of the process is wrongheaded and goes against the democratic foundation on which this nation was built. The remedy for good governance is what it has always been: informed, attentive and active citizenry who hold their elected leaders accountable. 

OK, I admit to being easily aggravated on the issue of appointed school boards. Search this blog for “appointed school committee” and you’ll see several posts on the topic. (This one is dated, but still relevant since the state has yet to enact election-day registration; and I like this one too.)  As for Mr. Shaw, he doesn’t even consider the district’s progress around instruction, professional development, curriculum, and safety when discussing board efficacy, and I doubt his children attended the Lowell Public Schools in the last 10 years (or ever). He also seems unaware that the City Manager is a voting member of the school’s negotiating team or that the state determines Lowell’s minimal share of the costs for educating its students. With all due respect, perhaps Mr. Shaw should stick to Dracut issues which one can assume he knows more about.

In an unprecedented show of collaboration, nearly 250 teachers and administrators gave two hours on a beautiful Saturday morning to meet at the Stoklosa School today. The meeting was to talk about how the groups could work better together to improve student achievement. In these tough fiscal times, it was a welcome ray of hope to see so many staff—central office folks, teachers, social workers, instructional specialists, principals, and assistant principals—interested in learning about a new labor-management partnership in the Lowell Public Schools.  Joan Devlin, senior associate director from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), spoke briefly about the many courses and professional development programs they offer, but the speakers from ABC School District, 20 miles southeast of Los Angeles, were the highlight as they demonstrated what this partnership can mean to a district. ABC Union President Laura Rico explained that after a teachers’ strike in 1993, she decided there had to be a better way and that it made no sense to “demonize” the administration. “I realized principals don’t want students to fail, and that we must keep our eye on the prize—student achievement.” ABC Superintendent Gary Smuts affirmed how useful the collaboration has been for the district: “Imagine how liberating it is to be able to say, ‘I don’t know. What do you think we should do?’” Some examples of the collaboration include teachers participating in the principal hiring process, using AFT programs to expand teacher-trainer models, holding union reps accountable for school improvement, empowering and consulting with teachers about curriculum, etc. (More information on ABC district’s partnership can be found in this article published in American Educator.)

For Lowell, today’s kick off collaboration will continue with four days of training in August. And in the great New England tradition, there was a compact to sign that states: “In the best interest of our students, we will build a mutually respectful and authentically collaborative culture, rooted in open, inclusive decision making and shared leadership.” With the Lowellian penchant for partnership, this collaboration just may shine a beacon of light on otherwise dark and difficult times.

On Easter evening, we sat in horrible traffic on 128 heading home from Peabody. We were probably 20 miles north of the Mass Turnpike, yet we suffered from the state’s attempt to save money by limiting holiday toll workers. I also mourned the loss of lights on the Zakim Bridge to save money—albeit a cosmetic rather than critical expense. And last week, I listened to cafeteria workers and their supporters tell the Lowell School Committee about the “unfairness” of possibly losing their jobs. Believe me, I felt their pain. It’s unfair that the schools must cut between $5 and $10 million, and it’s unfair that the city may face even deeper cuts. It’s unfair that people are losing their homes and jobs. And it is unfair that the Senate’s proposed budget cuts even further than the House or Governor into human service programs that impact the neediest in our state. Yet, no one wants more taxes, and who can blame them? The reality is we are in a global economic crisis, and budgets must be tightened at all levels. Yet, there are some cuts that are simply too shortsighted and too deep to make sense, and that’s where the case for additional revenue must be made. No matter how you look at it, increasing taxes is nasty business, especially these days. But whether it’s the Governor’s gas and candy tax, the House sales tax, or another revenue-building scheme (such as closing corporate communication loopholes and municipal relief options), something must be done. We cannot sustain the level of cuts the Senate is currently proposing without severe impacts to our collective quality of life in the Commonwealth—not only because it will harm those most vulnerable, but because the losses will be far-reaching, long-lasting and in the end, more costly to recover. (The impact on youth program cuts alone—from gutting the Shannon Grant, DPH, and jobs for kids—will be felt for years in terms of increased crime and gang violence, more dropouts, drug abuse, and other related, costly ills.) As unpopular as it is, I stand for increased revenues along with smart belt tightening and sensible, much-needed reforms. Without it, there will be a lot more outrage and pain, and the road to recovery that much harder to find.

My father recently came back from New York City where he visited the Tenement Museum (Teachers: the website is filled with excellent materials for a unit on immigration, including “the Immigrant Game.”) He liked it so much he went back a second time and brought back a book from the gift shop – Out of the Shadow by Rose Cohen. It’s a first hand account of a Russian Jewish girl who came to this country in 1892 (according to the Museum website, 23 million people immigrated to America between 1890 and 1924). Her story starts in a sleepy Russian village, where life falls in with the rhythm of the seasons. At the age of 12, she and her Aunt follow her Father to America, after being smuggled out of Russia in a hay wagon. She works 14-hour days in numerous sweatshops or as a servant until her health deteriorates, but she and her father save enough money to bring her mother and four siblings over from Russia. If you ever saw the musical Fiddler on the Roof, you get a sense of the family and culture into which she was born, including people whose profession is “matchmaking” and the constant fear of persecution for being Jewish (both in Russia and America). Her story, written at times almost haltingly, in a language that she struggled to learn in night classes or from her younger siblings, is one of a search for herself as well as a larger tale of the immigrant experience. There is a sense of wonder and amazement about the fact that public education is free to all. She discovers books, and I, who stumbled upon Dickens as a child, felt the same thrill as she did when she picks up David Copperfield and reads it aloud to her family. There’s also a Lowell connection: the book was edited with an introduction by Thomas Dublin, who wrote Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and community in Lowell, Masachusetts, 1826-1860.