Posted by MikeNaughton - Sat, May 19, 2012, 10:17 P

PUBLIC APOLOGY

"He's been on the School Committee for how many years now? A committee rife with issues...and now we're being asked to re-elect him?"

Well, he's been on the committee three years -- one term. The committee had issues long before he got on it -- that's why he ran. The first year he was on, the state took financial control of the district for the second year in a row, because the towns and the district couldn't agree on an assessment.

Jeff thought that was a problem (one of the reasons he ran), and he tried to do something about it. From the minutes of the 11/10/2009 SC meeting:

"Jeff Singleton moved and Sandy Brown seconded that the GMRSD School Committee has determined that it will not call another district meeting for the FY10 budget. It is time to move on to FY 2011 and to the development of a long term plan for fiscal stability for the district and member towns. Six voted in favor and two opposed (K. Boyle, J. Phillips) per roll call vote."

And Jeff did do something -- he worked with the superintendent and the towns and the state to come up with a plan for fiscal stability and sustainable budgets, a plan that has come to be known as "Table B and the Compact". That plan was endorsed by the school committee on 10/26/2010, and as a direct result the FY11, FY12, and FY13 assessments have been approved by the towns by wide majorities, with little debate, and the state is no longer in financial control of the district. [Note: The vote to approve the Compact in October, 2010 was eight to zero, with one abstention: Joyce Phillips. She is still on the committee.]

As I've said before, you'll get no argument from me that the school committee has problems, but I see no reason to think that getting rid of Jeff Singleton is going to make things any better -- in fact, I think if anything it will make things worse. Jeff's efforts are a major reason that the state is not in fiscal control of the district, but we're now facing new challenges and they could be back within a year or so if we don't figure out a solution. Nothing I've seen about the challengers makes me think they're up to the task.

And to blame all the current problems on Jeff is just plain wrong. During his time on the committee, as I described above, he helped _solve_ a major problem, so now you're going to throw him out because everything isn't perfect? I'm sorry -- it's just hard for me to take that kind of thinking seriously ....