Photo: Snow day
Photo: Snow falling for most of the morning Monday.
A Winter Storm Warning issued by the National Weather Service on Sunday, March 3, has prompted Belmont to announce a town-wide parking ban effect at midnight, Monday, March 4.
No information as of 3 p.m., Sunday, March 3, whether Belmont public schools will be delayed or closed on Monday.
According to Ted Pendergast, Belmont Police’s 911 Operations Manager, a Snow Emergency Parking Ban will be in effect on all roadways, as well as in municipal and Belmont public school parking lots, until further notice. Any vehicle parked in violation of the ban will be towed at the owner’s expense.
In addition to the parking ban, trash pickup will be delayed one day. Monday’s pickup is now Tuesday.
The NWS is forecasting between 6 to 8 inches of heavy snow beginning at 7 p.m., Sunday and lasting to 10 a.m. Monday. Travel could be very difficult especially around the morning commute.
Photo: A collage of memories with Coach Paul Lyons.
by Adam Pritchard
Varsity Boys Basketball Coach
Belmont High School
In 1978, I first started my career in Belmont Basketball when as a third grader I was signed up for the Belmont Youth Basketball Association. It was in its second year of existence and I fell in love with the sport. In those years following, my mom was running a needlepoint store in Belmont Center. Saturdays I would get dropped on at the high school with a bag lunch and told: “I’ll pick you up around 5:30.” Maybe it was free babysitting for her, but for me, it was the place I looked forward to hanging out at all week.
That summer, after playing organized basketball for the first time, my mom signed me up for a summer camp at Belmont High school run by the Varsity Coach Paul Lyons. It was then that I met one of the most influential people I would ever meet. I can’t say I remember much, memories are fleeting and have their own life, but I do remember coach saying my name and having me demonstrate a shooting form drill with some of the older high school players. I remember being told to “reach up into the cookie jar” and “keep your eyes on the rim.” Its hard to put to words the feelings that go into a moment like that, but I know it made me proud and wanting to work towards improving. I wanted to be part of Belmont Basketball. I wanted to hear Lyons call my name out on that court again.
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Coach Lyons Court/Scholarship Fund
Following that camp, I committed to basketball. It was a love and the thing I wanted to do more than anything else. It was my passion and that court was my home. The court is where I tried out for Varsity. Its where Coach Lyons met with me to tell me I was cut as a sophomore (a very difficult day). It’s also where I was named a Varsity player as a junior (a great day), named me captain as a senior when the other captain (my best friend) got injured. Its where Coach told me why I wasn’t starting and later told me that I would start. Its where I learned countless phrases like “success is a journey, not a destination” and “we over me,” “there is no ‘I’ in team” and “be a helper.” It’s where Belmont High School players for 25 years, in practice, would make a steal, an assist, a score, a rebound, or anything positive and here coach boom out… “NICE PLAY!”
Lyons introduced me as freshman coach in 1991, providing me a start in coaching and tutelage to work for one of the finest basketball minds I have ever met. His knowledge of the game was (and is) unparalleled and his teachings of sportsmanship and playing with integrity have been an example for countless players who had the opportunity to play on his teams. As an assistant, I witnessed the care, precision, preparation, and fairness through which he helped develop players. He was a master coach.
The Main Court is where I have had the privilege of coaching the Belmont High Boys Varsity for the past 19 years. As varsity coach, I have seen the lasting impact of Paul’s coaching on alumni, current players, and those kids who have been lucky enough to have him as a youth coach in recent years. Every year, I open the season with a call or calls to Lyons – his wife will verify if you need it. Those calls continue throughout the season because the one thing I know is that I have the greatest resource a coach could ever have and I have so, so much more to learn still. More importantly, the blessings of his mentoring have only been exceeded but his generosity and friendship.
Simply put, I’m a very fortunate coach.
Proudly, with great thanks to the Belmont School Committee, and the support of our Marauder Basketball Association, The Belmont Youth Basketball Association, the Belmont Boosters, the Belmont High School Athletic Department staff, and thousands of basketball players, girls and boys alike who have played BYBA and for Belmont High School, I am honored to be able to coach the inaugural game on Friday, February 8, at 7:30 p.m. vs. Reading Memorial High School, on “COACH LYONS COURT”.
It will be one one of my most cherished moments as a Belmont coach and I hope you are there to share it with me.
Photo: Jody Ray, the MBTA’s assistant general manager, pointing to the Brighton Street crossing.
In a significant concession to help push a final decision on a preferred route for the Belmont segment of a 102-mile bike trail, representatives from the MBTA and the state’s Department of Transportation said they could support a community path along either the north or south side of the commuter rail tracks from the Cambridge town line to Belmont Center.
At a standing room only Board of Selectmen’s meeting on Monday night, Jan 28, the two officials whose statements this past summer highlighting safety concerns at the commuter rail crossing on Brighton Street pushed Selectmen to revisit a north route to the consternation of Channing Road residents, noted their agencies consider the path a “high priority” and want to keep the project moving forward.
When asked by Selectman Tom Caputo if both potential routes “were both fundable,” Jody Ray, the MBTA’s assistant general manager for Commuter Rail, said while the authority’s focus is on safety, “there’s no fatal flaw” for either a north or south path if a fix could be developed for the Brighton Street crossing.
But while the declarations would appear to allow the path to proceed along a southern route as the board decided more than a year ago, the reemergence of problems with several “pinch” points along the first several hundred feet of the southerly path could eventually keep the route on the north side.
At meeting’s end, the Selectmen circled Monday, Feb. 25 as the date when it will declare which of the two routes – north or south – will be selected, a decision more than three decades in the making.
At the Monday meeting, Belmont Town Administrator Patrice Garvin said Belmont would be seeking the maximum $300,000 from the Massachusetts Department of Transportation’s MassTrails Grants program, to be used for project development and design. Those monies will either supplement or defray the $1 million in Community Preservation Committee funds approved by Town Meeting in May. With a Feb. 1 deadline looming, the town would need to submit a plan that selected either one of the two routes.
Ray and Michael Trepanier from the state’s Department of Transportation were asked by the board to attend the meeting to provide their view on which path option would receive a more favorable reading.
The Board of Selectmen voted in Dec. 2017 to adopt the recommendation of PARE Consultants to build a pedestrian tunnel at Alexander Avenue and proceed along the south or High School side of the commuter rail tracks.
But that decision is now in “flux” according to Selectman Mark Paolillo, due to “serious safety concerns” the MBTA presented to the town’s attention in July that bicyclists would cut diagonally from the south side across the rail/road intersection at Brighton Street to engage the existing bike trail to Alewife Station. At the time, town and Belmont’s elected officials were told the state would be “reluctant” to fund a southern route.
In addition to the safety concerns, the MassDOT declared it would no longer require funding for the Alexander pedestrian tunnel to be linked with a south path. With the changes, town officials and elected officials determined the town should pursuit a north route, to the frustration of several Channing Road homeowners who have long complained of a lack of privacy and personal safety with a well-traveled trail.
Ray and Trepanier were asked to speak at the meeting as many residents sought a direct answer from the state and MBTA.
The DOT’s Trepanier put his cards on the table early: the state wants the Belmont section built as it will connect other sections and Belmont has committed sizable funds for design and feasibility studies to the project.
“The state recognizes this is the Belmont portion of the Mass Central Rail Trail, a high priority corridor for us working at the state level,” said Trepanier which will impact if the project is selected for a grant. But he said that if the MBTA’s issues with bicyclists safely cross the rail tracks at Brighton Street – cyclists would likely travel diagonally across the tracks rather than at crosswalks or sidewalks and would not encounter the safety gates when they close as a train approaches – were not resolved than possible future funding would be “negatively impact the favorability” of the project.
“Bicyclists don’t tend to make right corner turns, they’ll take the shortest distance” which is hazardous when a train is approaching, Ray said.
Since the MBTA wanted gates to prevent residents from going into the crossing, Selectman Paolillo suggested a system in which additional gates onto the path to cutting all access to the intersection which incidentally is being discussed for an intersection in West Concord.
When asked by Selectmen Chair Adam Dash if such a design addition – which Trepanier called “a really innovated thing to do” – would change the MBTA’s concerns on the southern route, Ray said while the authority always wants a crossing away from the tracks, “we will consider it.” And Trepanier said, “the caveat would be that we’d want … to engage in national best practices on how we deal with these hazardous locations.”
But Trepanier added there needs to be some “amount of practicality and pragmatism inject here” and while the MBTA had “raised the red flag” on their safety concerns, “we recognize people can [cross at an angle] today. The path is there and we don’t want to exacerbate a safety issue because one fatality is a fatality too many.”
“There are details like this that need to be worked out in order to ensure that working with a partner that we could assuage their concerns or make the situation safer,” said Trepanier.
While the state and MBTA may have softened their objection to a southern path, it also brought to the forefront an issue of “pinch points” along the start of the route from Brighton Street towards Belmont Center. While both trails need to contend with buildings and right of ways to have the required width that will allow access for emergency vehicles, a southerly route would require the town to take a portion of two sites, the Purecoat structure and the building housing the Crate Escape, a dog daycare business, through a sale or by an eminent domain taking.
In fact, the analysis of possible routes by the Pare Corp. which conducted a near year-long feasibility study of the community path did not take into consideration the price of acquiring portions of the two businesses. Amy Archer of Pare said she would begin a new study to reevaluate how much the town will undertake in the additional costs.
And the price tag for a southern route could be significant upwards to several millions of dollars, according to resident and path supporter Paul Roberts. Resolving the pinches will be “at least as daunting” as solve the safety problems at Brighton Street. He said there is no such impediment on the north side of the tracks; the only reason the board will not declare its preference for the route has less to do with safety or cost but as a political decision to placate the Channing Road homeowners.
But defenders of the southernly laid out path challenged the price differential by proposing using town streets including Hittinger Road to avoid the buildings altogether.
Photo: Jessie Bennett receiving her nomination papers on Wednesday at the Town Clerk’s office.
It’s the photo all candidates – or potential candidates – should take, when they make the leap and take out nomination papers for local office. On Wednesday morning, Jan. 10, Jessica Bennett got “the shot” as she was handed her papers at the Town Clerk’s office for her run to occupy the seat of retiring selectman Mark Paolillo.
“I’m running for the Board of Selectmen because the work of local government is vital and touches all of our lives every day, regardless of age, race, income, political affiliation, and citizenship status,” said the 11-year resident who lives with her family on Trowbridge Street.
“We all bring the trash to the curb and have to get across town in traffic, and turn on the lights and expect that electricity to be there. I know that none of this happens magically and that the Board of Selectmen is an integral part of that process,” she said in an email interview.
While Bennett is the first out of the gate – less than two days after Paolillo first told the Belmontonian after Monday’s Selectmen’s meeting he would not seek a fourth term – to seek a seat on the important three-member board, she’s is almost certainly not the last to see Town Clerk Ellen Cushman seeking their own nomination sheets and the reason comes down to simple math: do it now or end up in the political equivalent of the Registry of Motor Vehicles waiting room.
The selectman’s race in April will be a contest for an “open” seat, so there is no pesky incumbent with a slew of supporters ready for a re-election campaign. Everything (meaning every vote) is up for grabs without having to craft a message and a campaign around the person who already has the job. Everyone who enters the race this year is starting from square one in this political game of Candy Land.
Even the most casual of town government observers that the current collection of selectmen – made up of Paolillo, Tom Caputo and Chairman Adam Dash – is one of the strongest bodies in terms of policy and process in recent memory. Whether it is the community path, the future of the incinerator site, attempting to militate (or just mitigate) the Gordian knot of local traffic along with the myriad of the important ongoing issues such as budgets and planning for revenue shortfalls, there has been an acknowledgment that its service along with no-longer-new Town Administrator Patrice Garvin has Belmont on the right course.
So, let’s say you’re a person interested in taking the leap and run for selectman. If you decide this is not the “right” time to throw your hat into the ring, look at what faces you. Over the next two years – if the longtime trend of selectmen likely to seek a second term – you will likely first have to challenge Dash (who won his first election with 64 percent of the vote against a well-known conservative) and then Caputo (94 percent against token opposition), both well-liked and well-known to voters, a deadly combination for anyone to attempt to unseat incumbents. And the third year will be the winner of this year’s race. And it could be longer for an open seat to arise again if Dash and Caputo decide to match Paolillo’s nine years of service.
In many ways, if not for a better job out of state, retirement to Florida or burnout that could produce an open seat sooner, it’s now or never for those who envisioned themselves spending alternative Monday nights – and at least one other night talking to residents or being a liaison at the Warrant/Capital Budget/Community Preservation committees – at three hour meetings.
Bennett is an attractive candidate with an inspiring back story – she left college (she would graduate later) to assist her parents financially, working as a teller then rising through the banking ranks before changing fields to high tech before moving to the Boston area when her wife was appointed a professor. If just going by Facebook “likes” and comments, Bennett has her supporters.
(The Belmontonian will conduct detailed interviews with all candidates after nominations close on Feb. 12)
Keen observers of town going-ons will have noticed Bennett’s increasing presence at Town Meeting and involvement with causes such as Yes for Belmont, parent/teacher groups and the Foundation for Belmont Education and at meetings including the Belmont High School Building Committee and the various traffic boards – she lives just a slingshot away from the new 7-12 school building. She was recently appointed to the High School Traffic Working Group. No surprise that she was in attendance at the most recent Selectmen’s meeting on Monday, Jan. 7.
Bennett is at the starting line, now it’s who’ll join her for the race.
Photo: Mark Paolillo
It was a tough decision, but in the end, Mark Paolillo decided that it was a time of a change in his life and the political life of his hometown.
The three-term member of the Belmont Board of Selectmen told his fellow members after the end of its scheduled meeting Monday, Jan. 7 that he would not seek re-election to the three-person board in April.
“Nine years is a long time and it’s time to move on,” said the life-long Belmont resident.
Paolillo had been wavering between staying for a fourth term – which would have been the longest-serving member since William Monahan
“I’ve been conflicted because it’s been a great board (comprised of selectmen Tom Caputo and chairman Adam Dash) this past year and I enjoy thoroughly working with Patrice [Garvin, Town Administrator] and there is still a lot of issues and there always will be. But I think it’s the best decision for myself and my family.
“I sought the counsel of many in town and I did call some of them privately and told them my decision. It was a really tough, tough call because it’s been a fun year,” said Paolillo.
“It’s not that [the work] has worn on me but I think new ideas are important as well. I only thought I would do two [terms] but I did nine [years]. And I will continue to support these two guys,” said Paolillo of Caputo and Dash.
“I am sorry to see him go,” said Dash, noting the importance of having Paolillo on the board who had the institutional history and policy heft when taking on major concerns facing residents.
“I understand your decision but you will be sorely missed and look forward you staying involved,” said Caputo.
Paolillo will still be involved in town governance as he will seek a Town Meeting seat this April and has talked about joining one of the myriads of boards and committees. “I will give it a little bit of a breather before deciding.”
After serving on numerous boards including the Warrant Committee, Paolillo was elected selectman in 2010, defeating Dan LeClerc and Anne Mahon with 45 percent of the vote. He ran unopposed in 2013 and beat back challenger Alexandra Ruban with 65 percent of the voters backing him in 2016.
While always looking for a “win-win-win” solution (a favorite Paolillo phrase) to challenging issues facing the town, Paolillo was not a shrinking violet when confronting opposing views that he felt were specious or misinformed.
Paolillo said he hopes candidates will step up, noting that “we need diversity on the board and hopefully they are up to that task.”
Photo: Seta Najarian is retiring from Starbucks after 14-plus years.
The sign on the door at 48 Leonard St. in Belmont Center reads “Starbucks” but on most weekday mornings for the past decade and a half, it might as well have read “Seta’s.”
That’s because it would be hard to find any more commanding personality among the whole of the baristas working in the Seattle-based coffee conglomerate than Belmont’s Seta Najarian, a five-foot-tall Lebanese-born and bred grandmother who demanded respect from those waiting to be served but at the same time loved her customers unconditionally.
Seta hardly the archetypical young-ish millennial that make up the mass of baristas – she doesn’t display or have tattoos, never heard of Young Thug and wears the most sensible of clothes. What she might have lacked in hipness she brought that first generation familiarity for the customer to the job. She knows what you drink, what your kids are doing and she’ll give you a quick kiss for that special day, “like a sister, a good friend or a neighbor.”
“[The cusomers] think I own this place,” said Najarian, a long-time Belmont fixture. “I’ve been here so long, I felt like it was my place, to tell you the truth,” she said as her friend Carol interrupts the interview to say how sorry she’ll be to see her leave.
But last week, on Friday, Dec. 29, after 14 year and three months to the day, Seta is taking a well-deserved break from working full-time that began when she was a teenager. The store held a small party at the store with the district manager “hang around and then say goodbye to everybody.”
The cafe and the town are going to miss Seta’s mannerisms that border on charming but which others would say it’s more her “old school” view on almost everything.
How old school is she? Seta’s aunt arranged her marriage to a “neighborhood boy,” Avedis Najarian, who lived in America and was visiting Lebanon.
“And I’ve been married for 45 years,” she said. “That’s old fashion!”
Born in Beirut, Seta started working at 16 as a secretary for a Swedish company in Beirut – she got the job because she can speak French, English, Arabic, Turkish and Armenian – sending and receiving telex posts. After she married at 19, she came to Watertown and her daughters Christine and Tanya came straight away. But Seta was not one to sit at home.
“I’m a workaholic, I guess,” she said. “I love working. If a person wakes up in the morning, they should go to work.”
And she did, working at a bakery then opening businesses with her husband including a gas station and for 17 years running restaurant across from the Arsenal Mall.
After closing the Watertown eatery in the early 2000s and with her husband settling into retirement, Seta began working at Starbucks in Belmont Center “because I didn’t want to stay home. I’m cursed in that way.”
“I am always with the public. I love talking, connecting with the people,” she said
And Seta soon was making the outlet of the multinational coffeehouse chain her own.
“Because I’m an older generation and I ran my own businesses, I know what works,” she said. If a customer would take too long to order, Seta would give them a stern look over and “suggest” a purchase but would greet a regular with a resounding shout of their first name.
She also took up the role of vigilant overseer of the store. During her interview, she stopped to pick up and move a pallet that was left where it could be stepped on. “See what I mean? I’m always looking like its my [place]” she said.
Seta admits that it takes a while for her to warm up to someone new coming into Starbucks. “If I don’t know them, I’m not good with them. I have to know them, they have to come close to me. But once I know that person, I will give them my heart,” she said. And while she wasn’t shy to express her opinion on how some of her colleagues’ methods – “Why do you leave the water running? It’s not your water.” – Seta had only the kindest comments for her follow baristas “although the young ones always go away so soon.”
She claims – it’s not known if this is true or not – that she’s responsible for the large number of fellow Armenians who would make a visit a part of their morning routine. “They knew me from my old place so they followed me. They were looking for the chicken.”
“I’m proud to be Armenian. It’s a beautiful, rich culture, language, music and food! The best food!” she added without prompting.
This summer Seta will downsize her current abode and move to one of her homes in Watertown that’s “walking distance from the church” and spend more time with her grandchildren, three boys and a girl, between 17 and 3 years old,
“They are my life, those grandkids,” she said.
Photo: An “average” Belmont home that recently sold for $1.1 million (and it’s a ranch!)
Belmont Board of Selectmen Chair Adam Dash said that next fiscal year’s property tax rate approved by the board Thursday morning, Dec. 13 isn’t that onerous compared to charges imposed in other Massachusetts city and towns.
“It’s our housing values that are high,” said Dash, focusing on the annual dichotomy of where lower tax rates result in raising taxes for Belmont’s property owners after the Belmont Board of Assessors presented its analysis of Belmont real estate valuation during its annual tax classification hearing before the Selectmen.
Robert Reardon, long-time chair of the Board of Assessors, announced that Belmont’s fiscal ’19 property tax rate – which begins on July 1, 2019 – will be set at $11.67 per $1,000 assessed value, a reduction of nearly half-a-buck from the fiscal ’18 rate of $12.15.
But the average quarterly bill isn’t shrinking with the new tax rate as the total assessed value of property in Belmont shot up to $7.947 billion from $7.497 billion in fiscal ’18 as home buyers continue to clamor into the “Town of Homes.”
The healthy increase in Belmont property values also pushed up the average residential home value to $1,090,000, a jump of a little more than 8 percent or $86,000 in 12 months. “Incredible,” said Selectman and lifelong Belmont resident Mark Paolillo upon hearing what the new “average” has become.
With home prices increasing at a steady clip, the annual tax bill in fiscal ’19 on an average assessed valued property ($1,090,000 x $11.67) will be $12,720.30, an increase of $525 from the $12,195.56 in fiscal ’18.
And the town is squeezing every last drop of taxes from the levy; by taking in $89.25 million, it is leaving only $4,003.08 of excess capacity “on the table,” said Reardon.
When Selectman Tom Caputo asked how the new 7-12 school building on the site of Belmont High School will impact tax assessments, Town Treasurer Floyd Carman said the nearly $215 million debt exclusion will be phased in over three years beginning in fiscal 2020. The town is expected to borrow between $85 to $90 million in long-term borrowing in the first two years with taxes on an average home increasing by $680 each year. The final year will be short-term bonds in the $25 million to $30 million range.
“Think $1,800 plus” total increase on the average property in taxes by the start of fiscal 2022, “assuming we keep our [triple A] bond rating,” said Carman.
As in past years, the assessors’ recommended, and the selectmen agreed to a single tax classification and no real estate exemptions. Reardon – who is director of Cambridge’s Assessing Department – said Belmont does not have anywhere near the amount of commercial and industrial space (at must be least a minimum of 20 percent, said Reardon) to creating separate tax rates for residential and commercial properties. Belmont’s commercial base is 3.9 percent of the total real estate.
“Every year, the layperson ask us why we don’t increase the commercial rate, and the reason is that is such a small, small impact,” said Reardon. If Belmont increased commercial rates to the maximum limit under the law, those tax bills would jump on average by $6,350 while residential taxes would fall to $381, placing an unfair burden on commercial owners and their renters “and make Belmont a less desirable town.”
“People always assume there’s more money if you go with the split rate when it really is just shifting the cost to the commercial side,” Reardon said.
Photo: One of the responses made by a student after racist and homophobic graffiti was discovered at the Chenery Middle School.
On the week before Thanksgiving, a bathroom at Chenery Middle School was tagged with racist and homophobic graffiti in an unprecedented attack of hate speech at the school. In response to the act, Chenery Principal Micheal McAllister conducted a school-wide activity to explain what happened and what students can do to begin the healing process. Below is a question and answer with McAllister before the School Committee meeting on Nov. 27.
Q: In your email to parents after the attack, you said you were “stunned” that such an incident took place in Belmont? After two weeks of reflection and knowing that such incidents are happening every day around the country, do you remained as shocked as when first discovered the graffiti?
Yes, I do. I have been here for 20 years and to my knowledge, an attack like this has never happened. I’m not that naive that it has never happened, it just never happened quite on that scale. It was really blatant done with a big thick marker right on the wall and the mirror. Now every middle school in the US has the f-word on the wall or someone says an unkind thing to another student, no one is immune to that. But this was on another, disturbing level.
Chenery Principal Mike McAllister.
Q: Was this incident an example of ingrained racism and homophobia, or was this attention seeking by an immature young teen?
It’s hard to know what the motivation was because there wasn’t a lot of context for it. I have two thoughts on what occurred; that someone was being provocative and writing words they didn’t fully understand and that’s my hope. Or there was real animous to certain students in our school. But it doesn’t necessarily matter what the intent was at some level, it’s more on what the impact is on everyone else. Now that this is out and happened to people, the goal becomes how do you address it.
Where did you turn for guidance to respond to this incident of hate at the Chenery?
Unfortunately, every school is dealing with this, so there were a lot of examples of how schools are approaching the problem. Based on my school committee work in Bedford, Superintendent Jonathan Sills introduced me to the concept of Not in Our Town. It’s based on the Billings’ [Montana] example where the community came together after an act of antisemitism occurred. It’s a school program that says whether you go public or not, you’re making a statement. You’re either tacitly accepting it by remaining quiet or you’re getting out in front of it by saying “Not In Our Town.”
So I think I learned a lot from Superintendent Sills example but I also counseled with friends I have, with certainly my teachers, my assistant principals, and our superintendent [John Phelan]. I never had anyone say, ‘I don’t think you should go public, I don’t think this is a good idea, maybe we should keep this quiet.’
Q. What happened at the Chenery on the day before the Thanksgiving break?
The school has an extended homeroom which is 17 minutes long and on half days we have what we call team days. We asked teachers to set aside for a minimum of the 17 minutes for our response but most teachers gave us almost their entire day. First, we informed students what had happened. Their parents knew of the incident two days earlier so a lot of the children knew. We talked about how we are not the only town dealing with it. We walked them through four different towns in the last week alone that had an incident like ours. We talked about how they felt when they heard about it but also how the targets of this act may have felt and what’s the right way and wrong way to react; what’s helpful and what’s destructive. Finally the concept of Not In Our Town/Not In Our School. We showed them a five-minute clip from Billings about a community not unlike Belmont where something happens to one person and rather just saying, ‘Oh, that’s their problem,’ the entire community stands up and does something.
It wasn’t anything dramatic but it was just a statement that there’s something every one of us can do. And if 1,400 of us in this school does something, that’s better than just one person dealing with the incident.
The most visible activity was student’s writing on squares of construction paper their reaction to the incident.
We gave the students three prompts to write about; how did you feel, the second was what did you want the victims of this to hear, and third, what you want to say to the person who did this. Some kids responded to every prompt, some to one and some just said “I just want to ask ‘why?” Some said the person who did this must have their own problems, and maybe they need some help and our support.
In your email and in the activity, while there is a need for discipline, there is also restorative justice.
There are two types of justice; retributive and restorative. Retributive is the traditional “You did this, now stay after school for detention.” And there is a purpose for that. But there is also a piece of us that says, “When you break it, you have to fix it.” And that requires acknowledging that there’s someone on the other side of what you did. So in this age of smartphones, you might think that you’re only shooting a text message into cyberspace, but on the other side of the screen is a person who receives that. And we have a responsibility to that person. And it’s really easy to forget that for both kids and adults if you look at the trash that’s posted online today.
So we were trying to say on Wednesday was we have a responsibility to each other. Sometimes we make mistakes. We talk with kids a lot about intent versus impact, that sometimes the intent of what you wrote wasn’t clear but the impact was. Intent doesn’t undermine impact. So whether or not you intended to hurt someone, all that matters is that you hurt someone. And now we all have that responsibility to fix it. So that is what we are talking with kids all the time.
I would like to think that someone who wrote that was in school on Wednesday and they wrote something caring. So it was their opportunity to be restorative themselves, in addition, with the help from 1,400 other kids.
Q: What happened that Wednesday was a short-term, a one-day response. What is the long-term solution?
Unfortunately, there isn’t one thing a school can do. The best example to look at is Reading High School which has been dealing with this for a year and a half, especially in the past eight weeks.
For the educators at the Chenery, it’s the continuation of the work that we have been doing. We’ve been talking about culturally proficient teaching that welcomes all cultures into a school. What do we as teachers need to do in order to create an atmosphere where kids don’t leave part of themselves at the school’s front door? So that’s work that has been on-g0ing.
We introduced two tools at the beginning of the school year, the first is called “marking the moment” which is when something provocative or racially charged just happened, you must stop class and address that. It’s no longer acceptable to say to the child ‘be nice because we have algebra to do.’ But sometimes we fail to mark the moment so the second way is the concept called circling back. We can always say to students, “Hey, you said something the other day and it stuck with me and I want to have a chance to talk to you about that.” Because when we don’t say anything, we are still making a statement.
I don’t think that two years ago I don’t know if we would have responded like this nor would we have teachers who would have felt confident enough to respond like this. So I think on some level we’ve been preparing for this. But the work continues. Every single day there is a mark the moment event.
Vigilance is the answer. Sometimes when you make it public, it actually makes it worse. That doesn’t mean its the wrong thing to do. Sometimes it becomes this game of cat and mouse or copycat. But the goal of going public is more than solely to stop the act of hate. It’s also to let other people know that you’re not going to sit back and let it happen. So it’s worth the risk. It’s just a drag that its happening everywhere.