Letter To The Editor: Support Checkoway’s Re-Election To The School Committee

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Photo: Amy Checkoway is running for re-election to the Belmont School Committee

To the editor:

I am thrilled to support Amy Checkoway in her re-election campaign for the Belmont School Committee this April.

Amy is committed to enabling every student to reach their full potential. She is doing so by staying committed to the goal of providing a normal school year for students in an environment that is safe for students and staff.

Amy works tirelessly to put the needs and well-being of all students first. This is evident from her support for funding programs and staff to support students’ educational, social, and emotional needs at all grade levels.
I have seen what a critically important role Amy has played as the School Committe Chair in the last year. Amy is thoughtful and empathetic when members of the community express concerns. She tackles challenging situations with professionalism. She bases decisions on data and reinstated a more robust evaluation process for holding the Superintendent and School Committee accountable.

Amy’s experience will be invaluable for the students of Belmont Public Schools in the years ahead. I hope you join me in voting for Amy Checkoway for Belmont School Committee.

Meg Moriarty

Garfield Road

Letter To The Editor: Thank You From Belmont Helps

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Photo: Belmont Help has assisted more than 600 Belmont residents

To the editor:

It’s the end of a long and challenging year, and what a year for Belmont Helps it was! Under the umbrella of the Belmont Food Collaborative, Belmont Helps has been fortunate to assist several households with meals, grocery orders, phone buddies and more. Our volunteers have tirelessly helped our neighbors in need while our team leaders have been behind the scenes coordinating, fundraising, as well as working on initiatives to Brighten Belmont.

We are filled with gratitude for the volunteers and partners that join our efforts so we can be there for those in need.  We would like to especially thank Mark and Angie Gregor for providing Belmont Helps with a year-end fundraising match of $5,000 and are happy to report that we’ve met and exceeded this goal, which will help to keep us strong for the year ahead! Huge thanks to Belmont Helps Leads Julie Wu, Martha Loftus and Abigail Klingbeil for the countless hours spent responding to requests for help, speaking with families about their needs, arranging to fulfill those needs and providing referrals to other town-based services; and to Anne Lougee and Fiona McCubbin for accounting for every dollar spent and received.  Thank you also to the many other leads and volunteers that have contributed to our work since we began. It takes a village, and we are very thankful to this one.

Belmont Helps is here if you find yourself needing assistance this upcoming year. We have succeeded in helping families in need due to the generosity and willingness of the many in our community who step up to help when needs arise! 

Cheers to a happy holiday and a healthier new year. Connect to us for help, to donate, or to volunteer at http://www.belmonthelps.org/ or leave a message with us at 617-993-0163

Amy Kirsch and Shana Wang

Belmont Helps Co-Chairs

Letter To The Editor: Belmont Needs Common Sense Policy On Student Covid Vaccination Mandate

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Photo: The author believes Belmont should adopt a common sense approach to student vaccinations

To the editor:

In the last year and a half, I’ve made it a point to call my elderly Aunt Helen every week. Our conversations touch on a wide range of topics: politics, stories about my parents I’d never heard before, and regular family updates. Lately, Helen has shared stories that are more personal: experiences with her mentally ill father and her unfaithful husband whom she divorced, and sexual harassment and gender discrimination as a working single mom. Recently, I asked her, “How did you manage to get through all of that?”  Helen laughed and said, “I just thought of the story about the little engine that could and I told myself, I can, I must, I will.”  

Belmont needs a little of my Aunt Helen’s can-do attitude right about now. For the third school year in a row, we’ve struggled to maintain focus on where we want to be in the future and how to get there from a policy perspective. To be fair, the national political and scientific landscape is complex, dynamic, and divisive, and “guidance” from the state has been slow to come and sometimes unhelpful. As a consequence, our small town has become torn about the best ways to keep everyone safe and to return to a “normal life” whatever that means going forward.

We can and must do better. For starters, as it did with the universal indoor mask mandate, the Board of Health should follow the advice of the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics by enacting a policy that mandates vaccinations against COVID-19 among all BPS students who are approved for vaccines by the FDA, presently 16 and older. Based on recent data provided by Belmont Superintendent John Phelan, student vaccinations seem to be stuck at the 80 percent mark, which means that hundreds of students who are eligible for vaccines have not yet gotten them. This represents a significant risk to public health and must be addressed.  

A vaccine mandate for students who are 16 and older will not ensure that all age-eligible students will get vaccinated, but it will send a powerful message to students and families that vaccines are normal and expected for participation in the Belmont Public Schools for all age groups once the FDA determines that the vaccine is safe. The policy can be written in such a way that families will know that they need to prioritize getting their children vaccinated as soon as their age brackets are approved under Emergency Use Authorization because, eventually, all age brackets will be approved by the FDA. This kind of policy will make it unnecessary for the School Committee to make vaccine policy in an ad hoc way every time a new age group gets approved, leaving time to discuss other essential business, such as academic achievement and the social-emotional wellbeing of our students, both of which have suffered in the last two years. 

A vaccine mandate, especially if the policy is enacted with a deadline before Thanksgiving, will not only make schools safer for students and their families by reducing the number of students who will become seriously infected as we head into the winter, it will also be a sign of good faith to our school nurses, the members of the Belmont teachers’ union, and other bargaining units who have agreed to mandatory vaccines that the community cares about their workplace safety.  

More than anything, by using its authority to enact this policy, the Belmont Board of Health will help us take a step in the direction of a future we all want for our children and ourselves, a world in which our children can play and attend school largely without masks and without dread of serious illness and death. As a small town with a strong commitment to local governance, we don’t need to wait for the Massachusetts Legislature, which we heard recently from State Senator Will Brownsberger will defer to the state’s Department of Public Health, to issue this common-sense policy. We can and we must take this important step ourselves to protect our community.   

Jeff Liberty

Worcester Street

Letter To The Editor: Avoiding Some Painful Budget Cuts By Delaying Pension Pay Down

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Photo: Belmont should not continue to pursue a pension pay down plan. (credit: Pixabay)

Letter to the editor:

It looks like the defeat of the override will lead to the loss of several school teachers, at least one fire fighter and police officer, and several DPW employees, as well as cuts to many important services for seniors and others. I’m guessing that even those who opposed the override will consider this prospect to be unfortunate. 

With this in mind, it is absolutely critical that we identify any moves we can make to free up money in the budget. While it would be nice to do so, we can no longer afford to achieve 100 percent funding status on our pension liability eight years before we have to. According to an October 2020 report by the Segal Group, we are currently spending almost $9 million a year to reduce our pension liability and will boost this expenditure by about 4.5 percent annually until it hits $13 million in 2031 to eliminate the liability by 2032. If, as we are free to do under the applicable state law, we adjusted our full funding target date to 2040, we could free up at least several hundred thousand, if not more than $1 million, a year. This adjustment would enable us to avoid some painful budget cuts, lower our structural deficit and the size of the next override while preserving our commitment to provide the pensions we promised to our employees.  

If you think that Belmont should not continue to pursue a pension pay down plan aimed at achieving full funded status several years ahead of when it is legally required, please ask the Select Board, the School Committee, and the Town Administrator to reach out to the Retirement Board, which determines the pension funding schedule, and request that it extend the full funding target date to 2040.

Dan Barry, Town Meeting Member, Precinct 1, Goden Street

Letter To The Editor: Designate At Least One Day To Honor Indigenous Peoples

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To the editor:

In third grade, my Winn Brook class went on a field trip to Plymouth Plantation. Furious that I got separated from my best friend, I stomped through the English village where costumed colonists wished us a “Good morrow.” At the Wampanoag Homesite, we watched Indigenous women dressed in deerskins cooking next to a bark-covered wetu (house). Exhausted, I breathed in the warm smokey air, recalling my preschool Thanksgiving crafts: the black Pilgrim hat and the colorful turkey shaped like my little hand. My teacher taught us that the Native people had saved the Pilgrims from starvation and celebrated the first Thanksgiving together.  

Four years later, I attended the first of many powwows – a large gathering of Indigenous people dancing, singing, and celebrating traditions – organized by the Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness. At Claudia Fox Tree’s workshops, my re-education about American history began. I learned about famous Indigenous people and contemporary issues like the struggle against denigrating Native mascots. As I watched Aquayah Peters in her vibrant jingle dress and the Edmond brothers’ joyful dance, I understood that the Wampanoags at Plymouth were not actors in historic costumes or relics of the past. They were living on their own homelands, preserving their way of life. 

For me, Indigenous Peoples’ Day is about the past and the present. It is an opportunity to acknowledge that Belmont is located in the homelands of the Massachusett and the Pawtucket. Reminders of Indigenous presence are everywhere: place names like Pequossette Park on Trapelo Road, Native artifacts discovered near School and Grove Streets, and a burial mound on land bordering Pleasant Street. Indigenous narratives were mainly absent from my Belmont education. On my own, I read about the devastating violence of colonial history like the Pequot massacre of 1637 celebrated at the first officially proclaimed Thanksgiving, and ongoing harms to Indigenous communities. The poet Mary Ruefle observes: “[L]istening is a kind of knowledge, or as close as one can come.” The students of Belmont deserve to hear truthful historical narratives.

We can also celebrate the knowledge of Indigenous peoples who have lived in harmony with the natural world for centuries and are at the forefront of climate justice. Belmont readers can discuss books by Robin Wall Kimmerer, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Terese Marie Mailhot, and Tommy Orange. We can choose to honor Indigenous people on at least one designated day.

Natalia Freeze, Leicester Road

Letter To The Editor: Vote ‘Yes’ To Secure Our Shared Future

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To the editor:

I’m a Belmont parent who likes clear and simple. For me, Tuesday’s override ballot question can be reworded simply: Do you support funding smaller classes for students?

After a long, hard year, my son goes back to school in-person full time on Monday. Finally. He will have 23 students in his class, less than five percent of his teacher’s divided time. Without the override, smaller classes are impossible, there will be fewer teachers, and no math coaches. The past year has been hard, hard, hard. I’m exhausted by the slow pace of return-to-normal, and how it has affected us all. Yet the forward looking question remains: do we support smaller classes for all our students in 2021 and beyond? I say YES.

As a member of our connected community, the override could also be worded as: Do you support hiring a social worker for the senior center?

I say YES. Without the override, our seniors get even less support. I will be a senior one day in Belmont.

I’m hopeful for our future, and want to invest in our community. I like running our streets and trails, being outdoors, and the smell of grasses and pine trees on Lone Tree Hill. The override might be rewritten as: Do you support finding more green infrastructure opportunities in our town?

I say YES. Without the override, we will underinvest in sustainable infrastructure and our shared outcomes.

In running every street in Belmont, I’ve unblocked storm drains, tripped on too many sidewalks, and carried home the trash I found along the way. You might read the override as: Do you support hiring more DPW workers to help maintain our community? How about Police, and Fire?

I say YES. Without the override, we will fall farther behind in essential maintenance and public safety resources.

Many of those most affected have no choice, and no voice. Our school children cannot vote for smaller classes and more teacher time. Our non-US citizen neighbors cannot vote. We can choose. They are counting on us to invest in our shared future. Please vote YES with me on Tuesday.

Matt Taylor, Edgemoor Road

Letter To The Editor: Civil Rights Groups Call For Transparency Investigating Racist Incident

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Photo: Recent protest in Cushing Square (Credit: COS New England Facebook page)

Dear Belmont Police Department, Belmont Public Schools, and the larger Belmont community:

We are writing to express our disgust with the hate filled and racist graffiti found on the Wellington School Building this past Monday. This is unacceptable. We stand, in solidarity, with our Belmont and Boston students and families of color.

We must not and will not tolerate racism in any form or manner. The severity of the incident should be acknowledged and there should be follow through with students and families, alike.

We thank Belmont Superintendent John Phelan for bringing this to our attention as quickly as he did and we thank Belmont Police Chief James MacIsaac for keeping the community informed of the ongoing investigation.  

We ask that the investigation of this hateful incident be swift, thorough, and transparent. We ask that any conversations with students, particularly of color, regarding this incident be thoughtful and transparent. We are here to be a support for our Belmont and Boston students, families, and educators. This is a community issue which is why we are asking for transparency.

For our students and community to heal, you all must be incredibly thoughtful in the manner in which the investigation is handled and how the information is disseminated. We would like to be included, along with community members, in the communications to students and families. We would like to receive updates on the investigation. 

The common theme is transparency.

ALL of our children should feel safe and welcomed in their environment. This incident proves that there are individuals in the Belmont community who continue to try and foster a climate of fear and intimidation. We, as a community, need to be vigilant in our fight against racism. Belmont schools are part of a greater community and we should all be informed when incidents like this happen. If it affects one, it affects all.

We look forward to receiving updates and working closely with you all.

In solidarity,

Community Organized for Solidarity (COS)

Black and Brown Families in Belmont (BBF)

Belmont Pan-Asian Coalition (BPAC) 

Belmont Antiracism Discussion Group (BADG) 

Letter To The Editor: Donner’s Work on School Committee Is More Important Than Ever

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Photo: Tara Donner is running for re-election to the School Committee

Belmont is blessed with an amazing abundance of candidates for the School Committee this year, but Tara Donner, who has served three years is a standout incumbent who deserves your vote.

Transparency and community outreach are so important for our community. Under the crush of hours and hours of meetings and decisions to make, it’s been difficult to get outreach right. But Tara has always been an advocate for outreach and was instrumental in launching “office hours” for the School Committee. She’s been a regular there – talking with frustrated parents, taking questions, investigating issues raised, and talking solutions. The School Committee needs so much more of this, but Tara is showing how to get the work done.

We’ve always struggled with diversity and inclusion in our school district. This is why Tara’s work in establishing the School Committee’s Equity Subcommittee is so important. Even while our students and families grow more diverse, our educators are mostly White. While we’ve begun work on the curriculum, it needs much more attention to ensure that inclusiveness and the full diversity of Belmont are honored and represented in our children’s education. We need so much more work on student outcomes, which tilt unfavorably against our Black and LatinX students. Tara has been there from the beginning pushing this work forward.

We have a well-educated community. But, historically, the School Committee has drawn from parents and other community members who do not know teaching as a profession. This is where Tara’s experience is both unique and extremely helpful. Tara is both a parent and an educator in Winchester. With this experience, she’s able to converse with parents about what’s happening in the classroom in a way that no one else can. She’s also able to offer a learned perspective when it comes to classroom solutions. This has only been made doubly important during the pandemic, as the School Committee has navigated many transitions from remote learning to hybrid, and now to full in-person learning. Tara knows how to get this work done.

Tara is someone with a deep knowledge of and passion for education. She has more integrity than just about anyone I know. She’s also about the most compassionate and caring individual that serves in an elected position in Belmont. As we continue marching towards normal in our schools, Tara Donner’s work is more important than ever. She deserves your vote.

Mike Crowley, School Committee, Town Meeting Member Precinct 8

Letter To The Editor: Demonstrate Your Anger And Dissatisfaction – Vote No On The Override

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Photo: Letter to the editor

Letter to the editor:

We are all stressed these days. We are working from home, learning from home, socialize online and managing many emotions. We transform every room in the house from dining room to classroom to board room and beyond. Everyone is tired and we yearn for how things used to be. 

But do we really want things to go back to “normal”? Regardless of how you interpret this question, I hope we do not return to how things used to be. If we have learned anything through this pandemic, how it used to be doesn’t work. Blindly throwing more money at a problem does not solve the problem.  

Since the day we closed schools down more than a year ago, our administration and school committee have failed our students and families. The School Committee was not and still is not up to the task at hand. Its primary role is to negotiate with the Belmont Education Association (BEA) which they have utterly failed to do over and over this year. 

Teachers must also take part of this blame. Although many teachers have worked hard to transition to remote learning, others have chosen politics, toed the line and committed a grave disservice to the students they are supposed to serve. Shame on them. 

Our families are left in dismay and frustrated; the ones who are able are running for the hills, searching for solutions outside the district in any way they can. Those remaining are engaged in arguments of spending more money because they do not see a better way forward, despite the negative impacts on many of our families that are barely making ends meet. We are a year into a pandemic, which is by no means near its end. Our parents and students are understandably dissatisfied and have a right to be upset, but where should this frustration be focused? The leadership, “lack of funding,” or should it be something else that is goes below the surface? 

I have run twice for town office in two years. Both times with the position of reducing our overall town spending. No one wants to run on a platform to reduce spending which is admittedly an uphill battle, but one I believe must be undertaken. Even those who are in favor of the proposed override, agree that we lack fiscal oversight and management in town. Everyone agrees that we spend more than our revenue. Everyone agrees the town deficit is an inherited from generations of the past.

What we cannot agree on is how we fix the problem. There are many ways we can come together to solve this problem. However, this ridiculous push to continuing to spend our way out of a deficit is not sustainable. This approach will never force change upon our leadership and will forever be a financial burden on families.

I agree with Jeff Liberty’s Letter to the Editor published in the Belmontonian on March 21. Everyone is exhausted with the same conversations and arguments every single election. What I do not agree with; however, is electing the same people again and again or replacing leaders with their cronies that prevent to town from moving forward to create meaningful change for the betterment of our town and our educational system.

I understand and agree someone like me who is outspoken and takes unpopular opinions can be a scary decision at the ballot box. After years of ineffective meetings, committees, communication, and lack of good decision making, it is time to demand change. It’s time to hold our current leaders and their mistakes accountable with your vote.  

Voting either yes or no for the override will have real consequences. Ask yourself: will your family, friends, and neighbors still be able to live here after you cast your vote? Will you be able to look them in the eye and tell them you voted yes or no? Will your vote truly create fiscal control? A no vote gives us a real opportunity for change. A yes vote ensures the status quo. 

The town argues that current services are unsustainable in the current environment. I disagree. We are delaying hard but inevitable choices, structural changes that must be made. These changes must be made despite the outcome of the vote. Our community relies on us, collectively, to work together for the greater good. We want great teachers – we have many – we want to support our seniors to age in place – some are – and we want to have inclusive community – we are definitely not there yet. 

Years of ineffective leadership and mismanagement have taken us to where we are today. This is a simple and undeniable fact, and one we talk about during every election cycle. We have historically underfunded our schools and town departments because of, not despite of, the mismanagement of funds, which has caused division within our community. 

Challenges can also bring a community together, and because of this I am hopeful. The challenges we face are clear and defined, and therefore resolvable. This will require trust in each other and accepting new ways of thinking.  

The conclusion should be simple. Vote no against the override on April 6. Demonstrate your anger and dissatisfaction with our town’s leaders. Show you want real accountability and demand a clear, actionable plan for our collective future. Show you want a School Committee that will strongly negotiate for all our children and get them back in school. Show you want Town Meeting members that will put your precincts interest before their own. Show the Select Board that fiscally responsibility is a priority. And show you matter; demand this now.  

Timothy Flood, Wiley Road, Candidate for School Committee

Letter To The Editor: Reduce Costs, Increase Efficiencies Before Asking For A Tax Hike

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Photo: A No vote sign in Cushing Square.

To the editor:

Belmont voters deserve more consideration, more respect, and far more effort from their municipal leadership and school department than they have been shown in the orchestrated push for a $6.4 million Proposition 2 1/2 override.

Drastic financial measures like a massive tax increase should always be preceded by an exhaustive and comprehensive effort to find savings, adjust priorities, defer expenses, cut costs and make other real attempts at emergency belt-tightening. This is especially true in times of great crisis – such as the global public health disaster of COVID-19. Yet there has been no evidence of such an effort in any of the official override presentations by the Select Board, Town Administrator, Superintendent, and School Department.

Furthermore, a series of significant cash windfalls are being disregarded by town officials – even though the town’s actual FY 2022 budget shortfall could easily be covered by funds either already on hand or on the way to Belmont from state and federal relief appropriations.

Here’s what override proponents want voters to either forget or ignore:

  • The proposed $6.4 million tax override is almost $700,000 more than the actual budget shortfall for the fiscal year 2022. If you count the reserve funds already built into the town’s budget forecast, it is almost $3 million more than the true shortfall.
  • Belmont has approximately $11.2 million in cash reserves on hand – enough to easily cover the budget shortfall and still have a robust emergency fund. 
  • Gov. Baker’s proposed ‘House 1’ budget includes an increase in unrestricted aid to cities and towns that will provide additional funding to Belmont. But the town administrator has acknowledged that those funds – enough to save at least one teaching or other position – were not included in the FY 22 budget calculations.
  • Belmont’s state senator – one of the highest-ranking members of leadership on Beacon Hill – has explicitly said the town will receive even more state funding than Baker has proposed. 
  • A $1.7 trillion rescue package approved by Congress and President Biden will deliver as much as $8.6 million in semi-restricted bailout funds to Belmont. This was disclosed on March 11. Yet just days later members of the Select Board, School Department, and others advocating the massive tax increase attempted to downplay the significance of this tremendous windfall.

Across the U.S. in public, private and non-profit sectors – operating budgets have been reduced as a result of COVID-19 impact or other financial challenges. Many Americans and many Belmontians took pay cuts or worse in 2020 as employers made adjustments to keep things going. But no such measures have been suggested or proposed as part of the official plan to manage FY 22’s shortfall.

Is it possible to cut our way to fully addressing a budget deficit? No. Certainly not. But should every step be taken to reduce costs and increase efficiencies before asking voters for a massive tax increase? It seems like a reasonable ask. When voters are told there is no place to find savings – even as a simple, good-faith effort at austerity – it is not an honest statement. If upper management salaries are untouched; if temporary furloughs are not explored; if proposed hiring increases are not curtailed or suspended; if costly consulting and legal fees for pension fund management and other functions are not re-examined; then the town’s leadership has not explored every option to show good faith to the voters.

What Belmont has experienced is a series of threats: to cut jobs and fire teachers and end services. This approach was vividly on display at an override presentation some weeks ago. “Last in, first out” was the term the superintendent used to whimsically describe how teachers will be let go if Belmont “fails” to approve the override.

The doomsday school scenario – in which we are warned that Belmont education will decline terribly without this override – ignores a very obvious reality: we have already struck the bottom when it comes to educating our kids in Belmont. The pandemic inflicted historically difficult circumstances on this and every other town. We have responded how we have responded, and the results are there for everyone to see. Even if our approach to pandemic-era schooling was the best of the best, we would still be at the lowest point possible for our public education. There is only one way to go: and that is up.

Either way, let’s remember something: Belmont HAS the money to cover the shortfall even without a dime of cost-cutting by town departments. What might have been a credible discussion for some people weeks ago, now makes no sense in light of the huge bailout package approved by Congress and signed into law and the promise of more state aid.

The number of people in Belmont who cannot withstand this proposed tax increase without serious pain is nothing to ignore. Yet many are willing to dismiss that pain and what it means for those households.

How can a community that considers itself welcoming to and encouraging to and celebratory of diversity make a decision that will inflict so much damage on households from diverse economic backgrounds? This community exists today – as it always has – to welcome people from all economic circumstances. It does not exist only for the wealthy or people of means who see a $10,000, $12,000, or $14,000 tax bill as simply a convenient alternative to $50,000 in private school tuition.

The bottom line is that a vote for the override is a hostile act against people who cherish this community and want to continue living here but cannot afford a massive tax increase.

Cosmo Macero Jr., Palfrey Road, Town Meeting Member Precinct 5