Date: 12/12/2018
I attended the Nov. 28 Longmeadow School Committee (SC) meeting and listened to the praise for Superintendent Dr. Martin O’Shea by teachers and by a group of students; I was indeed impressed, especially by the students! Clearly they are the future for our country. I ask the SC where they planned to obtain the estimated $100,000+ to pay for legal fees and for the search for a new superintendent, as I was concerned having two grand children in high school. I neglected to add that I hoped the funds would not come at the expense of seniors and the new senior center. The response from the Chair was in effect that “the SC had not gotten that far.”
On Dec. 3 I emailed nine questions to all of the SC members on this situation with Dr. O’Shea. On the next day I received an email from the Chair acknowledging my email, but no answers to my questions! Surprisingly, I do not believed they were addressed at the Dec. 5 SC meeting either!
This week I took two petitions for signatures to 29 Longmeadow voters, friends as well as strangers, about evenly split. The first petition was to change the town charter to allow the voters to remove elected officials from office, and the second to hold a special town meeting for effectively a vote of “no confidence,” to remove from office the four SC members in the “clique,” as I call them, who voted not to renew Dr. O'Shea’s contract. Twenty-five of the twenty-nine voters eagerly signed the petitions, with the others having conflicts or questions. This is a very powerful 86 percent of voters who fully support Dr. O’Shea!
If I were on the SC and viewed the overwhelming support for Dr. O’Shea by the students, teachers, principals, town officials, seniors and voters, I would not want the humiliation of defending myself at the special town meeting. I believe this town meeting will happen even if Dr. O’Shea is no longer working for our town, as those of us who think he is being treated unfairly, will push on.
As a SC member, I would change my mind and give Marty O’Shea another one year contract, and this time work very hard at not “micromanaging” this seasoned professional educator, plus comprehend the enormity of my foolish decision. If you recall the same sort of situation occurred with our Select Board several years ago, and was corrected when the voters voted “Nit Pickers” out office! The other option is to move to Palmer.
Donald Gaffney
Longmeadow
