Above: The School Committee will use the big room again this meeting for an agenda item on the same controversy that prompted them to meet in the auditorium in June. (screen shot from video posted by Southborough Access Media)
This week, the Southborough School Committee will hold a meeting to follow up on a promise made at the end of last school year. Its agenda is one item — a presentation by independent auditors.
At last week’s regular school committee meeting, Chair Chelsea Malinowski announced that the meeting would be held this Thursday, October 17th at 7:00 pm. She made clear, the report “will not be a forum”, just a presentation to the committee and public.
Unlike some committees, the school committees typically don’t allow any comments from the public during agenda item discussions, only at the start and/or end of a meeting. (That also means there is no back and forth discussion with the public at meetings.) For this Thursday, Public Comment is only listed at the meeting’s start.
The presentation by the “Independent Audit Presentation by Comprehensive Investigations and Consulting, LLC” will be held in the Trottier Middle School auditorium. That’s the same venue where the committee held its unusual meeting on June 12th. The auditorium had been chosen for that June meeting to allow for a large turnout from the public that night. (The room wasn’t packed, but it was a much larger audience than their typical meetings in the school library.) The meeting included public comments from petitioners, parents and community members who were prompted to speak out and/or listen after news broke about racially charged incidents in a Neary School 5th grade classroom.
That night, the committee publicly voted to hire an independent auditor to “audit” the investigation that had been conducted by the NSBORO administration into actions of a teacher and the school’s Principal, Kathleen Valenti. The audit wasn’t as far as many members of the public had asked the committee to go.
A petition had called for dismissal of Valenti and suspension of NSBORO Superintendent Gregory Martineau. It included an assertion that actions of the administrators raised “troubling questions about the integrity of the investigation and the seriousness with which the district has taken any of these concerns.” Prior to the committee’s vote, some commenters also called for a wholly new investigation. Afterwards, some questioned whether an audit would provide enough useful information.
The day after the tense Southborough School Committee meeting, the combined committees of Southborough, Northborough, and the Regional schools met and discussed Martineau’s performance evaluation. Members made public statements of support for Martineau and voted to give him an exemplary rating and a raise.
For any community members who aren’t satisfied or who still have questions after this Thursday’s presentation, the next meeting of the School Committee is scheduled for November 13th.
However, the Superintendent will be holding public “Office Hours” sooner, on Monday, October 28th from 6:30 – 7:30 pm. The hour will take place in the Woodward School Library. Martineau’s “Office Hours” are offered as “a time and space for parents and guardians to connect with the Superintendent about questions, feedback, or concerns about their student or their experience with The Public Schools of Northborough and Southborough.”
The Southborough School Committee has also committed to holding occasional office hours (with two committee members) for members of the public. The hours haven’t been posted yet for this fall. (I reached out to the Superintendent’s office to find out if any are scheduled. Someone will get back to me, and I will update this post when they do.)
