Am I correct when I say I heard it's a definite that the 5th gradets will now be middle schoolers and 8th graders will now be high schoolers? Does anyone else not have a problem with this? I'm happy my children are already in HS. I think as a parent I would be upset if my child were pushed to the middle school a year early. There are enough problems with bullying and drug use in middle school I think it is wrong to start exposing the kids a year earlier. Not to mention all the rights of passage that come with 5th grade.
Can't wait to have all the extra cars dropping off and picking up at the middle high school too. That Willie a real joy.
Thank you Mayor Dolan for allowing the city to be overbuilt and over populated.
Agreed.
These knuckleheads make changes just to make changes. I am glad my kids are almost done. When will we be bringing in the Middle east refugees to add to this?
Yup. Trying so hard to look like they're doing anything but causing a colossal cluster f***. We could have gotten a troupe of chimpanzees for free and gotten better results.
The MVMMS has a big drug problem! We will need to hire more police and fire to administer NARCAN! The planning in this city is out of control and all the yuppie entitled parents will want to get out of Melrose ASAP once their kids experience the school system!
I have to say I know a bunch of kids in the middle school, and not one of them has talked about anyone doing drugs. And they take health every semester which basically talks about the perils of drugs. Not sure who your kids hang out with or what your kids are doing that you think there is a widespread drug problem, but the kids I know would in no way indicate that the kids are doing drugs there.
Yea look how the say no to drugs campaign and dare program work well for kids of the 80's and 90's. I happen to have an 8th grade middle schooler and since 6th grade what kids are doing. Starting in 7th grade she knew some that smoked pot, eight grade more pot and some are drinking. She hasn't said any are doing heroin,I would hope none would start that young, but she did hear rumors last year of a student who carried a bunch of pills around in their backpack, selling. I believe the student has since moved on to the high schooL. Don't know if you know there was a girl who I
OD'd I pills in the bathroom a couple of years ago.
What happened to the edit feature? Now I need to proofread before I send? Should say I have been asking her what kids are doing since 6th grade.
Getting back to the subject of the grade shift, 8th graders going to the HS is incomprehensible. Children look to older peers for guidance and now these role models are 16, 17, 18 years old. Every HS has drugs, drinking and pot but SEX is even more pervasive than that. Hope the 7th graders pay attention in health class before they join the HS in 8th grade.
I wonder if the rate of teen pregnancy/abortion will go up?
Anyone who actually believes that "health class" (especially those taught in Melrose!) are somehow effective in preventing poor behaviors (early/unprotected sex, date rape, substance use/abuse) is seriously deluded. This department has been headed up for many years now by a chair that couldn't have cared less about the students, is rarely ever present for the athletic events over which she has been in charge (except the high-profile ones). The department is a joke as it stands currently. Same with the organizations supposedly working to promote smart choices like MAAV, where those in charge are political tools of the administration and the chosen students are often some of the worst partiers in the city, total hypocrites.
As for the decision to shift middle school-age students all over the place (bringing younger students into the middle school and sending 8th-graders to MHS), this is a totally wrong-headed proposition and there needs to be strong parental rejection of this whole crazy, harmful scheme. Once again, secondary education gets dumped on while Taymore and SC pander to the elementary power brokers leading the mayor around by the nose. There are other sensible solutions to any overcrowding issues in elementary that do not involve disrupting the entire secondary school population. Demand appropriate solutions, not these hack jobs that will hurt the 2,000 students of MVMMS and MHS!
If necessary, close the ECC to all but the 33 or so special needs students the district must provide services for. There is zero obligation to run a pre-school, let alone the boutique preschool now in place. The Franklin could take any kindergarten overflow, thereby solving that problem without disrupting any of the other obligatory classes the system must provide. They claim that taking back the Beebe is not feasible, but I'd want to see proof of this. (If suspicions are correct, it is indeed a feasible option, just not one that RD or CT want to employ for political reasons alone.)
Bring in a couple of portable classrooms if needed.
There are many possible sensible solutions that should be explored fully and openly (a foreign concept to this school committee and administration!).
Remember, all this chaos and cutting of department chairs, etc. is all about RD punishing those who didn't support his indefensible tax override. He wants pain and suffering so that he can trot out another indefensible tax scheme in the next couple of years as The Solution to end the pain he is now inflicting that is totally unnecessary and should be stopped in its tracks. CT and SC are going along with all of it because they really couldn't care less about anything except their own hides. This is a reckless and irresponsible bunch that has been proven to have violated federal and state laws. There should be heads on a platter, not this reckless and crazy reorganization of the district.
Heroin is epidemic nowadays in the 20 and 30 somethings. My child was in the high school not to long ago and he used to tell me of kids leaving the classroom to go to the bathroom and when they came back they would nod off. I sincerely hope there are no current high schoolers who are hooked.
Didn't anyone attend a K-8 school? From this conversation, you would think the kindergarteners at St. Mary's would become drug addicts because they go to school with 8th graders.
I could be wrong but I believe Wakefield is K-4 5-8 9-12 ?
K-8 schools have distinct areas for the different age groups. Our secondary schools are not set up to accommodate this model.
The spiteful Yes crowd, led by the likes of Dugan, Driscoll, Grover, Lewis, McAndrew, Christopher, Gagliono, et al (w/ CT and RD leading the pack) of needs to GROW UP. Their juvenile and self-serving conduct is hurting the community in ways that may take a very long time to heal. They are disgusting sore losers, in line with others like Lehman (multiple loser candidate for SC) who can't manage to respect the voters they are/were supposed to serve (most of the YES leaders serve on the MEFoundation and/or work for the city as well--like Grover & Gagliano). They nearly all share another major characteristic: they are (almost exclusively, except for MD) local Dems. They discredit their party with their conduct as well.
This community said NO to a poorly crafted tax override that also demonstrated the YES group's contempt for any kind of real public process. All that led up to the vote were cooked presentations and fake forums (to which the other side was refused participation). The override was based in flimsy numbers and requests that reflected the incompetence and contempt of the administration for transparency and accountability. RD and CT have only gotten more outrageously contemptuous since their failed override, presenting a current budget, if one can even call it that, based on presumptions that are hugely disrespectful of the public. Those in charge have totally failed in their mission to serve the students and the taxpayers who are footing the bill. The "fluid" document is a sham. It is a total manipulation, w/ PDR and RD pulling the strings even more cynically than before now that there isn't even a pretend business manager to funnel their cooked numbers through. The SC and BOA both rubber-stamped the "bottom line" sham of a "budget," acting as if they were helpless to do anything else, being the irresponsible cowards most of them have become. The "district priorities" are CT's way of giving the finger to the city that she views as giving her nothing but grief (and a huge, unwarranted salary, along with her ever-adoring YES/MEF sycophants). CKK, GM, and Colleen Murphy got it right, absolutely right. Pay attention to what was said by those individuals, and there's no mystery about what is happening now. The cabal tried every trick in the book, even sending their frothing attack dog Grover to a school committee meeting to publicly and personally insult Mrs. K as a way of praising Driscoll's "budget process" leading up to the override vote. They got all their gullible friends to write copious letters to both papers propagating the myths they learned from RD and CT. They marched all over town rudely standing with their signs in front of any holding signs for opposing views, displaying their crude and juvenile behavior over and over again, trying to shout down others with innocent and legitimate questions or alternate opinions. They made sure that all presentations were a closed system with nothing other than the preconstructed talking points they scripted (just like every school committee meeting).
After the election in November the MEF brigade and City Hall officials gathered at Mexico Lindo, stunned and in total disbelief, and totally without humility (as per usual) in the face of their stunning defeat. Instead of mature and gracious conduct, they raged, and they rage still, like medieval crusaders who actually believe they are fighting for The One Truth, when in fact they can't see beyond the end of their collective noses. They can't seem to see what an overwhelming majority of the community has seen for some time, that this administration is ethically and functionally bankrupt of the citizen's trust, that it has squandered good will that it formerly had for many years (even when it was already clear that it wasn't deserved).
Now this same crowd has stood by supporting the failed school committee as it has done its hatchet job on what was left of a mediocre school system (can't anymore call it a good one; that ship sailed when they hired Casey and then Taymore--same bozos like MG leading the charge vehemently and ignorantly supporting both of those failed supers, naturally). This crowd continues to be in the face of any who obviously took opposing stands, and it really doesn't care (or even see?) the damage they continue to cause.
Not one of these MEF Crusaders came forward to protest the fraudulently represented "level service budget" in which secondary academics is dealt its death blows with cuts all over the place, starting with the elimination of several department chair positions. Not one has stepped up to challenge the absurdly disrespectful conduct of the school committee. Not one has stepped up to fight for the children--secondary and elementary--who will without a doubt be harmed by any of the proposed schemes to move them all over the place (up to middle or high school too soon, high-schoolers forced to move aside into already overcrowded classrooms, fake classes added and real ones removed in order to satisfy the idiots currently in charge, on and on). Meanwhile, the math curriculum has been resequenced 3 times in recent years, remains in chaos, and now the chair is departing to join the failed chair (science) on the Chelsea district staff. You didn't hear any of the Crusaders bemoaning the poor outcomes that have resulted from these failed administrators, though. Did you hear a single one of the Crusaders ask about all the legal bills their darling CT has racked up and continues to cause? Nope. How about all those funds from the textbook bond? Now we're hearing that necessary curriculum materials will not be purchased because the SC and CT did not adequately budget for the requirements, instead bemoaning the lack of money and predicting/threatening that the district will be cited for violations of the DOE requirements one and two years from now. We're supposed to feel chastised as voters because this is all supposedly our fault. We're supposed to feel sorry for CT who is "freezing" her bloated $179,000 salary this year. We're supposed to believe that all this "reorganization" still amounts to a "level service budget," when clearly it is a decimated configuration that has little resemblance to the district that the citizens have poured at least $4 million extra dollars into the last 2 years alone, not even talking about the bonds for textbooks or science labs or the pretentiously named "learning commons" about to be unveiled at MHS.
The Crusaders (led by RD, the SC and to some extent even the BOA) have managed to lead the city straight into its own Melrose Dark Ages. Citizens need to disempower the money machine that keeps the Crusaders in business. Stop contributing to MEF or the PTO or to the political fundraisers for those who've caused this mess or for the many other adjunct fundraisers that in effect continue to support a failed administration. Just say No. They have bloated fees and tuition for Melrose public education beyond comprehension. Next time they come with their hands out, write the check for the MSPCA or Dana Farber or hospice care, or virtually anything else. Just say No. Then you can say YES to Taking Back Melrose! Step up and help those who are working to right this sinking ship.
Well said, and absolutely correct.
If you've ever watched any of this take place, you might stand there scratching your head and wondering how on earth could so many in Melrose be so god-awful stupid? How could they just roll over and say "Please, sir, could I have some more?"
Just watch films of 1940's Europe, when millions went meekly into the gas chambers. Completely inexplicable, yet it happened. If you know you're going to be dead anyway, why not at least go down fighting?
It's exactly the same mentality on display now in Melrose, albeit on a much smaller scale, and with less dire results. Sheep led to the slaughter and meekly complying.
We all know the reactions that are on display when someone says "I've had enough, and I'm out of here." The universal response is "Good. We don't want you here anyway." These fools don't even realize that the people who win in that scenario are those that leave, and those that lose are every single kid in the school system.
I have lost all respect for the people of Melrose who for the most part 1. Are too stupid to see what goes on right under their noses, or 2. Don't care, and 3. Don't have the balls to stand up and put a stop to it.
The only thing stopping the override has done is temporarily throw a monkey wrench into the works. We've seen their response to that - foot stomping spoiled little brat rhetoric - "I'll fix you!" - and not just a few outright lies. The only recourse now is a full blown tax revolt, and if it gets ugly and bloody, so be it. The entire administration should be run out of town on a rail. A pack of chimpanzees would be an improvement.
If you think they have your best interests at heart, you're even dumber than I thought. They claimed to have the best interest of the city in mind when they foisted the water and sewer theft - yes, theft - on us too. How's that working out for you?
Wait til Taymore and the school committee come down with their new rules for transgender bathrooms! This will be another distraction from the school mess!