Amaral and Coughlin for School Committee
Our schools need hard-working advocates, not culture war zealots
The culture wars raging around America's schools frequently overshadow the mundane but critical business of school districts and school committees.
Here in our own backyard Dartmouth's teachers are working without a contract in a state that prohibits teacher's strikes. Dartmouth teachers can barely afford their healthcare because the district's contribution is lower than other municipalities. Some teachers have not had pay increases for ten years. Dartmouth's teaching assistants are grossly under-compensated and many find their incomes below the legal definition of poverty. These are facts that almost all Dartmouth school committee candidates have acknowledged.
Of the district's $49 million budget, $37 million is spent on salaries. $1.3 million in services remain unfunded, and committee members must approve or reject budgets, contracts, and new expenditures. What schools spend money on is an expression of values and priorities. Not every school committee member would have signed off on a $4.8 million rehab of a football stadium, as several did, while teacher’s salaries stagnate. The choice of committee members is equally an expression of values.
Dartmouth's superintendent recently retired and the district was temporarily being headed by its finance director. Yesterday, as one of its responsibilities, the school committee approved the hiring of a new superintendent, Dr. June Saba-Maguire. A Dartmouth Week article on her hiring showed that some school committee members were better informed than others about a challenger's background.
Massachusetts taxpayers augment local taxpayers' contributions to their schools. In struggling "gateway cities" like New Bedford the contribution may be close to the entire school budget. Each year the legislature negotiates, and the governor approves, allocations for each school district. This year Dartmouth's Chapter 70 allocation was incremented by only 1% to $10.35 million. The school committee has now enlisted the help of state representatives to bump up Dartmouth's allocation.
To accomplish tasks like these school committee members need to be disciplined and do their homework on the issues, and be flexible enough to avoid petty partisanship. Most importantly, committee members should be interested in dealing with much more than their own pet ideological issues.
In normal times the election of school committee members would bring out candidates with relatively minor fiscal and social philosophies.
But these are not normal times. Right-wing zealots have taken the culture wars to the schools, lobbing frequent missiles at "woke" school curricula, library books, and health and educational policies. They have dragged along their conspiracy theories as well, screaming "no confidence!" at librarians and public health officials. Neither do they trust teachers or state officials to develop and implement curricula, and they don't like programs designed to help at-risk and minority children in majority-white school districts like Dartmouth's.
On March 21st, 2023 voters had a chance to meet the candidates at a forum held at Town Hall. Two candidates, incumbent Kathleen Amaral and newcomer, Elizabeth Coughlin, have been endorsed by the Dartmouth Democratic Town Committee (DartDTC) and are also my own choices for school committee. If you click on the DartDTC endorsement you will find profiles of both. These are two accomplished women with clear commitments to the schools and the community. They are hard workers and have no ideological axe to grind.
Unfortunately, at least two of the 2023 candidates are ideologically motivated. When she ran last year I wrote about Lynne Turner, the MAGA candidate, the anti-vaxxer, the anti-masker, the anti-CRT zealot who wants to dismantle the district's diversity and equity committee, calling it a vehicle for child "indoctrination." Turner told Dartmouth Week she was inspired to run for the School Committee after trying unsuccessfully to stop school mask mandates. She began her 2022 campaign on Facebook, telling a reporter that she wants to bring a "fresh view" to diversity issues which can be "very divisive." This time around, Turner's campaign is a bit slicker, she now has a website and has clearly received some much-needed campaign prep, but she's still selling the same old snake oil. Turner was recently the only Dartmouth School Committee candidate interviewed on the Chris McCarthy show on WBSM. Once again she took aim at Dartmouth's diversity and equity committee and at curriculum she claims has a "political bias." In 2022 Turner hitched her campaign to the Dartmouth Indian mascot and she still wants voters to know that she loves it. Turner admitted last year that she believed in book bans, though her WBSM hosts couldn’t get any specifics on the books she would target. If Turner is elected to the school committee, voters should be prepared for incessant challenges to library books, fighting with the state over curriculum, and giving short shrift to serious issues that demand a serious committee member's full attention.
Running on Turner's coat tails is Erica Morency, who also believes in book bans (especially if the book reflects negatively on police). Morency questions the need for diversity and equity and like Turner believes that signalling her great love for the Dartmouth mascot will help her campaign. Morency is/was a registered member of the United Independent Party, a Massachusetts political party founded in 2014 which enjoyed a brief lifespan before losing permanent ballot status in 2016.
Last up is Troy Tufano, who represents himself as a liberal Democrat and whose views at the March 21st forum sounded less troubling than Turner's and Morency's. But the problem with Tufano is that he has a bit of a George Santos problem. He told me after the forum that he was a Libertarian (which his political registration confirms), while to forum attendees he presented himself as a Democrat. Tufano was a Democrat, and was even briefly the head of the town Democratic committee. But today's Democratic Town Committee wants nothing to do with him. And for good reason. Around the time of the 2016 Presidential election, judging from his abandoned Twitter account, Tufano’s personal and political views changed dramatically. Besides his bromances with domestic right-wingers like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, and prosperity gospel mega-preacher Joel Osteen, Tufano's politics took an even darker turn, with his retweeting of European neo-fascists like: Ragnar Gardarsson of the Danish Nye Borgerlige Party; and Marine Le Pen of the Rassemblement National Party. Tufano also retweeted the conspiracy theory that the Clintons had deputy White House counsel Vince Foster murdered. Unfortunately for Mr. Tufano, social media is forever.
There are only two sensible candidates for Dartmouth School Committee, and they are Kathleen Amaral and Bess Coughlin. Please cast your vote for both on April 4th.