SAUGUS — One day after the dust settled after Tuesday night’s school committee house-cleaning, newly sworn-in members contemplated the new political landscape.
Tommy Whittredge, John Hatch, Ryan Fisher, Arthur Grabowski and Joseph Dennis Gould won election to the board. Jeannie Meredith, Linda Gaieski and Marc Magliozzi were defeated while Elizabeth Marchese and Lisa Morgante chose not to run.
Lurking in the background among the winners Wednesday was the elephant in the parlor: the vote earlier this year taken by the outgoing board to lay off the schools’ custodians and contract with a cleaning service. Every one of the five has thoughts about the issue, but Grabowski’s and Fisher’s were clearest.
“When that transpired, it got me involved,” said Grabowski, who served on the board earlier in the decade. “I know a lot of the custodians. I know what they do, and they are a huge part of the school system.
“You can’t balance the budget on the backs of these people,” he said.
Likewise, the decision, and the way it was handled, also left a bad taste in Fisher’s mouth.
“That issue was the one event that prompted me to run,” he said. “I have a 3-year-old daughter, and I’m worried about the condition of the schools.
“I didn’t think it needed to be done the way it was done,” he said. “And it made me wonder whether other, much more important, things were going to be handled the same way.”
That wasn’t the only issue that galvanized Grabowski, Fisher or the other three to run. Mainly, said Whittredge — who topped the ballot among school committee contestants — said his primary motivation was “the kids in the system.
“I didn’t run out of any protest. I ran because there were two open seats,” he said. “I wasn’t dissatisfied with the current members. I felt that I had a lot to bring to the table. I want to be part of the solution.”
He doesn’t want to dwell on the custodians, except to say layoffs are never easy, and watching people you know lose their jobs isn’t either.
“It becomes very public,” he said, “and very personal.”
But, he said, the most important thing the new committee has to deal with, going forward, is the new school opening next fall.
“Switching from four elementaries to two, lower and upper … if we all band together and help out the administration, and help out the teachers, it’ll be a smooth transition.”
Under the new plan, the Veterans School on Hurd Avenue will handle lower elementary students while the Belmonte School will handle the upper. Beginning in Grade 6, students will attend the new combined middle/high school.
Hatch is a former chairman of the committee who took time off from town politics “to be a dad.”
He feels his experiences as a collaborator will be invaluable to the new board.
“When you have a tough situation, such as what happened with the custodians, it tends to obliterate all the good that’s happened. I’d rather accentuate the good than exacerbate the negative.”
However, Hatch said that if the culture of the district needs to be changed, he wanted to be a part of it.
“Judging from the results (of the election), the town is dissatisfied,” he said, “even if on the outside, things appear to be OK.”
Hatch, who was an assistant hockey coach under Jim Quinlan, said, “I want to bring back Sachem pride. I don’t see it as much as I did when I coached.”
Gould said his two priorities were to make sure the transition to a three-school system is as seamless as possible, and to improve the MCAS scores in the town. Grabowski also saw this as a big issue.
“I think what we need to do is to take the best practices of the schools whose students have done well, and follow their example.”
He also said he thought the user’s fees the town charges for students to participate in extracurricular activities were too high.
“I think it’s been proven that kids who are in the arts, or the band, or drama, or sports do much better,” he said. “One thing about Saugus is that we charge for everything. We have to get these fees lowered so we can have more kids participating.”
“The MCAS scores are horrible,” said Grabowski. “Our new team has got to find a way to turn that around.”