This is a personal opinion, and I am not speaking on behalf of the Lynnfield School Committee.
I received a mailer from a candidate for School Committee and was surprised by the rhetoric and allegations it contained.
As someone who has worked very hard for our community over the last four years, I would like to take this opportunity to set the record straight on a number of lies circulating about the Lynnfield School Committee.
These are the facts: The School Committee answers all parents’ questions in a timely manner and values public input; all School Committee discussions, deliberations and votes are held in public; Lynnfield is a public school district and required to follow the mandates, rules and regulations and curriculum standards from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education: We cannot “go rogue.”
The School Committee listens, serves and leads. We led the Lynnfield schools back to full, in-person learning and made masks optional long before many other districts across the commonwealth.
Over the last few years, sacrificing the truth has become the primary politically expedient tactic to engender discord and disruption across the United States.
Far-right-wing movements under the guise of “grassroots activism” have hijacked public discourse. They have taken words such as “patriotism” and “parental choice” and turned them into code words for racism and censorship. Across the country, school boards have been disrupted by this movement which has created false narratives about masks, Critical Race Theory, and now, transparency.
This is not a grassroots, parent-led democratic uprising, it is an attempt to limit the educational opportunities of public-school students. Facts have been replaced by fake news. The truth has been replaced by lies. George Orwell, in his dystopian novel, “1984,” stated it thus: “everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.”
Lynnfield voters have the opportunity to cast two votes for School Committee on April 12. To ask the citizens of Lynnfield to “cast a single vote” is undemocratic and dangerous. Putting forward one candidate is the tactic of dictators and autocratic regimes, who are also prone to remove books from school and public library shelves, and then ban them, and then burn them.
We must learn from and teach our children the lessons of history. We must teach our children to value and tell the truth. We must model these behaviors if our democracy is to survive.
Please cast both your votes responsibly on April 12 so that the lies don’t become truth.
Phil McQueen has served on the Lynnfield School Committee for four years.