While the short piece in the Feb. 1 edition on the Mass Dev RFP for elementary school students was an excellent topic summary, the Harvard Press failed to report on substantive content from the rest of the School Committee’s Jan. 28 meeting.
Among the topics discussed were two very important ones regarding the recently completed Department of Education audit and the DOE intake letter. The results of the DOE audit were presented by Charles Horn, director of special education. The audit this year was our comprehensive six-year audit. Taxpayers should know that the preliminary results were exceptional. This is even more newsworthy when you consider that the last major audit, done six years ago under a different administration, revealed many inadequacies. Charles and his staff deserve a great deal of praise for a job well done.
Importantly, the committee discussed the DOE intake letter which we received in the beginning of January. There still is much ugliness in this town regarding confidential information that never should have been in the public domain. The School Committee has tried repeatedly to educate the town about the issues of student confidentiality. Many in town want to believe that the School Committee has hidden behind these laws as opposed to upholding them. I encourage people to read the letter, which can be found on the School Committee website at www.psharvard.org/SchoolCommittee/archive/DOE_letter.pdf.
Part of the discussion on the DOE letter involved Lorraine Leonard, our town finance director. It appears that two different state agencies, the Department of Public Records, and the Department of Education, can’t agree on what is a public record. More disturbing is that the DPR will not issue a written response for clarification. Given the tensions created by differing interpretations of these rules, reporting on this frustrating situation would have offered folks more visibility into the quagmire elected officials and town employees face.
Please keep up the good standards The Harvard Press has set for comprehensive reporting.
Stuart Sklar
Scott Road
