School Committee chairman Keith Cheveralls opened Monday’s meeting by chiding both the Lowell Sun newspaper and Massachusetts AFL-CIO President Steven A. Tolman for recent “misstatements” about possible effects on the schools of the proposed development at Vicksburg Square in Devens.
Cheveralls read from an article in the March 23 Sun, which said that unnamed “Harvard officials…have threatened to end contractual obligations to teach Devens residents” because Harvard schools would be “overburdened” by the Vicksburg Square development.
Cheveralls denied emphatically that the School Committee had made any such statement.
“That is completely and utterly incorrect,” he said. Cheveralls said that he had contacted the editor of the Harvard Hillside (owned by the Lowell Sun), who in turn had forwarded his complaint to the Sun’s editor.
“A correction has been issued online,” Cheveralls continued, “which was accompanied by the School Committee’s joint statement, issued by myself and Marty Jones [president and CEO] of MassDevelopment.”
Cheveralls then turned to an email he said had been circulating in Harvard, co-signed by Tolman and also by Francis X. Callahan, a member of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO Executive Council and president of the Massachusetts Building Trades Council.
The letter urged support of the Vicksburg Square proposal, including the following statement: “[T]he growth of the population at Vicksburg Square will bring 75-100 additional students to the Harvard Public School system…, making up for a projected under enrollment and reducing any need to downsize teachers.”
Cheveralls said, “That [letter] has spawned a flurry of speculation that the School Committee are about to embark on staff reductions should Vicksburg Square not pass. That is completely and utterly without foundation.”
Interim Superintendent Joe Connelly concurred, calling the letter “totally wrong and misleading” as well as “hurtful.”
Connelly cited the recent posting of staff positions for the next school year as an indication that no reductions were planned. He also read from last fall’s enrollment and capacity report, which stated that Harvard schools could maintain desired levels of enrollment by accepting students through the school-choice program.
The School Committee’s Vicksburg Square position paper, issued on March 23, states the relationship between Choice enrollments and personnel as follows:
“If Vicksburg Square is not approved, the Harvard School District will continue to accept Choice students as long as doing so does not incur any additional personnel costs. However, because the tuition for Choice students falls short of the per pupil cost of educating a student, relying on Choice is not a viable means of generating revenue for the schools in the long run. …At some point the Harvard School District may face the decision of whether or not to increase our reliance on Choice students or revise our total enrollment targets and become a smaller district.”
The full text of the position paper is available on here and on the Harvard schools website, www.psharvard.org.
