Town Meeting Survival Guide

If you have never been to Town Meeting before, you may not know what to expect. As such, we decided to compile this “survival guide” to help you know what to expect.

You do not need to bring anything to Town Meeting. However, many people find that bringing a notebook and pen or pencil is helpful to make notes during the discussions. No food or drink is allowed in the PAC; bring a few dollars to get something to eat in the cafeteria at lunch. YoTaco and Benchwarmers are also nearby. Many people also find that something to occupy one’s hands is helpful. If you are a knitter, for example, bring a small project. (Wool Basket Yarns is offering 20% off today for mentioning “Town Meeting.”)

Town Meeting begins at 9AM at the Performing Arts Center. The schedule is usually 9AM-5PM, with lunch from 12PM-1PM. If we don’t get through all the articles on Saturday (unlikely this year), Town Meeting with be continued on Monday night, and can continue evenings until all articles have been addressed.

As you enter the PAC, you’ll see numerous tables of information regarding the various articles and issues before our town. There is some terrific information here -- as well as the opportunity to meet candidates for town offices.

To actually vote in the PAC, you must be registered to vote and you must sign in at the voter table. Your name will be checked off and you’ll be given a piece of paper. Hold on to this piece of paper; you will need it for counted votes!

You do NOT have to be present for the entire town meeting to vote, though the more that participate in whole, the more balanced the democratic process. There is no set time to check in. You just need to check in prior to the vote, whenever you arrive. You only have to check in once, and you can come and go from the auditorium as you please. There will be monitors around the lobby of the PAC so you can monitor what is going on in the auditorium. There are many interesting articles in the warrant and we hope you'll participate in as much of Town Meeting as you can.

You can text from within the auditorium. Step outside to make a phone call.

The format of the meeting itself follows Robert’s Rules of Order. Articles are presented, motions made, discussions ensue. Sometimes it can be a little confusing if an amendment comes up, so keep your ears open. Listen carefully -- and you’ll learn a lot.

If you choose to ask a question or comment on an article, step up to one of the microphones located around the auditorium. Wait for the moderator to recognize you, then state your name and address, and keep your comments brief, civil, and to the point. Passion is absolutely allowed.

As for the actual voting, most votes start as a voice vote. The moderator asks all in favor and all opposed. If the voice vote sounds close, it will go to a hand count. The moderator will ask all in favor to raise your hand. Now is the time to get out that piece of paper! Hold up your hand and keep it up until one  of the counters had indicated to your row that your vote has been recorded.

If you have any other questions about Town Meeting, please ask!!!

A Letter That Didn't Make It Into The Clipper

There were nine pages of letters in the Duxbury Clipper yesterday -- and even then, some didn't make the cut. The following is a letter that didn't make it, by Matthew Ali.
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I am an architect who has participated in the planning and design of three $100M plus buildings for higher education in the past seven years, two of which are public projects in Massachusetts. I am familiar with planning and design for large buildings dedicated to learning. There are many relevant factors to the process Duxbury is going through in regard to the schools but the three most important items are long term planning, trusted project leadership and cost control.

Major capital expenditures require long term planning to avoid bundling of costs and wasteful emergency repairs. We are being asked to pay for a series of new buildings simultaneously, during a time when some residents are affected by a poor economic environment. This situation is more of a result of the Town’s planning process than a recession. Renovation may have been an option many years ago; now the buildings are so neglected that this is no longer feasible. Planning does not imply excessive spending; in fact it is the opposite. Everyone benefits from identifying and agreeing on asset reinvestment needs and executing improvements in a methodical manner. New construction becomes the economically preferred option when regular improvements are not made, as is the case with the schools.

We need to trust the group charged with running the project. The individuals on the School Building Committee are qualified, dedicated and reasonable and have professional experience with education, construction and financial management. If there are questions about the education benchmarks, cost planning or needs assessment, just ask them. There is no need to accept their recommendations on blind faith and the SBC benefits from questions addressed to them directly.  Publicly proposing alternate plans without the requisite data or relevant professional experience has the appearance of attempting to discredit the Committee’s work rather than objective inquiry. 

There is no substitute for proper project management to keep the costs of the project in check. This includes controlling the project scope (size of buildings, program of spaces, etc.), allocating a realistic budget, and relentless scheduling review. Representatives from the schools, Town, designer and contractor must sit at one table to resolve conflicts and be held collectively responsible. Contingencies should be used to protect against overruns and total project costs should be identified; in this case, the SBC has done both. There are tools for managing any large construction project and specialized tools for publicly funded work in our state. Applying these tools will bring this project in on time and on budget.

The graduates of Duxbury have done well despite the obsolete buildings, but we can no longer dismiss the substandard conditions the children are learning in. Schools at all levels are adjusting teaching pedagogies and their campuses to the highly interactive and information rich world we live in now – our kids do not learn like we did. New school construction is the most cost effective way to provide the flexible, interactive and technologically appropriate learning environment for generations to come.

Things to Consider....

Blake Dalton, Principal of Duxbury Middle School, wrote the following in this week's newsletter. He has given us permission to reprint it here.

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Things to Consider...

As the Principal of Duxbury Middle School I’ve been asked several times do you need a new building? Simply put there are so many reasons your students deserve a new middle school building. To best understand the need,  several key items should be understood. Today’s middle schools are very different from the educational tradition of a junior high. Middle school builds the bridge from the elementary setting where a student spent the majority of the day with one teacher to the high school where a student travels from one discipline to another. A successful middle school builds small communities of learners and teachers into teams. In effect, middle schools develop a school within a school. For example, the 850 students currently enrolled at DMS are divided into 7 teams. These 7 teams are composed of roughly 120 students and 5 teachers. There are numerous learning advantages created by placing students on these teams. The most important being the ability for the teachers to get to know and understand the learning styles of the 120 students they teach. By working as a team and across disciplines, teachers are able to share teaching strategies and develop learning projects. In today’s progressive middle school, teachers develop integrated learning units, which cross over the traditional subject area boundaries. Modern middle schools have teaching teams in close proximity to one another in pods or clusters. As DMS was originally built as a high school the very physical layout of the building inhibits and interferes with our ability to have teaching teams located physically near each other. This in turn limits the teachers’ ability to work with their teaching teammates. DMS has very limited space for team gatherings and project work; it is not uncommon to see our students sitting on the floor in the halls working together on projects that the classrooms cannot accommodate.

As the Principal of Duxbury Middle School for the past 3 years, I have been privileged to work with professional educators and students who do not complain, and constantly ensure that no mater what the building throws at them; a leaking roof, a too cold or too hot classroom, that learning takes place. As the outstanding education of children is the town’s most important industry, it goes without saying that supporting the infrastructure has no down side. This year’s action by the MSBA to approve our yearly request for funding may seem inconvenient as the town also looks to approve the Fire and Police Station projects, but the reality is that the building committee had no way of knowing when or if ever the schools would be accepted by the MSBA. There is the tested adage that opportunity only knocks once, we should answer the door. With the MSBA’s approval for funding we have been given an outstanding opportunity to support and provide for our most important investment, our children.

Blake A. Dalton, Principal Duxbury Middle School

Lesson learned from Plymouth school delays

This letter, by a former Plymouth school committee member, was published in the March 6, 2011 Boston Globe, in the Globe South section. Thank you, Pat, for sharing your experience.

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I was interested to learn that Duxbury is currently approved to receive state reimbursement of over 43 percent for a new middle and high school, pending the outcome of a town vote.

As a former School Committee member in Plymouth, as well as a parent whose children were educated in “portable classrooms’’ (trailers) at Plymouth North, I urge Duxbury residents to not make the same mistake that Plymouth did. Back in 2003, Plymouth voted “No’’ to building a new high school, despite being approved for almost a 70 percent state reimbursement under the old guidelines for School Building Assistance. Plymouth passed up all that state money, left it on the table with a “No’’ vote, and the new Silver Lake High School was built in neighboring Kingston.

Meanwhile our schools were in a warning status for accreditation, our scores kept going down, and our students continued to be educated in trailers. Plymouth finally voted “yes’’ in 2006, and then had to wait to reapply under the new School Building Assistance guidelines. Approval was granted a second time, but at a lower rate.
 

Now a new Plymouth North is finally in construction here, as part of the state Model School Program, and we are receiving state reimbursement. Plymouth will finally have a new high school completed for the graduating class of 2013.

Don’t make Plymouth’s mistake — Vote “yes’’ to a new school building and have the state money come to Duxbury while you can.

Pat Adelmann
Plymouth

Childcare During Town Meeting

If you are looking for childcare during Town Meeting, there are several options available to you:

• The Duxbury Student Union is sponsoring The Wacky Olympics from 12:30-5:00 on Saturday, March 12. School-aged children can be dropped off for an afternoon of games and fun while you exercise your right to vote! The cost is $20 per child or $30 per family, and advance registration is required. Contact the DSU directly at admin@duxburystudentunion.com to register or learn more.
• Child care services for preschool (ages 3 and up/must be toilet trained) – school age children will be available at a reduced cost for Duxbury residents attending Town Meeting on Saturday, March 12th.   High school students will provide care in the Extended Day program classrooms at the Alden Elementary School.  The service is available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., with the exception of the town meeting lunch break, when parents are asked to pick up their children.   The cost is $12 per child per day, or $6 per child for the morning session or afternoon session.  Each child should bring his/her own drink and snacks.  Families must register in advance for the child care service during Town Meeting.  Registrations will be processed on a first-come, first-serve basis, and the number of children attending will be limited to ensure proper staffing ratios.  Please call the Community Education office at 781-934-7633 by Thursday, March 10th  if you wish to register your child for the reduced cost child care service.
• Kate Garrity, a college (and DHS) graduate now living in Boston, plans to return home for the day with a couple of friends to care for a group of children at her parent's home. If you'd like to use this in-home option, please contact us and we'll put you in touch with Kate promptly. Email us at DuxburyCARES@gmail.com for more information. Thanks, Kate!
• Several teenagers in town have expressed an interest in helping with childcare for individual families. We have a limited list, but if you email us we can hopefully connect you. Again, email us at DuxburyCARES@gmail.com.
• If none of those options works for you, why not bring your kids to Town Meeting with you? Not only will your children learn about democracy in action, but they can show to others in town who, exactly, will be benefiting from new school buildings. Your children are the face of Duxbury Public Schools! In fact, there's still time to order (with rush deliver) a tshirt that says at much from the CafePress store. Visit CafePress.com/DuxburyCARES.

Following DuxburyCARES on Twitter -- and Getting Updates Directly to Your Text-enabled Phone

One of the ways DuxburyCARES has been reaching out to the community -- and highlighting the kind of technology and communication today’s students will need to be fluent with going forward -- is by using Twitter to broadcast short pieces of news and information about the project and the voting process in real-time.

Twitter is a hybrid of social networking and “microblogging” to provide a platform that is used for everything from simple personal connections to targeted product marketing to customer support initiatives to news dissemination and, yes,  teaching. It’s even had a role in major international events, such as the very recent “gentle” revolution in Egypt.

In the final days before Town Meeting, DuxburyCARES plans to use Twitter to update followers about last minute developments in the process, reiterate key points, and to remind voters to attend Town Meeting. You don’t need to be near a computer to follow these tweets; Twitter will allow you to configure a “follow” to deliver tweets to your text-enabled phone.

If you’ve ever wondered about Twitter, now might be just the time to check it out.

So…how do you go about setting this up?

1. You need to have a Twitter account. It’s free, and you can choose to hide or “protect” your tweets, or you can choose to let your tweets be public (of you choose to tweet at all!). Go to http://www.twitter.com/, click Sign Up, and follow the on-screen instructions.

2. Make sure your Twitter account is setup for mobile connectivity. Under your user name in the upper right corner, click Settings, then click Mobile. Enter your mobile phone number and click Start to verify.

3. Follow DuxburyCARES. Go to http://www.twitter.com/DuxburyCARES and click Follow.

4. From your mobile phone text “follow DuxburyCARES” to 40404. You will receive some confirmation texts and from this point forward you’ll receive all DuxburyCARES tweets on your phone as text messages.

You’re all set!

Let us know if you have any additional questions.

The Student View

Parents and other town residents are not the only ones talking about the proposed school building project; students are talking about it as well. Students, such as the two who write here, have experienced first hand what it is like to attend classes in the current buildings -- and they will get no benefit from the proposed new buildings.

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A Time to Move Forward
by Casey Reinhart, DHS '11

As a small town, Duxbury has always made up what it lacks in size in pride. Our pristine beach and the clear blue waters off it have become one of the top summer destinations. Even the oysters grown in those very waters have become world-renowned. Our teachers and administrators provide an education among the best in Massachusetts. Our library and archives offer extensive and comprehensive collections to satisfy every research need. Our sports teams are respected and feared. Yet few Duxbury residents can summon pride for our schools’ facilities and the state of deterioration they have been allowed to slip into.

These days, the hottest topic in education seems to be “twenty-first century skills”. When students graduate, they are expected to be competitive in today’s marketplace by having a thorough understanding of the technology which has been integrated into today’s business markets. Despite the town’s best efforts, the application of technology into students’ education always seems like a lost cause at Duxbury High School. The building was not wired or planned to handle this kind of demand. Most of the teachers are happy to get their classes to the computer lab a few times each term, and students’ skills have not progressed much beyond creating a PowerPoint presentation. Most of the students would probably agree that the bulk of their technological knowledge comes from at-home experience.

Beyond technology, the high school has been unable to meet the needs of the school community within the last few decades. Every year, the incoming freshmen class seems to be larger than the grade exiting and the building has not adjusted well to the strains placed upon it. Many of the classrooms are overcrowded and teachers’ offices have been displaced into what used to be storage closets. The movable partitions between classrooms, which have never actually been moved to most peoples’ knowledge, are so flimsy that teachers must occasionally yell over one another and movies become a distraction for the entire hallway. Classroom heaters are generally over or under-efficient, and in one particular English classroom the air conditioning runs through the winter.

Unfortunately, the poor state of our school buildings has often overshadowed the accomplishments of members of our school community. Progress that could be made within the classrooms is halted by a lack of resources, rendering us stuck in the past and unable to compete with other schools which are far more advanced. Opponents of the plan for new schools need to appreciate that this is a project which must be accomplished. Already the topic has been pushed aside too long, allowing the schools to reach their current condition. On March 12th vote yes for your children on article 18, vote yes for your town, and vote yes for pride.

New School, Please
by Emilie Munson, DHS '12

It is ironic that Duxbury High School, a school that strives to “provide a high quality, comprehensive education that enables students to make connections between learning and life,” allows life so frequently to interfere with learning. Yes, often this is unavoidable: students chatter, cell phones buzz, and people are late to class. However, there is one glaring disturbance to student’s learning which could be aptly remedied unlike so many of the others which are currently ignored: Duxbury High School’s physical facilities.

At a time in their lives when social lives are exponentially more important than academic ones, teens often find it difficult to focus in class. This fact is only compounded when the conversations or films of the class the next door can be heard clear as a bell. When designing the school years ago, it may have seemed like a good idea to include walls that can fold away, allowing two classrooms to be united as one. Today, however, this functionality is rarely used and the walls themselves are poor sound barriers against the day to day ruckus of high school classroom.

Another distracting factor in Duxbury High School is the wide range of temperatures students will encounter as they move from class to class. In some rooms, students may sit literally shivering in their metal desks and fifteen minutes later, in their next class, be forced to shed a layer. In summer months, students seek relief from the brutal heat, which permeates the classrooms, in the library, the only air-conditioned area of school. It is not uncommon for teachers to resort to bringing their students there in order to try to alleviate their heat-induced lethargy.

The Duxbury school building is sometimes not only a distraction, but a hazard. After the gas was shut off over Christmas break, it took science teachers three days to locate the switch which could turn it back on. At the conclusion of much searching, it was found behind an unmarked panel in the English wing. Not only did this fiasco prevent students from doing laboratory experiments using Bunsen burners for three days but it highlighted a significant problem: what if the gas had been stuck in the “on” position and there was a gas leak? How, then, could science teachers be expected to find the unmarked shut-off a floor away?

On the whole, despite the efforts of teachers and the custodial staff, the Duxbury school building is simply an unpleasant place to be. The locker rooms are a maze of gum-covered lockers and unused showers. The cafeteria is dark. Bits of insulation float down from the gym ceiling whenever a ball hits it. Students and teachers crave a clean, airy, organized building in which to learn and work. If ever there was a school that needed revamping, it would be this one.