To the editor,
I am writing to urge all to come to Town Meeting this coming Saturday and to support, with a resounding “yes” vote on Article 28.
Once again we are at a fork in the road, and we must make a choice to move forward. We have all the critical pieces in place to make the choice to begin a collaborative process to rebuild our community campus, beginning with our schools. There are two potential directions to take. One is to seek constructive and fruitful collaboration with the Commonwealth. This is a reliable path with an experienced partner, and it is critical to build what is necessary for a 21st-century education that we can be proud of. Lincoln cannot do this alone.
The other is to attempt to travel down an unpredictable path, without any financial contribution or technical support from the Commonwealth. The first choice, offered and advocated for by the School Committee in Town Meeting in Article 28, is to reaffirm our desire to seek collaboration with the Massachusetts School Building Authority.
At last year’s Town Meeting, we strongly supported an application to work with the MSBA. Now, with additional work done during the past year, we have even more pieces in place to assure the state that we are ready willing and able to commit to a project with the Commonwealth’s guidance and financial support.
We have conducted studies of the Lincoln School’s programmatic and space needs to ensure an education for the 21st century, the most recent being presented by the School Building Advisory Committee II in February 2015.
We have completed an analysis of the programmatic and space needs for the rest of our community, served through our Council on Aging and our Parks and Recreation Department. This study was finalized in March 2015. In the course of many public meetings, it was determined that the best location for expansion of services would be on the campus, in spaces already in community use.
And finally, we have just received the final report of the Campus Master Planning Committee, which was discussed at the 2015 State of the Town meeting, completed in January 2016, and will be presented at Town Meeting. This study provides a critical overview and provides technical analysis of the physical, regulatory and infrastructure challenges and opportunities offered by the 71.5 acres of our campus.
This analysis does not offer building designs but rather provides clear outlines and constraints of zones for future development. Each zone can serve separate and distinct functions, with a variety of choices for school construction zones that are separate and distinct from other community-use zones. The study and public presentations have made it clear that each zone has trade-offs. These choices will be made after we know our direction with our school building project. And it is clear that having the Commonwealth as a partner as we approach these choices would be best for our schools and the town. A “yes” vote on Article 28 is critical to allowing us to continue on this solid direction.
On the other hand, Article 29 offers an uncertain path that, because of cost, means much less design flexibility and few to no educational enhancements. The School Committee has said they will only ask for a vote on Article 29 if the town fails to pass Article 28. Choosing the path offered in Article 29 would mean embarking on a school building project on our own, without any potential for state funding. This choice is not in our children’s or the town’s best interest.
It is time for the town to come together and give the educational future of our schools a clear and resounding “yes” on Article 28, and to then support the School Committee when it asks us to pass over Article 29. This is the critical first step in realizing our shared vision for our community campus. It is an investment in all our futures. It is the choice at this fork in the road we must take now.
Please vote “yes” on Article 28 and vote to pass over (or vote “no”) on Article 29.
Sincerely,
Sara Mattes
71 Conant Rd.
Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.