To the editor:
The Lincoln School Foundation urges residents to vote YES at Special Town Meeting on December 1st and at the ballot on December 3.
In just two weeks, we as a town are being offered the unique opportunity to transform our school in a way that expands educational opportunities for the children of our community.
The new school building, meticulously designed by the School Building Committee with unprecedented community involvement, is a transformative renovation of the Lincoln School. Movable walls. Shared hubs. A learning commons. Exterior gathering spaces. A climate-controlled environment. Safer routes for bikers and walkers. And a building that gets its energy entirely from the sun.
The teachers and students of Lincoln School can use these transformed and new spaces in ways that improve the educational experience for all. The enhanced building will facilitate and enable more team teaching, differentiated instruction, project-based learning, and group work. These educational practices are not optional, frivolous, or excessive. They are absolutely required in order to deliver a high-quality education to children now and in the future—an education that develops the essential skills for success in tomorrow’s workforce: critical thinking, collaboration and creativity.
Lincoln School teachers are already working to foster these skills in Lincoln’s children. But the current building inhibits their efforts. It is difficult if not impossible for an entire grade to gather together without planning much in advance. Spontaneous, flexible groupings of students are limited by the walls that separate classrooms.
We have seen, within our own district at Hanscom, how a forward-looking investment in a school building can allow teaching teams to do more to reach each child in new and innovative ways, and we are so excited to see what more can be accomplished at the Lincoln School as teachers there are given the same opportunity to envision what new spaces will mean for their teaching.
Everything we wrote in our June letter to the editor remains true: “A commitment to excellence in education and innovative practices is a collective enterprise that is deeply embedded in the values of this community.”
We value education in Lincoln. And a YES vote on December 1 and 3 is a vote for education.
Sincerely,
The Trustees of the Lincoln School Foundation
Cathie Bitter, Chair
Ginger Reiner, Treasurer
Liz Wilkinson, Secretary
Becky Bermont
Juliana Delahunty
Alison Donnelly
Lis Herbert
Jen Holleran
Peter Hussey
Tareef Kawaf
Caroline Nordstrom
Elaine Papoulias
Tricia Thornton-Wells
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.