Dear Lincoln community,
I write reluctantly to announce that I am stepping down from the Lincoln School Committee. I have been asked to take a leadership position with the Cambridge Quaker Meeting in which I grew up and am still active, and I feel called to fully engage my responsibilities there. Were I to try to do both, I would probably risk being excommunicated by my family, who have always been extremely tolerant about the extensive time I’ve already been spending in community meetings.
I am proud of what the School Committee collectively have accomplished during the 7½ years in which I’ve served. We hired a first-rate Superintendent, Dr. Rebecca McFall, who has recruited excellent new hires to help us in key areas of technology and curriculum. We’ve negotiated three new teacher contracts during this time, always making sure that we rewarded better-performing teachers with greater job security, worked to turn the new teacher evaluation system into a source of strength and not merely a bureaucratic hurdle, and made other strategic improvements. We are in the midst of the Hanscom Middle School rebuilding project and are advancing on design of the Hanscom Primary School.
Our Lincoln MCAS scores have risen over this term, especially in the advanced and proficient categories, and we have increased differentiation in middle school math. We are now one of the few schools in the Boston Metro area in the exemplary Category I under the No Child Left Behind regulations. We have done much more to infuse active civic engagement throughout both campuses. We lowered the age at which students begin foreign language instruction. In addition, we have undertaken important experiments using technology and other means to give students enhanced opportunities to engage in authentic learning and share their outcomes and learnings with others. And we have worked hard to moderate our per pupil costs over the last four years without sacrificing teaching quality.
That said, I leave with challenges remaining. We need to do more to increase academic rigor further in our schools and ensure that students across the learning spectrum are getting the right level of challenge and are neither struggling nor, conversely, feeling bored. We need to do more to collect student data with minimum burden on teachers and with maximum assistance from software to be able to analyze and interpret data and learn from it. We need to push back against the never-ending series of state mandates, all well intended but collectively straining our ability to focus our human talents and time on what matters most for students. And we need to thread the needle on renovating the Lincoln campus and find shared ground between the many different groups with differing priorities: educational improvement and long-term solutions vs. minimizing cost, meeting environmental goals, preserving the campus feel, integrating school facility needs with a potential community center, etc. These challenges are serious, but I leave with confidence in the school leadership and leadership on the School Committee. They have been terrific collaborators these past 7½ years and I will miss our frequent interaction dearly.
Thank you to the town of Lincoln for the opportunity to serve. I have learned a lot, and trust I left the schools in a stronger position.
Faithfully yours,
Tom Sander
100 Lincoln Rd.
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