Left In Lowell

Jackie Doherty stopped by my place today for a sit-down interview about the school committee race, which came to just under a half an hour of recording. Topics ranged from the specific (school curriculums, MCAS, and what she has done or wants to accomplish in the future to improve our schools) to the more controversial (internal hiring practices and the hubbub surrounding the Headmaster position at LHS). In particular, she spoke to this last issue very eloquently. Since this is an issue being tossed around a lot in this race, it’s worth a listen to Jackie’s perspective.

(Disclosure: I am supporting Jackie’s bid for reelection and do host a sign at my home.)

Past interviews: SC candidate Connie Martin, and CC candidate Dr. Louis Stylos.

 Left in Lowell Podcast: Interview with Jackie Doherty [29:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Our second in a series of podcast interviews with candidates for Lowell city government. Today, I spoke with Dr. Louis Stylos, who is running for City Council. Lou emphasized his support for professional city management and his intent to continue the direction in which the city is currently headed.

(Quick disclosure: Dr. Stylos is my current family dentist and has been for over a year.)

If you missed it, you can catch my first talk with School Committeeperson and candidate Connie Martin.

 Left in Lowell Podcast: Interview with Lou Stylos [22:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Stand for Children did their own set of questionnaires, and have posted them online for voters to review. There are both School Committee and City Council questionnaires (and I love the format they use, allowing a compare/contrast of the responses).

Stand for Children’s questions reflect their advocacy for children, both regarding public schools and in other areas, so there’s some great, and different, questions from what Left in Lowell did. I highly recommend a read.

Here are the responses I received from School Committee candidates (PDF format):

Dennis Canney
David Conway (Edit: David did send his in to us, but due to email problems we did not receive it. We apologize for the mixup.)
Jackie Doherty
Kevin McHugh

Not answering were David Conway, Regina Faticanti, John Leahy, Jim Leary, or Connie Martin. All candidates are invited to sit down with Left in Lowell next week for an interview if they would like - we have done one already with Connie Martin to which I hope you take a listen.

Here are the questions from the 2007 School Committee Questionnaire, many reader-contributed:
1. What do you think of Superintendent Karla Baehr’s leadership of the Lowell Public Schools? If given the opportunity, would you put forward a motion to vacate that position? If yes, whom would you like to see as the School Superintendent? If no, would you vote to renew her contract? (LuvinLowell and Anonymous)

2. If you are an incumbent, list recent accomplishments that directly resulted from your efforts as a member of the school committee. If you are a challenger, list accomplishments that uniquely qualify you to be an effective member of the school committee. (Anonymous)

3. Do you currently or have you ever had children enrolled in the Lowell schools? When and where, and if not, why not? (Anonymous)

4. What areas would you focus on to improve the schools? (Anonymous)

5. What are your plans to restore Science as a major subject in the K-4 system? Science labs were built with Federal funds in the new schools and are being closed down to make room for other disciplines. How would you remedy this? (Fran M)

6. How do you plan to help the superintendent and her staff achieve the goals you mutually set for her in the coming year, such as improving reading, MCAS, etc.? The Committee has to give her the tools to implement the mandates she’s given. How would you do so? (Always Right in Lowell)

7. Do you support the teaching of Intelligent Design (creationist theory) alongside evolution in science classes? Do you think it should be taught instead of evolution?

8. It appears that the current School Department and the current City Administration have a good working relationship; would you agree with that comment? If not, what do you propose to improve working relations between the School Department and City Hall?

9. Is the cost of the Lowell School Administration adequate, too high or too low? Why?

10. There is some talk about the percentage of Lowell teachers who live in the City. Does that figure reflect on the quality of education our children receive? If yes, please give us some examples.

11. Educational Reform has limited the power and authority of local school committees. What changes would you propose to make the School Committee more effective?

The Lowell Sun is reporting in their breaking news section that Adam Baacke of the Planning Department will be the new Assistant City Manager. Baacke replaces Matthew Coggins who leaves for the private sector.

Congratulations to Adam, and I look forward to his work with the City Manager in this very important time in the city’s history.

Lowell School Committee incumbent and candidate Connie Martin stopped by today for a podcast interview to talk about her candidacy. We spent roughly 30 minutes chatting about school curriculum, progress from our students and where we might go from here.

Any candidate who’s interested in a podcast interview (I have to come up with a better title for our podcast series…any suggestions?), please email me (lynne [at] leftinlowell.com, replace [at] with an @).

I have to say thanks to my husband for his original music, which really pulls the audio together. Enjoy!

 Left in Lowell Podcast: Interview with Connie Martin [33:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I am going to bring up another issue now that we are looking at comments before posting them. And that’s the definition of fair use in regards to using the text of someone else in your post or comment.

Fair use is defined thusly (from Wikipedia):

Fair use is a doctrine in United States copyright law that allows limited use of copyrighted material without requiring permission from the rights holders, such as use for scholarship or review.

Note the “limited use” and “for scholarship or review” parts especially. How “limited” is limited is a hard question to answer, especially for the internet age, but certainly, copying whole articles, book chapters, etc will most likely fail the test of “amount and sustainability.” If you quote an entire article, even with a provided link to the original, you are denying that other venue which holds the copyright its revenue stream or even, one could argue, just the web hit count from people who would otherwise click through to read the whole article. (For instance, in quoting Wikipedia above in a limited way, I’m also showing an instant of fair use, as I am taking a very small portion of said article for use in illustrating the concept I’m talking about, and then also linking to the whole.)

Comments which cut and paste too much from another copyrighted work, especially without comment or review of said quote and/or a link to the original, will be deleted from here on in (even after we stop moderating comments). We won’t bother to edit it down (we have enough work to do, Mimi and I), though you can try reposting it with the appropriate usage if that happens. We are asking writers on this blog to be careful in the use of other authors’ copyrighted material, because as writers ourselves, we would hope that someone would treat us in such a manner.

We sent out our questionnaires for each city race over two weeks ago, and though I was hoping that all or most of the candidates would take advantage of this opportunity to reach out to voters, we did get a decent turnout.

First up, the Technical School Committee questionnaire. We got a response from Fred Bahou, a challenger. Though there are four slots and only two incumbents are running besides Mr. Bahou, we are glad to post Mr. Bahou’s answers here (PDF format). Answers from the other races are forthcoming.

The following is the list of questions which were sent on this questionnaire:
1. How do you think the MCAS scores affect students at Greater Lowell Technical School, and how do we mitigate any negative effect?
2. What is your view on M-CAS requirements for graduation?
3. Per-pupil spending and teacher salaries rank in the top 50, and our teachers are highly qualified, according to statistics from 2002-2005 reported by Boston.com. Yet the Office of Educational Quality and Accountability placed the school on “watch” in 2005 for low performance. In your opinion, is this still the case? If yes, how will you address this? Do you feel the standards are unfair for vocational schools?
4. According to the same statistics, the number of students per computer is 8.3, which ranks 279 out of 327 districts. Do you feel that computer access at the Technical School is adequate?
5. The same stats show a student attendance rate of 92.4%, making Greater Lowell Technical number 310 out of 328 districts. The average absentee rate of students is 14 days per year. How would you address this problem?
6. How can the Technical High School serve low-income students better?
7. The school turns down a lot of that apply and are deemed qualified do to lack of space. Are you committed to putting the expansion of the school on a fast track? If yes, what will be your approach?
8. Do you think Lowell gets its fair share of student number allocation and how do you respond to those who suggest that Lowell’s representation is disproportionate?
9. What is your opinion of comments made by some that students at the Technical High School who become disciplinary problems are not kept at the school but dismissed and sent to Lowell High School for that entity to deal with these difficult students?

It is over a week that the 5th District Congressional election took place and the national press is still trying to analyze the election result. On Tuesday, the Globe’s Peter Canellos in his column, “Tsongas’s Slim Victory Signals a derailed Congress;” and then yesterday, Reuters had a story with a Lowell by-line that asked “Now political strategists across the country are trying to figure out what Ogonowski’s strong showing means for the nation as a whole and how worried Democrats should be about next year’s elections for president and Congress.”

My answer is nothing. The “strong showing” is not an indication of what will happen next year; first I question how strong it was. If the Republicans intend to follow Jim Ogonowski’s campaign strategy and start beating the drum of “anti-immigration,” they will meet the same fate he did, defeat. Needless to say, neither of these articles analyze the voting results nor discuss the voting history of the 5th District. What was the margin of victory that would have satisfied these observers of the national political scene?

Needless to say, I do not share the concerns that were expressed last week on BMG. Dick Howe is on the right track when he asks “But the bigger issue here is not why Tsongas won …but why Republicans like Jim Ogonowski and Kerry Healey do so well in the towns that surround Lowell.”

If you look at the detailed election results, Niki Tsongas, received 54,363 votes and won 18 communities and Ogonowski, received 47,770 votes and won 11 communities. And if you look at the cities and towns that he won, you will see the impact of a Dracut residency as well as a conservative bend. So, I disagree with both The Globe and Reuters, I would not say that as Billerica, Methuen, Chelmsford and Tewskbury go, so goes the nation.

And if you read the Reuters story it refers to a Mary Burns with a “Democratic pedigree” who voted for Ogonowski? I am not sure which Lowell resident the reporter is referring to but I thought the Mary Burns active in Lowell politics was a Republican.

Mimi and I had a long conversation about the tone and tenor of comments on this blog over the last few weeks and decided we had to do something about the lowering of the discourse around here.

Politics is very personal in Lowell, and a lot of emotions are tied up one way or the other for so many voters, candidates, and movers/shakers. It is clear that, unfortunately, the politics of personal destruction are a part of this process; however, on this blog, we aren’t interested in that. We are interested in spreading as much sunshine as possible onto city government and life. Contrary to some readers’ opinions, that is the be-all and end-all of why we write this blog. The day that is no longer the case, we will close up shop and go back to life in a more private space.

To that end, we are implementing a new policy around here. It’s one thing to discuss how some candidates are affiliated with those who wanted to “get those rats” and take back the city, with how this affects the future, and another to make the kind of personal attacks that have been levied by both sides, against both sides on this blog and elsewhere. I have already deleted and/or put people on probation for that sort of rhetoric.

Well, if Mimi and I are going to make more work for ourselves here, we might as well make it egalitarian.

We are turning the comments into moderated comments until this election is over. What that means is, all comments will go into moderation until approved by one of us. We will make every attempt to do this very frequently so that the discussion can be as lively as possible, and be an actual conversation. One of the drawbacks of moderated comments is a less immediate and timely sort of feel to the discussion.

We will be publishing a “rules of the road” page to outline more clearly what we expect of our commenters. Until then, here’s a list of things that will not make it past moderation without editing (or deletion):

• Personal attacks against candidates, public figures, or other commenters, or myself or Mimi. I don’t care if you’re on the same side we are; it is not appropriate to use gross and insulting slang or language to describe the situation. This goes for all sides. Criticism of candidates is welcome; meanness is not.
• Accusations you either do not explain, provide context, or actual proof. We are not against people talking about their experiences with city government, media, or other high-profile folks past or present; however, anything even remotely bordering on flimsy will be deleted without mercy.
• Degrading humor of any kind. We are not going to be “PC” police, but for heaven’s sake, if you write something in a comment that you could not say to your grandmother, please think twice about posting it.

Mimi and I are the final arbiters of what is appropriate. This is not a first amendment issue - the first person to claim they are victims of the curbing of their rights will be deleted. Hell, if we so desired, we could shut off comments all together on this blog, and it’s our choice whether or not to do so. (Of course, we don’t want to do that.) Posting on this site is a privilege, not a right. It’s more akin to you coming into my house and standing on my kitchen counter when I ask you not to (though, I hope we’re all more civilized than that!). I would have every right to ask you to leave my house if that happened.

This blog is my home, in many ways, and as the person who pays for its hosting, for the domain, and spends the most amount of time building it up, I have no problem with cutting off part of the discussion in order to further a more civilized place.

So, wipe your feet on the welcome mat, try not to spill the beer on my new couch, and if you play nice, you’ll have no problem getting your comment through our not-overly-onerous standards. Thanks so much!