Left In Lowell

I watched parts of the School Committee meeting last night. As I had stated in a previous post,, the City Council Chambers were filled with cafeteria workers who were there to protest the School Administration’s issuance of an RFP to gather information in preparation for the budget discussion.

I will post a clip of the meeting as soon as the streaming video is posted on the internet. If you missed it, you miss some grandstanding, some misrepresentation of the facts, and you missed School Committeeman Jim Leary take the Mayor, Bud Caulfield, to school. If Bud thought that he was going to spin the facts and have no one attempt to rebut him, he tried it with the wrong guy.

So we had 4 School Committee people who wanted to be informed and we had 3 who “outraged.” Please save me the drama and put your time and effort to come up with a solution to this massive budget cut that is coming down the pike. Massive is an understatement.

The issue of the authority to issue an RFP was mixed in with the potential lay-off of cafeteria workers. It is easy to support $11.00/hour workers; not so easy to balance the books. Sometimes I wonder who is the natural constituency of the School Committee: the taxpayers of Lowell who want to educate the children or the special interest groups that take over the chamber halls.

Last night the Mayor mentioned that the cuts should come from “middle management.” He reiterated the same thing this morning on WCAP. Does the salary and benefits of “middle management” come up to $4 - 8 Million? And I want to know who these “middle managers” are? I want the names of the “big fish in the ocean.”

If you want the background story, here is the link to the Jenn Myers’ article that appeared on April 24th in the Sun. Dick twittered the meeting; here is the link to his tweets which provided the “live blog” of last night’s proceedings.

By the way the SC passed a motion to table the RFP until they receive an opinion from the City Solicitor.