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8 SPENCER NEW LEADER • Friday, November 27, 2009
VIEWPOINT
OPINION AND COMMENTARY FROM SPENCER, LEICESTER AND THE BROOKFIELDS
EDITORIAL
Clouding the issue
of charter schools
It’s about the children, stupid.
Was a time when unions were actually
a good thing. They still are —
sometimes.
Far too often, however, we see cases
where union interests override just
about everyone else’s. And that
appears to be the case when it comes
to charter schools.
While, yes, passing his education
reform plan would give Gov. Deval
Patrick a whole lot of political clout
— not to mention that it would pump
millions of dollars in federal funding
into the state — it also does something
many of its critics don’t seem
to get: It puts the kids first.
You see, lest we forget, education is
about the children. You hear a variation
of that line all the time; if
you’ve ever watched “The
Simpsons,” maybe you’ve seen the
woman who sometimes appears out
of nowhere, crying “Will someone
please think about the children?”
In this case, we’ll ask the same
thing.
The governor’s plan isn’t perfect.
But its inclusion of charter school
expansion is the right call, no matter
what the union honchos say.
The debate over charter schools is
nothing new. Reporters with this
newspaper have, throughout years of
covering School Committee meetings,
heard charter schools brought
up almost as though officials were
expecting Michael Myers to arrive in
their town and start hacking people
to pieces. In the public school sector,
charter schools have never exactly
been a welcome subject of discussion.
In this regard, Patrick has hit the
proverbial nail on the head in wondering
why unions have become the
focus of this piece of legislation
instead of the education of our children.
It’s certainly worth wondering.
It may seem overly simplistic, but
the public really should be asking:
“Will someone please think about
the children?”
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25 Elm St., Southbridge, MA 01550
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www.spencernewleader.com
FRANK G.
CHILINSKI
PRESIDENT AND
PUBLISHER
WALTER C.
BIRD JR.
WEEKLY EDITOR
AT-LARGE
DAVID F. DORE
EDITOR, SPENCER NEW LEADER
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
McNaboe: Deliberation, discussion on bylaw were public
To the Editor:
“There is no act, however virtuous, for which
ingenuity may not find some bad motive.” —
Thomas Jefferson
The Leicester Architectural Conservation
District Bylaw’s purpose is to preserve and
protect groups of buildings and their settings
that are architecturally and historically
significant. The Town of Leicester
though this bylaw would be able to limit the
detrimental effects of alterations, additions,
demolition, and new construction.
This would help preserve our history and
culture for future generations.
Moe Sadegh’s assertion that a small group
of people was “planning to railroad though
a bylaw article” is absurd and shows how
little Mr. Sadegh understands about the
machinations of local government. This
proposed bylaw as all others are discussed
in great length in public forums in compliance
with the open meeting laws.
Discussion is among the Planning Board
members and the general public, resident
and non-resident alike. Anyone who has
attended a Planning Board meeting understands
that our meetings are rather lengthy
and delve into the content of the subject
almost to a fault. Planning Board meetings
and the agenda are announced publicly, and
posted on the Town of Leicester Web site.
These meetings are recorded and minutes
of those meetings are available to the public.
The Architectural Conservation District
Bylaw was discussed on the Planning Board
meetings of June 2, Aug. 4, Sept. 1 and Oct.
20. The town planner also updated the
Planning Board on the bylaw on Sept. 15
and Oct. 20. The bylaw was also discussed at
televised selectmen’s meetings of Oct. 5 and
Oct. 19 and was available to all Leicester
residents on LCAC.
Accusing the Planning Board of violating
the Open Meeting Laws is a very serious
accusation and should not be made without
evidence that can’t be sustained. I demand
Mr. Sadegh to produce evidence that the
Planning Board has violated the open meeting
laws or apologize to the Leicester town
planner and the Leicester Planning Board
as publicly as the accusations were made.
As with all organizations, town government
is run by the residents who show up.
JOHN J. MCNABOE
VICE CHAIRMAN
LEICESTER PLANNING BOARD
Editor’s Note: The author of this letter is
referring to a paid advertisement from
Sadegh that ran on Page A3 of the Nov. 20
Spencer New Leader.
Goodrich: Explaining reason for football player’s departure
To the Editor:
I feel compelled to write about an article
you ran in the Friday, Nov. 20 Sports section.
The story was about the Shepherd Hill and
Tantasqua “Thanksgiving clash.”
The article was inaccurate when talking
about senior Jordan Messier’s departure
from the team, and I feel the correct information
should be put forward.
The article made mention of “senior
Jordan Messier struggling and eventually
leaving the squad.” This is not the truth.
Since Jordan was 7 years old, playing Pop
Warner football, this young man has lived
and breathed football. He played faithfully
as a child, and continued on through high
school at Tantasqua, starting junior varsity,
and eventually moving up to varsity. He
waited under the wings of a fantastic quarterback,
Corey Lavallee, patiently waiting
for his moment to shine this senior year.
And shine he did — virtually every newspaper
article or TV3 clip that featured
Tantasqua made mention of something beneficial
that Messier brought to the team.
Messier and the coaching staff didn’t see
eye to eye, and this is what led to his departure
from the team, along with several other
senior teammates that the article made no
mention of.
It was a very hard choice for Messier to
make, as he had waited years for this
moment.
The article also failed to mention that not
only was Jordan Messier an excellent quarterback,
he was also captain of the football
team, which is not a title you get by “struggling”
your way through high school football.
JESSICA GOODRICH
SPENCER
Editor’s Note: During an interview for the
article cited above, Tantasqua coach Aaron
Powell said he switched to another player as
quarterback because Messier was, in his
words, struggling. Messier did not like the
decision, Powell said, and therefore decided to
leave the team.
Lunan: Thanks to RE/MAX for bringing balloon to school
To the Editor:
I would like to thank Pam Crawford
Realty for sponsoring the RE/MAX
Challenge the Wind program that was
presented at Wire Village School on Oct.
30.
The sixth-graders had been studying
thermal energy in their science classes
for nearly two months and it was a wonderful
program showing many of the concepts
the students had been taught in
their classrooms. Chris Mooney, the pilot,
and his copilot brought the RE/MAX balloon
from Connecticut right onto the
playground. Volunteers from the school
staff and the realty office were instructed
in how to help inflate the balloon then
given rides up in the balloon. The audience
of sixth-grade students was able to see how
everything worked and to look at all parts of
the balloon assembly. The pilot and copilot
then visited each classroom to give additional
information and answer students’ questions.
In the words of the students: “The hot air
balloon was simply astounding! Seeing the
hot air balloon also made me understand
more how they work.” — Taylor Butler
“I can’t believe how big a hot air balloon
is! At some points, it felt as if the balloon
Photo courtesy Pam Crawford
was going to fall on us!” — Ana Caroline
Carvalho
“It was fun to look inside of the balloon
when it was deflated. ... Also I liked when
you and another pilot came into the building
to answer all the various questions we had!”
— Melissa Ashleigh
Again, thank you for such an educational
and awe inspiring program.
BEVERLY LUNAN
WIRE VILLAGE SCHOOL
SPENCER
Honestly
appreciative
The story (legend?) goes that Diogenes of
ancient Greece grabbed his lantern and
began searching the streets of Athens for an
honest man. Alas, his search was fruitless. He
should have come to Southbridge — and the
Tri-Community YMCA.
I know whereof I speak
on this one. Having previously
suffered a theft or two
at the hands of some dishonest
men (and their gender
is thus assumed by
virtue of the fact that these
losses occurred in the
men’s locker room), I might
have been somewhat skeptical
last week when I suddenly
discovered something
AS YOU
LIKE IT
MARK ASHTON
missing from my gym bag
after an afternoon of racquetball
at the Y.
The discovery wasn’t
made until we returned
home, as I cleaned out the
gym bag for laundry purposes.
The towel, sweat
pants, T-shirt and socks were all there, along
with my after-workout footwear, but where, oh
where, were my work jeans, the ones with all
the paint and caulking on them, the ones with
my extra set of car keys, my comb and handkerchief,
my WALLET?
I went from room to room at home, trying to
remember if I’d unpacked the gym bag at various
stops throughout the house, but NO, it
was cleaned out all at once, and everything
was there BUT the work pants. I remembered
having hung them on a hook in my locker at
the Y, but after racquetball I had made a hasty
exit, since we had had errands to do before
supper.
So, where were the jeans, and my wallet
with all its credit cards, photo IDs, membership
cards, family photos, bank account numbers,
my church temple recommend, and even
a spare key for my YMCA locker room padlock?
YIKES! They must still be hanging in
the (now UNLOCKED) locker. That’s right. I
had been talking to Wes, who’d beaten everyone
at racquetball that day, and I must have
been distracted and loaded everything but the
work jeans into my gym bag. I must have left
them right there, unattended, unsecured, for
anyone who wanted them to abscond with!
There wasn’t much money in the wallet, but
it was all I had for the week. And there was an
uncashed check (and how hard would it be to
forge MY signature?), and every piece of useful
identification and membership information
I could imagine. Talk about identity theft!
I felt as if this loss would be worse than being
robbed at gunpoint. In that case, I’d simply
give them all my money, but in THIS case,
they’d get things I wouldn’t even know were
missing until I tried to use AAA on a cold winter
morning or wanted to rent a video or cash
in my Staples Rewards certificate!
It was 8:30 p.m., but I rushed down to the Y
hoping against hope, worrying that if the
pants and wallet had been found by someone
honest I’d have received a call from the front
desk informing me of my absent-minded
error. The place was still fairly busy when I
got there, the parking lot was still half-full,
and nobody at the front desk gave me a
“Here’s the dope now!” look when I scanned
my card to gain entry.
Nor was the locker room abandoned. There
were folks in various stages of dress and
undress, heading to and coming from the
showers. There were men and gym bags and
towels on the benches, and there — on the
bench I had used just a couple of hours earlier
— were some well-worn jeans, not neatly
folded, but placed there as if unloaded from a
locker and awaiting confiscation.
I couldn’t assume they were mine until I
saw the telltale paint and sheetrock stains. A
quick check of the pockets found my car keys
and change on one side, and my wallet in
another. Should I check the wallet to see
what’s missing? No, I took the pants and their
contents out to the car and home before
checking all of the contents. The money was
there, the uncashed check was there, the
health insurance card, the driver’s license,
along with all the photos, the secret codes, the
password reminders — everything was just as
I had (inadvertently) left it.
Who knows how many men had used the
locker room in the last two hours, how many
had used a locker in my row, or had even used
my locker? Who knows how many had seen
my unnattended jeans on the bench, or had
even sat next to them to put on socks and
shoes and had left them unmolested? Who
knows how many might have been tempted by,
or might even have needed, the contents of
my wallet, but had decided “It’s not mine.”
Previously, I’d had to chuckle at those who
used a locker but didn’t bother putting a lock
on it. What were they thinking? Didn’t they
know the dangers and evils of the world in
which we live?
Perhaps they’ve known all along something
that I didn’t. Something about the basic trustworthiness
of their fellowmen. Something
about living and letting live, about doing unto
others as you would have them do unto you,
something about building strong bodies,
minds, and spirits at a place called the Young
Men’s Christian Association.
The Tri-Community YMCA has been in
operation for 127 years, and while I’ll continue
to put a lock on my locker (isn’t it better
NOT to put temptation in someone else’s
way?), I’m beginning to understand why from
its earliest days (circa 1816) Southbridge was
known as “Honest Town.”
Mark Ashton writes a weekly column for
Stonebridge Press publications.