NEWTON SCHOOL COMMITTEE

DOCKET FOR SPECIAL MEETING, JANUARY 29, 2001

BROWN MIDDLE SCHOOL, AUDITORIUM

7:00 P.M.

AGENDA

PUBLIC FORUM ON REDISTRICTING

FOCUS AND PROCEDURE - PLEASE NOTE!

The focus of the School Committee's January 29th public hearing with respect to redistricting will be the guidelines or criteria that should be used by the School Committee in its decisions regarding redistricting for the two high schools and possible other schools. At the public hearing the Committee is primarily interested in hearing from members of the public as to their views as to what guidelines or criteria the Committee should use in making those decisions. After hearing the views of members of the public, the School Committee will decide, and will make public, what guidelines or criteria it will use. Until that decision has been made, it will be difficult for the Committee to assess comments concerning the situations of individual students and families at particular schools. There will be a subsequent public hearing at which members of the public will be invited to present to the School Committee their views as to how possible redistrictings will affect particular students, families and communities and how such effects relate to the guidelines or criteria that are to be applied in making the redistricting decisions.

Concerns have been expressed by a number of people about the possibility that numerous speakers from a particular school or schools may obtain priority on the School Committee's speaker signup list at the hearing and thereby deprive speakers from other schools of the opportunity to speak until unfairly late in the hearing. The Committee intends to address those concerns by utilizing the following procedure:

All those who wish to address the Committee will be required to sign up, as at our usual public comment sessions at our regular School Committee meetings. Each person who signs up to speak is to sign in with his/her name, address, and school whose concerns are to be the focus of the speaker's remarks. People will speak in the order in which they sign up, except that at any time at which two consecutive speakers have addressed the concerns of the same school, no further speakers from that school will be permitted until at least one speaker, and a maximum of two consecutive speakers, from all other schools who are making presentations of their concerns has spoken. When the presentations by the speakers from the other schools have been completed, then we will return to the order of signup and will once again apply the two-consecutive speaker rule so long as speakers from other schools have not yet been heard.

Inasmuch as the focus of the hearing, as noted above, is the guidelines or criteria to be used by the School Committee in making the redistricting decisions rather than the detailing of individual student, family, or community situations, each speaker will be limited to two minutes. The Committee also encourages everyone to submit to the Committee written statements of their views, whether in traditional hard copy or by e-mail.

Verne Vance

Chair, Newton School Committee