Thursday, October 18, 2012
The Winchester School Committee meets tonight to discuss redistricting plans, and Winchester Patch wants to know which is your favorite.
The Winchester School Committee is meeting tonight to discuss the redistricting plans. The meeting was moved to the Winchester High School auditorium and will start at 7:30 p.m. The revised map-based proposals from the Redistricting Advisory Committee as well as the alternative plans will be up for discussion. The RAC has five options for redistributing approximately 200 elementary school students between the schools in the next two years. Enrollment projections from the New England School Development Council helped in the development of these proposed models. Parents also submitted five alternate plans in response to RAC's request for feedback from the public after concerns were raised from Superintendent William McAlduff's intial …
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
The next Winchester School Committee meeting will be in the high school auditorium on Thursday at 7:30 p.m.
The Winchester School Committee moved its Thursday meeting from the Lynch School library to the Winchester High School auditorium. The meeting will still be at 7:30 p.m. If you aren't able to attend, you can view it live from WinCam on Verizon 38 or Comcast 22. The School Committee will continue the discussion of both the revised Redistricting Advisory Committee maps as well as the alternative plans. The alternative plans consist of: Two Letters to the Editor were submitted this week in favor of the ALO plan. You can submit a Letter to the Editor with your thoughts on the plans via email to winchester@patch.com. Please have "Letter to the Editor" in the subject line as well as your name and street in the email. Stay updated on …
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Parents are invited to hear the alternative plans at tonight's School Committee meeting in the Winchester High School auditorium.
The School Committee will hear alternative redistricting plans from the public at tonight's meeting. Residents are invited to view the plans and engage in a Q&A session in the Winchester High School auditorium starting at 7:30 p.m. Each presentation is allotted 25 minutes for the plan explanation and a Q&A session. The presentations will go as follows: Superintendent William McAlduff presented his recommendations to the School Committee in late May, but the vote was postponed because of concerns from the community. A new date for a vote has been proposed for the first week in November. In response, the Redistricting Advisory Committee asked the public to submit their plans for consideration. The School Committee held a series of meetings …
Thursday, June 7, 2012
The Winchester School Committee will meet Tuesday, June 19 to discuss any redistricting plan updates.
The Winchester School Committee tabled the proposed redistricting plan per Superintendent William McAlduff’s recommendation. Although McAlduff said he believed the plan was on track when he proposed it May 22, with the community suggestions, he recommended both him and the committee take more time to assess the feedback. “It appears to me to review all the feedback, questions and concerns in a thoughtful and responsive manner simply requires more time,” he explained. School Committee Member Cindy Bohne agreed and made the motion to table the redistricting item till the next regular meeting on June 26. Bohne said the committee needs to take the proper amount of time to be thoughtful and deliberate with this issue even if it requires …
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
With the public hearing on the proposed redistricting plan less than a week away, Winchester Patch wants to know what you think about the plan.
The Redistricting Advisory Committee made its final recommendation for the redistricting changes affecting several Winchester elementary schools. If passed, the changes will go into effect for the 2013-2014 academic year. Before then, a public hearing is scheduled for Monday at 7 p.m. at Winchester High School. The School Committee, who makes the final decision on redistricting changes, will hold a special meeting for the final vote 7:30 p.m. Thursday, June 7 at the high school. The proposed map has been attached to this article. You can also view Superintendent William McAlduff's presentation from Tuesday, May 22 when he presented the final recommendation to the School Committee. More information about how to submit comments to the School…
As an Oak Street resident for 14 years, this Winchester parent and realtor questions aspects of the proposed redistricting plan.
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Wednesday, May 30, 2012
My family has lived on Oak Street for 14 years. Our daughters attended Lincoln Elementary, a 10-minute walk from our house. Many cherished memories, indeed some of our best Winchester friendships, were made lingering while the kids played at “our” school playground before meandering home. Therefore I was shocked and saddened by the School Redistricting Plan. If accepted, it threatens to compromise our beloved in-town, walkable lifestyle, and weaken the desirability that brought many young families to our neighborhood. It will erase the rich tradition of families strolling down Washington Street with backpacked kids for morning drop-off or afternoon pick-up, heading to or coming from the train to work. At-home parents who now bundle up …
A Winchester parent says while the committees surrounding the redistricting plan want to make the town better, the proposed plan doesn't achieve this goal.
- OPINION
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Wednesday, May 30, 2012
I live in Spruce-Lincoln community. Both of my kids are in Lincoln Elementary School though only my younger one will be forced to transfer to Lynch, according to the RAC plan. I read RAC's report and do not think this proposed report will achieve the goals that they set up. First of all, the goal of redistricting, according to RAC, is to establish close to similar size of schools for kids of different schools. There is no valid model to project student size in the schools for the future. Moving/renting/relocating due to economic and house market reasons makes the mode within a confidence level impossible. Even for the whole school, different grades will possibly to have different number of kids. To achieve an average class size or teacher-…
Monday, May 28, 2012
Winchester parents provided Patch with a letter they submitted to the School Committee outlining reasons why they are against the proposed redistricting plan.
- OPINION
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Monday, May 28, 2012
The following letter was sent to the Winchester School Committee in regards to the proposed redistricting plan. Sue and Stephen Kim of Winchester provided this letter to Winchester Patch. Dear Members of the School Committee, As parents of a former and current Muraco student who live in the Cedar-Tremont- Swanton-Winter St neighborhood, we are truly outraged with the proposed redistricting plan. We appreciate the difficulty the committee faced in determining which neighborhoods would be moved to different schools, but the recommendation does not appear to take our neighborhood’s strong arguments for safety and walkability into consideration as evidenced by the outcome and the Redistricting Advisory Committee’s (RAC) own report. Our …
Dennis France
11:54 am on Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Outsidein. Thanks for your empathetic response, but actually I thought the Globe reporter has been doing a very balanced job, interviewing as wide an array of folks as possible (her email has been available since June: Brenda.Buote@gmail.com). In particular, she captured nicely Cindy Bohne's concept of a possible Hybrid Plan (ALO/K-Flex, e.g.) that could obviate the need to ever draw lines again… more ›