Melrose’s successful $13.5 million override vote in November holds valuable lessons for Belmont, which – commercial development or not – will need to keep passing overrides to fund our Town.
A Tiered Override Won In Melrose. What About Belmont?
Tag: Education
Fair Teacher Negotiations: Addressing Class Sizes and Compensation
In an open letter to residents, the Belmont Education Association (our teachers’ union) looks to set the record straight about ongoing negotiations: expressing their commitment to students, and their concerns over ongoing contract negotiations with the Town. The teachers’ priorities? Reducing class sizes, increasing collaboration time, and providing fair compensation (so: not ‘more work for less pay’). Unfortunately, the BEA writes that our School Committee has been rejecting fair proposals, putting the onus on the community to support teachers and ensure a productive bargaining that seeks to maintain Belmont’s quality educational environment.
Belmont: 3 Reasons To Vote Yes On Question 1
On April 2nd, residents will be asked to approve Question 1, which raises our property tax levy to fund critical Town- and school operations. Check out the top 3 reasons that I am going to vote YES.
Survey: What do you want from Belmont’s next superintendent?
The Belmont Superintendent Screening Committee published an online survey to help identify screening criteria for our next school superintendent. Make your voice heard!
Show up Wednesday AM to support Solar at Middle-High School:
Hey Blogging Belmont readers. Just an update that the Belmont Middle- High School Building Committee will convene on Wednesday morning (tomorrow) February 16 at 8:00 AM. The link to the full agenda is here. The link to the Zoom meeting…
Belmont: Our Best Days Are Ahead
Belmont’s best days are ahead of it. But no community ever shrank its way to greatness. To realize a brighter future, we need to embrace a vision for what our town can be, and do the yeoman’s work to make that vision reality.
A Progressive’s Guide to Tuesday’s Town Election: Town Meeting
OK. If you’ve checked out our post on the top of the ticket, its now time to dig down in the weeds: Town Meeting! This is Belmont’s legislature, in essence, and incredibly important. Think of your local TMMs as…
This week in crazy: students punished for riding bikes to school in Michigan
When you live in a compact, walkable town like Belmont, its easy to forget that many, many other communities across the country are what you might call “car bound.” They’re sprawling, decentralized, with poor access to critical services and lacking even the basic infrastructure, like sidewalks and bike lanes, to support citizens who choose to go car free. No surprise, also, that in these communities the collective memory of things like walking or biking places or riding the bus has disappeared, making those once normal activities seem foreign or downright dangerous. Thus, the news item that flashed across my computer screen today about high school seniors in Michigan being punished for riding their bikes to school. Crazy, no?
PTO/PTA: Race to Nowhere Screening tomorrow evening
Just a note that the Belmont PTA/PTO will be screening Race To Nowhere: The Dark Side of America’s Achievement Culture tomorrow evening (Thursday) at the Belmont Studio Cinema, with half the price of admission donated to Belmont’s Public Schools.PTO/PTA’s! The…
Selectmen on override: 6 months, 180 degrees
The question for those of you who are planning to attend tonight’s meeting of the Board of Selectmen should be “what has changed” for Belmont since last Spring, when both Selectman Jones and Paolillo ardently supported passage of an Override. If the town needed it in June, why is it suddenly unworthy in January now that our budget deficit has grown and all-important one time funds, such as the Federal ARRA grants, have dried up?!