In the spring of 1975, the School Committee approved a budget with an 8.7% increase, when inflation was at 11%, due in part to the 1973-4 oil embargo during the Arab-Israeli War. In the local election that November, four School Committee members were ousted by candidates from a new political action committee, VOICE. The election result was a surprise; since World War II, only one seated School Committee member had lost their seat.
The VOICE slate ran on restoring “quality education at a reasonable price.” They spent $1,031 campaigning, less than half as much as their opponents, and were described as unknowns and “real yahoos” by a reporter for the Newton Times (Quinn, 84). The VOICE candidates were college-educated professionals, similar to the School Committee members they ousted. One, public school science teacher Paul Ash, went on to become Superintendent of Westwood and then Lexington Public Schools.
Al Mandell, previously the odd man out on the School Committee, became the new chair. VOICE had “committed to a zero-growth budget” and began reducing staff, lowering spending on instructional supplies and building maintenance, cutting programs such as junior varsity after-school sports, and increasing or adding fees. School Committee meetings became long and heated. The School Committee allowed the public to speak and sometimes replied. The 1976 budget had a 1.4% increase.
METCO threatened
In August of 1975, the State changed its reimbursement formula for METCO, removing $81,000 from the Newton Public School (NPS) budget. METCO was in its tenth year, and thus far, all costs had been covered by the Federal or State government or private grants. Of the 42 participating cities and towns, Newton had the largest number of students, with 350. Only two communities, Framingham and Newton, refused to accept lower tuition payments. Both cities had a METCO staff of 10. Framingham’s METCO program ended. Newton’s conservative school committee planned to reduce the budget by cutting three METCO staff members. Newton’s METCO director, Kathy Jones, said the staff cuts would kill the program.
The issue culminated in a June 1976 School Committee meeting. At 2 AM, after six hours of “speeches and accusations” from METCO supporters in a packed Day Middle School auditorium, Chairman Mandell called the police to clear the room. The School Committee held firm and refused to find additional funding in the school budget for METCO. Newton officials and METCO supporters put pressure on the State, and in August, Governor Dukakis “transferred $150,000 to the METCO fund,” saving the staff positions. Director Jones quit to run for the Newton School Committee.
Teachers Work-to-Rule
At the end of August 1977, after having been without a contract for over a year, Newton teachers began to ‘work to rule’, working only 20 minutes before and after the school day. The main points of contention were the rate of the pay increase (5% versus 7%) and whether layoffs would be based on seniority and performance, as the School Committee wanted, or on seniority alone, as the Newton Teachers Association (NTA) wanted.
“It is possible that the futures of the seniors will be seriously damaged because of the teachers’ refusal to write recommendations. Extra-curricular activities, which are an integral part of the student’s high school career, are affected by the ‘work to rule’ decision. Certain school facilities such as the library and the commons rooms are closing early, and there is a danger of a serious breach between the student and teacher bodies.” Newton South High School Student Representative, NPS SC Minutes, October 11, 1977
Work-to-rule dragged on until after a new School Committee was seated in 1978.
The most expensive School Committee election yet
School Committee elections were local affairs until 1977, when a liberal political organization, CONCERN, was formed to counter VOICE. CONCERN endorsed eight candidates and received endorsements from State and National politicians, and the Massachusetts Teachers Association. Newton teachers “worked to elect the new majority of liberals.” Over $40,000 was spent on the election.
Newton Graphic listed candidates’ replies to three questions the week before the vote. The first question was about closing schools, the second about basic skills, and the third about METCO. Candidates backed by both CONCERN and VOICE generally agreed on the first two questions, replying that there should be a consistent, community-involved process for school closures, and that there was “room for improvement” in basic skills instruction. METCO funding was the main dispute:
- CONCERN candidate Manuel Beckwith stated: “The city has no legal obligation. The obligation is of the spirit. There have been too many phony interpretations of ‘fully funded.’ To receive full tuition rates, he said, would provide a ‘handsome profit’ to Newton. “Our costs have been more than covered. Those who seek to kill Metco are asking for court-ordered busing.”
- VOICE candidate Sumner Silton stated: “Any obligation must be considered moral rather than legal. Since state-elected representatives have established such a program, they must support it with state funds. There should be no additional, direct costs to the already over-burdened Newton taxpayer.”
CONCERN candidates won every seat but Ward 8, won by Al Mandell.
In February of 1978, after 20 months of negotiations and six months of work-to-rule job action, the NTA and the School Committee agreed to a new contract. The new 3-year contract included 5% salary increases for teachers at the top of the scale and 7.5% for all others. The School Committee held onto its “right to consider evaluations, experience, and training when laying off teachers.” At the time, 80 percent of teachers had tenure.
Many Years of Maintenance Neglect
“For the past five years, the staff and the children have patiently borne the burden of living with poor heating and ventilation, inadequate wiring and plumbing, poor lighting and terrible toilet rooms, sustained in the knowledge that soon Underwood’s old facilities would be rehabilitated and enlarged.” Wilson Pollock, President, Underwood PTO, October 14, 1975, School Committee Minutes.
Back in 1974, the School Committee had released a 10-year plan to address “many years of maintenance neglect in the schools” in the nine “worst schools.” (SC Minutes, 3/28/78) Underwood, built in 1928, was not included in the plan because it was already on the City’s Capital Improvement Plan. Then, as now, the City paid for new school buildings and major renovations. The City relied on the State to provide 50% to 65% of the funding, and in 1975, the State had frozen funding while revising the School Building Assistance program to lower costs.
On Monday, January 17, 1977, Newton North High School was closed for the day and students were sent home because the building’s heating units were leaking and frozen. The five-year-old building was plagued with heating, cooling, ventilation, and other mechanical problems. Its pool was shut because the chlorine-balancing unit was broken. Consultants recommended adding dehumidifiers for damp rooms, drapes for hot rooms, and operable windows for ventilation. Parents and staff wanted the 80,000+ sq ft of toxic asbestos removed. In December, Superintendent Aaron Fink declared the 10-year plan dead. Inflation, exacerbated by the unanticipated costs of Newton North High School, had made the plan unattainable.
Underwood began renovation work in the winter of 1978. Remediation work at Newton North continued into the 1980s.
Closing Schools
Before the new liberal School Committee took over, the old conservative School Committee reversed its 1975 decision and voted to close Memorial School (which had only 100 pupils), move the students to Spaulding, and sell the building to Solomon Schechter Day School.
In January 1978, the debate began anew over which underenrolled schools to close to reduce expenses. Among the issues:
- Public Opposition: Many residents, as well as the Newton Historical Society and the Newton Teachers Association, opposed the closing of neighborhood elementary schools.
- Redistricting to Balance School Populations: Should Mason-Rice and Zervas be redistricted and bused to Meadowbrook (now Brown) and Newton South, even if the students could walk to Newton North?
- Open Enrollment: Should NPS allow parents to move their children from a crowded to an uncrowded school? If allowed, would it be for only one year or until the child graduates from the school? What about siblings?
- Grade Organization: Should the elementary schools change from K-6 to K-5 or K-8, as in Brookline? Are sixth graders mature enough for junior high school?
- METCO: How do the 400 METCO students impact the decision to close a school? Should Newton continue to increase the number of METCO students? (The State resolved this by freezing the number of METCO students in 1980 to hold down costs.)
- Special Education Students: Would the Special Needs classes be kept together, with all the children in their old school, as requested by the Special Education Parents’ PTA, and be treated “as an integral part of the social fabric” and not a “supplemental group”? (SC minutes 12/18/78) Are the new schools accessible?
- Elementary School Specialists: How can the reduced number of specialists (art, music, gym) and after-school programming be equitably distributed among the elementary schools?
- Busing Costs: With the exception of METCO and a winter bus over the Mass Pike for Underwood students, begun in 1970 for safety, there had been no K-6 busing.
In March of 1978, the new School Committee voted to close Hamilton Elementary School in September and the Hyde and Emerson schools the following year. Residents protested and gathered signatures from 20% of registered voters, twice as many as required for a city-wide referendum on the closures. The City declared the referendum petition invalid, stating the City had no control over the school budget. The petitioners appealed to the State Supreme Court and won a city-wide vote in June 1978. The referendum was defeated 2-1, and the schools were closed (Ash, 20).
The School Committee had two years of budget increases and modest program restorations until the City’s deepening fiscal crisis and the threat of State limits on property taxes led them to request a “zero-increase” budget from the Superintendent for 1980. By then, the student population had decreased from a high of 18,900 in 1967 to 11,800, and the School Committee had voted to close Memorial, Emerson, Hamilton, Hyde, Davis, and Carr elementary schools, and Weeks Junior High. The full-time teaching staff had been reduced by almost a quarter.
Next: Newton Schools history, Part 14: Proposition 2½
Works Cited
- Ash, Paul B. Factors Which Influenced School Closings in Newton, Massachusetts: An Analytical Case Study (1974-1978). Newton, Boston College, 1982.
- Newton Public School Committee. School Committee Minutes. Newton, City of Newton, 1969-1980.
- Newton Public Schools. “School Committee Votes Budget for 1975-76.” The Inside View, vol. 9, no. 4, 1975, p. 1.
- Quinn, Susan. “Suburbia’s blackboard jungle.” Boston Magazine, vol. September, 1977, pp. 83-130.
