Revere School Committee vote to keep lottery for middle-schoolers

REVERE – The Revere School Committee voted 5-2 to keep its contentious middle-school lottery program in place, while allowing siblings to attend the same school of their older family members.?I think the current system in place I feel is the best one,” Superintendent Paul Dakin said. “This one makes the most amount of people happy I feel.”The way the current system works is a child about to enter middle school will let the school officials know what their first, second and third choices are for middle schools and from there are placed in lottery.Many parents and students who got their third choice this fall were upset and believed the current system worked poorly.Dakin said that 92 percent of students get either their first or second choice and that 32 percent end up with their third choice.?Those were the people we were hearing the most complaints from,” Dakin said.The Superintendent has had 10 meetings with parents to find out what they thought was the best option and sent out a survey to parents.Other options were to make Garfield Elementary strictly a sixth-grade school and then from there students will go Rumney Marsh or Susan B. Anthony. Another option was to make each school a specific grade.The survey results indicated that 51 percent of parents liked the current system.The other options varied from 10 to 15 percent in popularity. Five hundred parents participated in the survey.School officials did not let parents decide on the survey whether they supported creating neighborhood schools.The committee feared that with neighborhood schools by the time students got to the high school that they would be so divided they wold not be able to integrate with one another.?If you go with neighborhood schools, all it is going to be about is turf,” Dakin said. “In the cafeteria one section will be the east side Revere kids and the other side will be the north side Revere kids. Then, one day someone is going to get a boyfriend or a girlfriend from the other side and we are going to have all sorts of problems breaking lose. It will be West Side Story.”The school committee ultimately decided that the current system in place is the best option. “My recommendation would be to keep the current system,” Dakin said.School Committee member Michael Ferrante suggested that they put all the students in the lottery without giving them a choice of first, second and third picks. “Just put everyone in the lottery and pick from there,” Ferrante said. “That seems to be the fairest way and the purest form of a lottery.”However, that idea was shot down quickly. Most of the committee felt that parents and students should have some choice in the matter.?I don?t think we would please many parents or students if we did that,” school committee member Stacey Rizzo said.Most of the committee members felt that siblings should stick together and be able to attend the same school.However, some members were concerned about that plan.?What if a child is from a large family?” asked School Committee Member Dan Maguire said. “Then, isn?t that robbing a seat from a child who doesn?t have any siblings.”The committee ultimately decided to vote for the new sibling provisions and to let the superintendent write something for the next meeting about what the guidelines for siblings will be.Sara Brown can be reached at [email protected].