LYNN — The 10 candidates seeking six seats on the School Committee faced off Wednesday night in a debate that explored the future of the city’s schools.
For the most part, the incumbents and hopefuls agreed on the issues: no more charter schools, the city desperately needs new school buildings, and education should be fully funded.
Sponsored by the Lynn Teachers Union, the event at the Breed Middle School moderated by Colleen McElligott-Liporto drew fewer than three dozen voters to the school’s auditorium.
Four incumbents are seeking reelection including Donna Coppola, John Ford, Lorraine Gately, and Jared Nicholson. The challengers are Cherish Casey, Brian Castellanos, Elizabeth Gervacio, Natasha Megie-Maddrey, Jessica Murphy, and Michael Satterwhite.
School Committeeman Ford said charter schools are sucking $20 million annually from the school budget and should not be expanded.
“Charter schools don’t play by the same rules,” he said. “More than 500 kids over the last five years have returned to our public schools from charters and we have to take them back.”
All the other candidates agreed saying until the state Department of Education can devise a charter school funding formula that does not penalize public schools, no more should open.
Only Megie-Maddrey offered that the city needs to have an “adult conversation”about the future of charters in Lynn.
“Parents deserve options,” she said. “Not everyone can afford a private school education. But I am running so that every child in our city has an excellent education.”
All agreed it was necessary to build new schools, considering the average age for a school building in Lynn is 80 years old. But only a few came up with suggestions on how to pay for them.
Murphy said private companies should be approached who might want to pay for a school in exchange for having the new building named for them.
“We need a community buy-in and outside-the-box thinking,” she said.
Gervacio and Castellanos said the School Department needs to have an aggressive fundraising effort to uncover every available dollar to help pay for new schools.
Casey said she was appalled by the condition of the school buildings when she arrived in the city more than a decade ago.
“I’m perplexed by the way our schools look,” she said. “The best way to fix them is to build onto the schools we have. But we need to find grants and fundraise to get it done.”
Prior to the debate, Sheila O’Neil, president of the Lynn Teachers Union, said public schools is how the commonwealth fulfills its commitment to give each child an opportunity to succeed.
“To fulfill this responsibility, we need a system of great neighborhood public schools, where educators have the tools and resources to meet the needs of each and every student,” she said.
