SWAMPSCOTT — Superintendent of Schools Pamela Angelakis has sent an email to parents addressing a past email she sent in support of a new proposed elementary school that was viewed by opponents of the school as too political.
In an Aug. 4 email to parents, Angelakis shows support for the YES campaign for a new district-wide elementary school, which will be voted on at a special town meeting next month.
“I have some happy news to share,” Angelakis wrote in the initial email. “There is a YES campaign for the new elementary school and its website is now up and running.”
This new elementary school is a $98.5 million project, which would involve the construction of a K-4 school for 900 students on the site of the current Stanley School.
The new building would replace the Hadley School, Stanley School, and Clarke School. It would have separate entrances for younger and older students, but there would be shared resources.
The superintendent’s email included a link to the site for the local campaign and said she was “so excited to work together to make this happen for our children! Please check out this website for more information and to get involved.”
However, the email was not viewed favorably by a community group opposing the new school. Gail Brock, chair of the school building’s opposition ballot committee, Save Our Schools, said many complaints have been filed with the State Ethics Commission, saying Angelakis should not have used public resources to encourage people to support the new school.
Following backlash from this email, Angelakis issued an apology to district families, saying: “I am sorry if anyone may have been offended by my enthusiasm for alerting families to the opportunity to access accurate information on a project that is critical for the district and the community.”
As the leader of the district, she said her primary obligation is to foster the most advantageous learning environment possible.
“If I stepped over any ‘ethical’ boundaries in doing so, I apologize and will ensure that it does not happen again, as I continue to advocate for our students, teachers and families,” she said.
Angelakis said she is 100 percent in favor of the school building project, but her primary goal with the first email was to ensure that everyone had access to “accurate information prior to forming an opinion on the merits of the project.”
“(This is) something which our district critically needs in order to continue to deliver the caliber of education that our students and families want and deserve,” she said.
Brock said the superintendent used her school access to the parents of all children to send this email, and as an employee of the School Committee and the town, she is “prohibited from using her office, title and access to parents’ emails for political purposes.
“We are not satisfied with her apology, which I have not seen or received,” Brock added.
A special town meeting will vote Sept. 13 on a warrant article, which proposes to raise $64 million in local property taxes to pay for some of the estimated cost of the proposed district-wide elementary school.
The Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA), the quasi-independent government authority that funds public school projects, authorized up to $34.3 million in grant funding to build the new school.
If the warrant article passes — with a two-thirds vote — a ballot question asking voters to raise taxes through a Prop 2 ½ (debt-exclusion) override will be voted on during a town election in October.
