LYNN — New schools and the quality and freshness of school lunches were a couple of the major topics discussed at a School Committee candidates forum hosted by Lynn Community Television on Monday night.
All nine candidates vying for seats on the six-member School Committee took part in the debate. Running for School Committee are incumbents Lorraine Gately, Donna Coppola and Brian Castellanos, and challengers Tiffany Magnolia, Sandra Lopez, Eric Dugan, Lennin Peña, PoSan Ung and Daniel Richard.
The forum, which featured questions from the community, started with a query about the candidates’ campaign platforms and their three main pillars.
Gately said that she would like to continue working on safety, building new schools, reducing overcrowding in the existing schools, and excellence in education. She said that with more people moving to Lynn, the School Committee needs to focus on building the new Pickering Middle School and then a new elementary school.
“We still need to address other issues with overcrowding in high school, too,” Gately said.
Magnolia would like to see more voices of people included in the process who don’t normally participate in School Committee meetings. She would like to develop a new robust process for building a new school that would involve as many stakeholders as possible and a community buy-in. She is also advocating for more transparency around school funding.
Lopez said that her pillars were scholarships for students going to college, better food at schools that would make students happier and reduce waste, and more parental involvement in the school system.
The next community member asked incumbent committee members to explain why it was taking so long to build new schools and what new candidates would change in the School Committee process.
Coppola said that building a new school is always a matter of funding, adding that it takes a long time to get a new school built. She got involved in a PTA (parent-teacher association) when the new Lynn Classical High School was in the works and her oldest daughter was an elementary-school student. It took two of her other children to graduate before Classical was finished.
Castellanos said that the city was neglected by the state for the last 20-25 years and struggled with the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) funding process. He said that Lynn needs to work with its state and federal delegations to lobby for more funding.
Richard said he would like to see more parents and students attend School Committee meetings and advocate for the issues they care about. He said the committee needs to expand its outreach to more platforms and use social media more.
Ung said that his ears are open for any suggestions from the constituents. He would love to hear any ideas and test if the committee is doing a good job listening to the constituents and if it can improve feedback exchange.
The forum also addressed the food issue in Lynn schools; the quality of school food has been widely discussed recently among the parents, on social media and in the news following a petition created by parents that detailed the poor food their children were receiving in the district.
Castellanos shared that he comes from a personal experience of food insecurity.
“I know what it’s like to feel that type of hunger,” Castellanos said.
The School Committee needs to take the issue seriously, he said, act on it and improve the system. He suggested going and talking to the food vendor, and looking into putting kitchens in some schools with the help of grants.
Richard said that the committee needs to check how the designated vendor makes and delivers food, as well as look into other foods that don’t spoil as easily.
Lopez suggested that the committee needs to determine what foods are healthy for children and who can provide them. She said that the menu should include more vegetables and good sources of nutrition, as well as look good, so the children would eat these meals and not trash them.
Gately promised to come up with a healthy and safe solution. She said she wants to ask the current food vendor about their process at the food-tasting demonstration at the Lynn Public Schools administration building on Nov. 3, which will be open to the public. She also reminded everyone that the schools have to follow federal nutrition guidelines, which is why school food doesn’t taste like it does at home.
Answering the question about combining schools like the neighboring communities are doing, Dugan said Lynn needs to be open-minded. Ideally, people would like to keep schools in their neighborhoods, but if the city can get only one new school it might have to combine old ones to not lose families because of bad schools.
“Schools are the backbone of a community. They are going to keep people in our community; they are going to keep young families in our community,” said Dugan.
Peña would get the opinion of constituents and teachers first. He would like to keep separate elementary and middle schools to fight overcrowding.
Ung said that ideally people want a school in their comfort zone and walking distance away, but that might not be realistic. He thinks Lynn needs a modern, high-tech school so the School Committee might need to look into a location for it, ask constituents and conduct a vote.
Magnolia said she is not against combining small, old schools that are close to each other. But some schools are bigger and spread out, she added, so it might not make sense and might create bussing issues.
Coppola reminded everyone that the city is “land poor,” which could make it hard to find locations for new schools. At the same time, with its neighborhood schools, the city didn’t have to have many buses. Buses would become a permanent cost in the budget and the bus-driver shortage might become a problem. The city would need to decide what a reasonable number of students is OK for a combined school, Coppola said.
“I don’t have a problem with combining schools but it has to be well thought out and sold to the parents. That’s their schools,” Coppola said.
The three other School Committee incumbents — John Ford, Jared Nicholson and Michael Satterwhite — are not running for reelection; Ford chose to retire, while Nicholson and Satterwhite opted to run for mayor. The city election is Nov. 2.
