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COMMUNITY SCHOOLS
Shrewsbury school operates food pantry for families experiencing food insecurity
By Cindy Zomar Education Coordinator
SHREWSBURY - A recent “necessities drive” has helped restock a food pantry at Oak Middle School in Shrewsbury, helping this school program distribute new essentials to family after otherwise being empty since the summer.
This food pantry got its start back in 2017 when Special Education teacher D’Arcy McCarthy started a club called the Community Service and Leadership Club at Oak.
“It was all-inclusive and had a rolling admissions process so students could join at any time,” she recently told the Community Advocate. “We had discussions about local concerns, at OMS, in Shrewsbury, in Massachusetts, even the world. We had no limit.”
“We realized that many local families were facing food insecurity, which was a surprise to many of our students,” she continued.
The group decided to form a food pantry and began a complex process of setting one up.
“We used a grass roots approach, making phone calls to other food pantries, and even visited South High in Worcester, who has a successful pantry,” McCarthy said.
Food insecurity a revelation to many
The Oak food pantry was up and running by mid-2018. The nurse’s office helped manage the program, with recipients remaining anonymous to the rest of the school.
The nurse also checked for allergies and planned special treats when a recipient’s birthday occurred.
Families could request help, either short term or long term, at any time.
“Food insecurity in our community was an eye opener to many,” Principal Ann Jones said. “We have such a tapestry of families, if some reached a tough place in life and needed a hand up, we were able to offer temporary help.”
Food Pantry distributing
Brown Bag lunches
The group conducted a survey asking individuals what they liked or needed, noting that not everyone has the same tastes or dietary needs. They’re currently distributing brown bag lunches through the pantry, with each
A recent bag including breaktoiletry drive added many necessities to the cupboards at the OMS fast items and cans of vegetables and fruit as well as shelf-stable milk. Members of the Food Pantry. club prepare the bags, which they then disperse through the nurse. They have also PHOTO/CINDY ZOMAR provided brown bag lunches on Oak’s early release days when the cafeteria does not serve lunch, including sandwiches for younger siblings at home. Future plans now additionally include a fundraiser for cash donations which will probably include a competition between classrooms. “That’s always fun,” McCarthy said.
Oak food pantry part of larger effort
The Oak Middle School food pantry has collaborated with Shrewsbury’s long running food pantry at St. Anne’s Parish in town. Shrewsbury, likewise, is now expanding its efforts to fight food insecurity as it plans to use a $75,000 earmark in a recent state spending bill to set up a separate food pantry for community members. Town Manager Kevin Mizikar told the Community Advocate earlier this month that, while he is not sure when Shrewsbury will actually receive that money, the town plans to begin planning for its new food pantry soon.
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COMMUNITY SCHOOLS School Committee talks unmasking criteria at Algonquin
Masking | from page 2 ing with district staff back in November. At that time, one of the criteria for adaptive masking was low to moderate community transmission rates as defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That criteria was a sticking point for some members, who expressed concern that Northborough and Southborough may never hit those thresholds.
The Medical Advisory Team subsequently met and looked at the numbers, variants and the various implications associated with adaptive masking.
The district’s most recent data indicated that, as of Dec. 15, 86.35 percent of students at Algonquin were fully vaccinated.
“But we need to look bigger than the high school,” Duggan said. “We need to look at what are our vaccination rates in our younger grades.”
Algonquin notes case surge
There were 75 positive COVID-19 cases at Algonquin from the beginning of the school year through Dec. 15. The district reported 20 cases on Dec. 21 and Dec. 22 alone, however, prompting some alarm and causing school officials to ban spectators at all school athletic contests.
This decision came at the advice of the Medical Advisory Team, Principal Sean Bevan wrote in a message to families.
Likewise, it came after officials noted that multiple students who tested positive for COVID-19 had attended school athletic events in recent days.
Family members of student athletes can still attend games. But school staff will be on hand to turn away other students who may try to attend games, including ones held at other schools or off-site locations, such as NorthStar Ice Sports in Westborough.
Speaking back on Dec. 15, School Committee member Daniel Kolenda questioned the proposed benchmarks for adaptive masking.
“At this point, do we make a motion to permanently keep masks on? When do you think we’ll ever get less than 12 [cases]?” Kolenda asked. “Should we just not have the discussion every month and just let the students know that it’s going to be a permanent mask wearing?”
“Not at all,” Duggan replied. “We have had less than 12 since the first week of October.”
Duggan explained that staff had asked nurses what could be handled in terms of contact tracing in a week. The nurses said they could handle about 10 cases.
“With support, we thought we could do 12,” Duggan said.
Student representative Lindsey Stone said students have adapted to masks and know the rules.
“The minute we say we can take them off, I have a feeling that that adapting and that whole thing [of], it’s just a rule and we have to do it, is going to go away,” she said. “That silver lining is going to fall aside.” incident of hateful graffiti in a matter of weeks.
“An announcement will be made to address how deplorable these types of actions are and teachers will then engage students in conversations about what steps we can take to prevent this from happening in the future,” she said.
That day a separate incident took place where a new series of hateful slurs and words was found written on a girls bathroom wall.
That incident was still under investigation as of Dec. 22 according to Bock.
She added in her Dec. 20 email that Westborough High School administrators would be available on Jan. 12 for a previously scheduled after school student feedback session “to discuss ways in which students and staff can work to make our school the respectful place we want it to be and that it needs to be.”
This is an ongoing story. Visit CommunityAdvocate.com for expanded reporting on this topic.
Westborough schools respond to hateful graffiti at Westborough High School
By Dakota Antelman Managing Editor WESTBOROUGH - Westborough is grappling with a series of incidents of hateful graffiti at Westborough High School after the school district confirmed, Dec. 20, that staff had found swastikas drawn in a boys bathroom.
This came after a separate incident in November where someone wrote the n-word in a stairwell.
“It’s important to reaffirm that hate has no place at Westborough High School,” Superintendent Amber Bock wrote in an email to school community members on Dec. 20. “We, as a school community, stand for inclusion, social justice, and respect for all.”
That email followed the recent swastika incident.
“It is deplorable, and we denounce it,” Bock wrote, adding that staff “worked quickly to remove this horrible symbol of oppression and genocide.”
Full investigations took place following both the November incident and this more recent swastika incident, she said. Those investigations included reviews of security camera footage and interviews with students, according to Bock’s email.
The district also “utiliz[ed] the resources of the Westborough Police Department,” Bock said.
“We continue to act on any information received,” she added.
Bock said that anyone identified as being responsible for either of those incidents would be held responsible.
“We will determine appropriate disciplinary consequences, support and learning, and restorative practices,” she wrote.
Bock asked anyone with firsthand knowledge about these incidents to use the district’s Anonymous Alert system, which can be accessed through the district’s website.
Bock wrote on Dec. 20 that the next day would begin with an announcement addressing what was then the second
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Shrewsbury schools talk next steps with limited space at Assabet
Assabet | from page 1 if we can become a member,” Collins said.
This discussion came at a recent Shrewsbury School Committee meeting, just a matter of weeks after schools Superintendent Joseph Sawyer reported that Shrewsbury eighth-graders may not be able to attend Assabet in the future following state policy changes regarding vocational school admissions.
“I think when I look at this, it was, at the state level, a wellintentioned decision with some unintentional fallout from it,” said School Committee member Sandra Fryc after administrators presented to the committee.
There are excellent students who would prefer a vocational technical education, and those skills are needed, she said.
“It’s going to have a negative impact on the students of Shrewsbury who really want to go,” Fryc said. “I know, last year, less students got in and that was difficult for many families.”
Assabet was created in the 1970s, following a federal push to create more vocational technical high schools.
Decades later, Shrewsbury remains one of 112 municipalities in Massachusetts that do not belong to a regional technical high school district.
Assabet’s district, meanwhile, includes Berlin, Hudson, Marlborough, Maynard, Northborough, Southborough and Westborough.
The state’s new admissions policies require vocational schools to prioritize students within their districts over students from other communities that could previously attend on an individual, tuition-funded basis. Advocates have said the former admission policy discriminated against students of color, low-income students, English learners and students with disabilities.
“[The regulation change] may have addressed one type of equity issue,” Sawyer said. “But it has created an equity issue that’s more so based on geography.”
“Communities that made decisions 50 years ago about whether to join one of these districts are now affecting eighthgrade students and their plans for high school here in 2021,” he continued.
As of Oct. 1, there were a total of 96 Shrewsbury students enrolled at Assabet. Twelve of those students are freshmen, 34 are sophomores, 20 are juniors and 30 are seniors, according to the district.
Collins said each vocational school has a regional agreement with its member towns. Those agreements detail the method by which new members can be added.
In Assabet’s case, the Assabet School Committee would have to vote with a two-thirds majority to have a new community join. After, it would send a letter to the seven member communities.
“They would then ask each respective Board of Selectmen to place a warrant article on their next either special or annual Town Meeting, asking that their Town Meeting vote affirmatively by a majority vote to let Shrewsbury join their district,” Collins said. “Then also the City Council for the City of Marlborough would have to do the same.”
All seven member communities would have to approve it, he said. In Shrewsbury, it would be voted by the School Committee and ultimately by Town Meeting.
The Shrewsbury School Committee supported having Chair Jon Wensky send a letter to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education’s board and commissioner and Shrewsbury’s representatives in the state legislature voicing concerns about the new vocational school admissions policy.
In the meantime, Shrewsbury is investigating if there are vocational schools besides Assabet that may have seats available for students. The district is also discussing what it can provide in house at the high school.
School Committee members suggested several ideas, such as internships or partnering with community colleges.
Wensky said he appreciated thinking outside of the box on ways to fill in the gap created by the likely loss of Assabet as an option for students.
“You’re not going to solve this with one or two classes,” he said. “The curriculum just doesn’t fill that void that a vocational opportunity would.”
“Simply, it’s not just to call up Assabet and ask if we can become a member.
Patrick Collins
Assistant Superintendent
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