Would work for accountability, communication
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| Keith Cheveralls. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz) |
Quarry Lane resident Keith Cheveralls likens the school board to the board of directors of a corporation.
“It is the highest level of governance of our precious resource, the schools,” and needs to be seen as “acting above reproach,” he said in an interview last week. He believes that his leadership and business skills, acquired during a 34-year career as an international banker, would be helpful for the schools.
Cheveralls, who has lived in town for 14 years, left banking three years ago and has since become very active in volunteer work with the schools. He co-chaired Celebration, the Bromfield after-prom party, for three years, and has worked on the Special Education Task Force since 2006. His two sons graduated from Bromfield in 2005 and 2007.
“We need governance protocols in place [for the school board] that the town has complete confidence in,” Cheveralls said.
For example, he would like to see more objectivity and measurability in the way the board reviews the School Superintendent’s performance.
“We need more accountability, responsibility, and communication,” from the board, according to Cheveralls.
He suggested the board actively solicit input from residents, even though he understands it can be difficult to get the public involved. In addition, the board could use blogs, public forums, and quarterly meetings with other town boards, to discuss issues beyond the budget.
Cheveralls was one of the most vocal leaders in bringing the school board censure motion to last fall’s Town Meeting. He believes the board handled residents’ concerns in a poor fashion, and ended up with “a public relations disaster.” However, Cheveralls stressed that his role in the censure “is in the past… now we move forward.”
Even while he advocated for the censure, Cheveralls served with board members and the superintendent on the Special Education Task Force, and says he is committed to continuing his work on the issue.
“I passionately believe that a good way to move the town forward is by championing the belief system of inclusion [of special needs students],” he said. Cheveralls argued that many townspeople have a narrow focus, just looking at high MCAS scores as a measure of the schools’ excellence.
“We need to broaden that. A measure of success is when a struggling student relishes going to school and, better yet, leaves smiling at the end of the day,” he said.
When asked about the schools’ strengths and weaknesses, Cheveralls said he believes the schools have a stellar reputation, and that their excellence is “still mostly intact, due to the faculty, the students, and the parents.” It’s how those three groups work together that determines how the schools will perform in the future, he added.
However, he worries that the schools may have to scramble to deal with a shortfall in revenue if voters turn down the override request for next year.
“What I’m personally fearful of this year—there’s a significant confluence of contributing factors that voters have to face. It goes back to voters’ view of management,” he said. If Cheveralls is elected, and if the override fails, he said he would very quickly dig into the details of the budget numbers.
“When you’re dealing with a financial shock like a failed override, it can be the wrong people who leave… my mantra is ‘classrooms last’ [for cutbacks]. We’d need to look at the administrative model and overhead [for cuts].”
Cheveralls said he is all in favor of residents and town officials lobbying for more state aid, but wondered, “What is the realistic prospect for getting more money for the town?…it’s a revenue issue on the state level.”
He is very supportive of the town setting up an independent financial study group to look for solutions to the town’s structural deficit. Such a group could study issues like labor contracts, housing, and commercial development, Cheveralls noted. Still, “no one has a silver bullet” to solve the budget crunch, he said.
One possible future source of revenue that Cheveralls has looked into is the tuition Harvard would get if it wins the contract to educate the elementary students living at Devens.
“It’s a very interesting source of revenue on a short-term basis,” Cheveralls said. However, he believes it is important not to use the money to fund recurring costs, since the town could not count on the money always being there. He also is pleased that the schools have proposed educating the Devens pupils for four years, not five, as the Devens Educational Advisory Council (DEAC) would prefer. Cheveralls believes the shorter term for the proposed contract would minimize the risk that the elementary school would become overcrowded if the number of Devens pupils increases over time. (The other two towns that submitted bids to DEAC, Ayer and Shirley, have proposed taking on the pupils for five years.)
Cheveralls is very up-front about how he would deal with possible conflicts of interest that could arise if he is elected, given that his wife is a teacher at the elementary school. He would abstain from certain discussions or votes, such as those concerning the terms of the teachers’ union contract, Cheveralls has pledged. He has asked for, and received, written guidance from the State Ethics Commission, he said. Cheveralls discusses this, and his policy positions, in greater detail at his website, www.electkeith.net.
Note: Keith Cheveralls is running against Virginia Justicz, B.J. Pessia, and Brian Stevens for a three-year term on Harvard's School Committee.