Has no pre-set agenda

Patty Wenger. (Photo by Lisa Aciukewicz)

Patty Wenger is running unopposed for a one-year term on the school board. Wenger, who moved to Harvard 14 years ago, has served on the Bromfield School Council for the last seven years. She has also helped put on the elementary school Fun Fair, and for several years co-chaired Celebration, the Bromfield after-prom party.

Wenger has two children who have attended school here: a daughter who is now in college, and a son currently at Bromfield. Besides her extensive volunteer efforts, Wenger also works part-time as a nurse in the intensive care unit at Beth Israel Hospital in Boston.

When asked in a recent interview why she is running for the School Committee, Wenger laughed and said, “When you’re as involved in the schools as I am, you get pulled in more.”

Particularly in the past two years, Wenger has felt that there ought to be some changes in the way the school board operates.

“The board needs more communication with the town. You need to have more open dialogue, to get more information out there,” she said.

Specifically, she suggests that the School Committee hold three or four open meetings a year, with no agenda, for the purpose of hearing residents’ opinions and concerns. Wenger also believes the school board ought to give short answers or responses when residents bring up questions or concerns at board meetings, so residents feel they have been heard.

“It would alleviate emotions,” Wenger said.

She believes that last year’s motion to censure the school board occurred because the board did not listen to the public’s concerns.

“They are now trying [to listen] but they have a ways to go,” Wenger said.

She did not want the censure to happen, but noted “attendance of the meetings is up—that’s something positive. The censure, awful as it was, did accomplish something.”

Asked about the strengths and weaknesses of the Harvard schools, Wenger immediately lauded Harvard’s teachers.

“They are the nuts and bolts of the schools,” she said.

Unfortunately, there are still some lingering hard feelings among the staff related to the contentious union contract negotiations and the work-to-rule action the teachers instituted during the last school year, she believes.

“I’d like to improve that. When teachers are happy, the schools look better,” Wenger said.

The main problem facing the town’s schools is the precariousness of their funding, and a shortfall in state aid, she believes.

“I’d like to see more working together between administrators and teachers, and the school board and the FinCom, to come up with a budget that everybody agrees on,” she said.

Wenger said she would not come on the board with a pre-set agenda.

“I’m going into this to make the schools as good as they can be… I want people to work well together—it’s too small a town not to. I want people to get along again!” she exclaimed.