Massachusetts News 

August 2--The political establishment in Newton is concerned that they may have a revolt on their hands in November. 

Although there has not been a contested election for the Newton School Committee  in recent years, nineteen candidates have turned in signatures for the eight  seats, more than any time in memory. 

The establishment is so concerned that they are already taking defensive actions. Both the Newton Tab and the Boston Globe are trying to help them. Both of the papers have run major stories about just one of the nineteen candidates. 

"Instead of writing about all of the candidates, or about the best of them, they focused entirely on one woman who is the publisher of a soft-porn magazine," stated Brian Camenker, the head of "Stand Up Newton." The Group posted fliers all over the city trying to get some new blood into the system. 

"Obviously they are interested in this only because they are trying to taint every one of the nineteen candidates. Their bias and advocacy is done so subtlety that very few people are able to detect it," he continued. 

Flier was Catalyst 

Although Camenker says that the large number of candidates can be attributed to citizens' unrest and even anger, the catalyst that sparked the flame was a flier passed out around the city by "Stand Up Newton." 

It is a non-partisan, local civic group that has successfully challenged citywide issues in the past. 

It decided earlier this year that a city like Newton with so much talent in its population should at least have contested elections for something as important as the School Committee. It discovered that most people didn't even know how to run for School Committee, or where and when to file papers to do so.  So they crafted a simple flier with all the pertinent information and offered the service of their approximately 200-300 members to help candidates get signatures.  The offer was for any registered voter, no matter what his political positions, who is new to politics. "We're looking for new blood in city politics," stated one of the fliers. 

The challengers who responded have backgrounds that range from engineering and software to publishing and business. But the Tab and the Globe focused exclusively on one person who deals in pornography. 

Camenker said that several more people who had just seen the flier called at the last minute wanting to run. But by then there wasn't enough time to get the necessary 150 signatures. 

Long list of Complaints 

Citizens tell Massachusetts News that there is a sense of powerlessness -- that the current Committee has grown arrogant and unresponsive to the feelings of parents and students.  They cite the following: 

• The MCAS test results were a wake-up call. Many who thought they were "good" students scored poorly. There was a sense that teachers were "cramming" kids for the test to fill in the gaps they should have learned all along. Parents are now asking, "What happens if my child can't graduate because of this?" 

• Newton has increasingly been at the forefront of unproven "experimental" techniques. Parents are constantly battling the schools over "inventive spelling" and whole-language reading methods. In the lower grades, students sit at tables instead of desks so they can learn as "teams," a widely criticized approach. Core subjects such as penmanship have been rejected altogether; one parent was told that his fifth grader "will just be using a computer, anyway." In many English courses, literature "analysis" courses have supplanted basic grammar studies. There is a feeling, passed down from above, that "rote learning" is old-fashioned. 

• Parents see school days filled with endless field trips, and an ever-growing percentage of the day is taken up with "feel-good" social programs, and other non-academic pursuits. But also, many schools are squeezed by "time and learning" concessions to the teachers unions that have caused unreasonably short lunch hours and sometimes eliminated them altogether. Another concession to the unions is the 12:30 p.m. early-release days every Tuesday for elementary students, which rankles many parents. 

• There is a very strong concern that disruptive students, many with emotional problems, are not properly attended to, but just ignored. This has become a situation at some schools where safety is now an issue. 

• Newton schools are among the most aggressive in pushing sexual agendas, with no parental input or involvement. Newton's often graphic sexuality courses reach down to the sixth grade. They have officially adopted the Planned Parenthood message that sex among children is "a responsible choice" that they may make, even if their parents disagree. High schools liberally distribute condoms to any children who request them. 

• Homosexual courses, programs, exhibits, and assemblies have become a pervasive part of the high schools, middle schools, and even the elementary schools. The two high schools have several "gay days" each year -- entire days of such things as "transgender panels" and "coming-out assemblies." Students are often given propaganda-like information of questionable medical accuracy, usually provided by homosexual activist groups. 

Taxpayers' Money 

Probably the biggest criticism of the current School Committee, the citizens tell Massachusetts News, is the way it spends the taxpayers' money. Newton now spends over the half its city budget -- over $101 million -- on its school system. That is up from $78 million just two years ago. 

One long-time Newton resident recalled that when he attended high school in the late 1950s the entire school administrative was housed in a converted two-family house. And there were more students then. 

Newton has a very high ratio of administrative support -- lots of $90,000 per year PhDs who oversee things like "middle school social studies curricula." By most accounts the city is top-heavy in people just "administering things." Newton also supports many unusual enterprises such as "gender committees" which spend time researching esoteric curricula that can't be obtained normally. 

Another criticism of many citizens are the decisions about buildings, renovations, and moving students. Newton is probably unique, for instance, as a city that has two middle schools located across the street from each other. This happened after selling a perfectly located, former middle school for a housing development. 

Tired of "The Machine" 

It's been an open secret and acknowledged by just about everyone that for the last few decades the School Committee has essentially been "appointed" by a longstanding group of powerful left-wing local political activists says Camenker. These people were willing to put enormous effort into winning these low-level elections, which would normally be non-partisan, individual efforts. Over time, folks got the message and didn't bother running if they weren't "picked." 

The few that bucked the system suffered for their efforts. David Scott lost in the late 1980s by a final-week push that labeled him as a "Nazi." In 1993, several people ran and were collectively labeled in several local newspaper articles, letters, and editorials as "Christian right stealth candidates," even though several of them were Jewish. And that year Planned Parenthood formed a local political action committee to defeat the challengers. 

But now there is a strong feeling throughout the city, says Camenker, that not only has the machine lost most of its punch, but that people are tired of them and their tactics. 

Dirty tactics this year? 

The candidate who published the pornographic magazine, Brenda Lowe, reports that someone was calling local reporters, the Boston Globe, and radio and TV stations about the magazine she publishes. 

The Tab ran its 500-word story on Friday, July 15 with the headline, "Brenda Lowe, publisher of an adult magazine, is hoping to unseat current committee member Susan Heyman." The entire story was about Lowe with the exception of three paragraphs about Brian Camenker of "Stand Up Newton," which began with the following, "Ironically, Brian Camenker -- a proponent of eliminating sex education in the Newton Public School Department..." 

The Globe ran its story on Saturday, a day later, with the headline, "Porn editor tries hand at politics." The entire story was about Lowe, except for the last five paragraphs, which were about Camenker. It said that she was attracted to run by the many posters put up by Camenker and "Stand Up Newton" and the Globe implied that he had endorsed her and asked her to run. The author of the article in the Globe, Doreen Iudica-Vigue, used the derisive term "political gadfly" to describe Camemaker. 
 

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