Do not circumvent town meeting on school vote

By
The Martha's Vineyard Times
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1

To the Editor:

Reports that the nine-person school committee plans to vote on Nov. 3 whether to circumvent spring 2026 town meetings in favor of an Island-wide simple majority vote to gain final approval of the planned Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School renovation are deeply disturbing and revealing.

Given the extra effort and expense required to hold a special Island-wide election, its only purpose would be to disenfranchise voters from towns where support for the project might be in question.

Rather than plotting election maneuvers to impose the project and millions of dollars of debt upon certain towns against their voters’ wishes, the school committee should focus its energies on making sure the project is worthy of each town’s support.

This regional district election maneuver has been rarely used, and never on our Island. Pursuit of such to gain approval for our Island’s biggest-ever capital project would be certain to create long-lasting discord. 

Approval of the project should remain congruent with its funding, which is allocated by town rather than uniformly across our Island.

If the school committee fears one or more towns may not support the renovation, they should consider why — and then ask, “How can we earn their support?” Not “How can we mute their voices?”

Jamie O’Brien

Aquinnah

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1 COMMENT

  1. Bewilderment is all I can say reading this. There is a 25 person building committee appointed by the school committee to create a project to take to the voters. It has been working for more than a year and sometimes later this year will deliver a project to the school committee. It is made up of people from every town. What is bewildering is the concept that a project is open for debate. Why have a committee. Why don’t you people who want to debate this show up until the last minute. It’s actually rude to the people who spent countless hours getting a project together. As for the voting process, you all agreed to this regional agreement. My advice. Engage from the beginning and you won’t be frustrated with the outcome. If you don’t have the time guess what you still have a ballot vote. But hours of debate on a thumbs up or down vote gets you nothing more than I had my say in public after the fact.

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