In 2006-2007, Mayor Sullivan and the School Department failed to pay the Juniper Park lease payments to Westfield State. WSU offered to forgive the School Department’s debt in exchange for the fire substation building and land on Western Avenue. The city refused and sought a lease payment reduction by volunteering to vacate some classroom space. WSU agreed, and 3rd and 4th graders were sent to Highland. Eventually, those grades were returned to Juniper Park.
Through emails recently obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, we’ve learned of a ‘select’ group of School Committee and City Council members who controlled ‘behind the scenes’ discussions out of public view. Newly elected Ward 4 Councilor, Mary O’Connell, was informed of these activities and sensed something was awry with the ‘behind the scenes’ activities related to the Juniper Park School. Councilor O’Connell wrote some suggestions that in her view, would be better for the parents and students at the Juniper Park School. Closing JP was not her suggestion, but rather the goal of some on the ‘select’ group of School Committee and City Council members at that time.
In the October 2009 Mayoral candidate’s debate, challenger, Dan Knapik, said, “I don’t know a parent or teacher who is happy at Juniper Park….we have other buildings we could use.” Thus the attack on Juniper began to publicly surface. Mayor Boulanger replied that Juniper Park was a great school and its use saved money for the city.
In the fall of 2010 while calculating which schools he would close in order to assure the Mass. School Building Authority (MSBA) that the City would have the capability to populate a new 600 student school, Mayor Knapik, without any public input, hearings, or School Committee votes, offered the closures of Juniper Park and Franklin Avenue Schools. In March 2011, the School Committee continued their private executive session discussions on Juniper Park. No records, no minutes were kept of this meeting – a violation of the Open Meeting Law.
In July of 2011 during a meeting at the old Ashley St. School, then Franklin Avenue principal, Leslie Clark-Yvon, School Building Committee member, was asked, “Do the parents of the Franklin Avenue students realize their school is planned to close?”, her response was, and I quote, “They know I’m on the School Building Committee.” In other words, nobody told the families.
Mayor Boulanger’s 2009-2012 negotiated Juniper Park lease agreement provided the School Department the opportunity to seek a ‘successor agreement’before his agreement ran out. In December 2011, Mayor Knapik and the School Committee, again behind closed doors during an executive session, voted to restructure the Juniper Park lease to be a terminal one with no ‘successor agreement’ clause. The School Committee closed Juniper Park Elementary School without any public hearings for people to weigh in.
School Committee member, Cindy Sullivan, said during her interview on WSKB this spring, “You won’t find any of this written down. We didn’t take a vote or anything.” Oh yes, they did.
Mayor Knapik’s long explanation on WSKB claimed WSU “wanted the building back”. The so-called “building” that WSU was interested in was the fire sub-station and not the Juniper Park building.
WSU president Evan Dobelle wrote in a 2008 email “…we can always use, NOT need the classrooms, so agreed with a 34% reduction … what we didn’t know was this was a local game to deflect attention from their desire to reorganize the district and are afraid of parents..so they unbelievably misled them and the press…straight forward…local politics is sad on this…”. CBS 3 reporter, Doug Lezette wrote in response to Dr. Dobelle’s email: “…backs up beliefs this is all a plan on the school dept’s part to make Westfield’s new school needs more urgent. Dobelle even clarified that they don’t have a space crunch,…”
We can’t make this up. If anyone wishes to see the documents for themselves, we will share.
Tom and Dan Smith
