Happy to hear Harkness is the guest, we can ask her how she lead a School Committee that took a great working relationship built on mutual Trust and Respect between teachers and leadership and completely, and possibly quite irrecoverably, flushed it down the toilet in the name of fiscal responsibility to the town which has mismanaged money by hiring hiring hiring teachers it obviously cant afford (many with federal bailout money that would vanish year later) only to cry 'town is broke' when it came to paying teachers competitively and fairly.
It would also be great to ask specific questions such as why the town says NO MONEY when there is $5 million more in the town's reserve than is required, millions more than carried by most towns of this size and yet there isnt $450,000 (which was budgeted for) to pay teachers steps in the year they were due.

Questions about drug use at WA also seems like something we wish to know more about seeing as there was a big spike from what I hear and not much info to us parents about the scope and equity of how the cases were handled.

Thanks Andrew for making this happen, you continue to do great things here!!!

also how about full day kindergarten....shameful this town doesn't have it.

So it seems an agreement will be reached before then, otherwise it would have the potential to be a train wreck or just "I cannot comment on ongoing negotiations", ... In any case I think it is a very bad idea for her, any other administrator or local pol to do one of these (see above then multiply by X), I hope to be proven wrong.

I sure hope you can filter what they post Andrew. I give her credit for trying this but based on the union people and there novels written here over the past 6 months it will get ugly.

The Lowell Sun is reporting that there is a tentative agreement between Westford teachers and the School Committee.

Prediction: The tentative agreement will be rejected almost as soundly as the previous one. It is a better deal on paper (step significanly delayed) but still falls well short of 'fair' and although some teachers might take the short now money (next 3 years) gaurentted most who have some general awareness of how these things work understand that FY2014 is the MELTDOWN year according to TM Ross -and if this deal is ratified by teachers by laying down for steps can be delayed years precident setting contract and all days, meetings language needs to be renegotiated down from the old contract and not new (called sunset clause) understand this is NOT a contract that will get the required 50% of the vote. Only the teachers whose attitude is Ill take anything to help the town out and hire more new positions with money legally due to me in the next 3 years will vote Yes.

I wouldnt bet the bank this agreement is ratified so like the last time, dont get too excited.

I hope when Andrew mentions the terms of service he means language or character defmation and not that legit tough questions for a publicly elected offical will be censored on this patch chat. If the Patch is going to censor any questions that are 'pointed' then these chats are pretty meaningless. I know Andrew to have higher journalistic integrity than that so I am confident that the tough questions will at least be presented to Harkness (what she does with them is out of Patch's hands).

Perhaps she will comment on how a town so broke it cant honor steps for its teachers this year can afford all these new positions at that same time.Money tree or no money tree, it gets confusing

If the patch holds chat with public officials the questions need to be uncensored. Foul language is different but frustrated taxpayers asking real questions should be allowed. The day I hear that the patch censored content because of a position one way or another is the day I leave for good. I have to say Andrew does a good job of keeping things in check and allowing for productive but heated forum for discussion here and I expect that to continue which is why patch has legitimacy the Eagle and Lowell Sun don't have in my eyes. The schools are in disarray with the teacher contract and rampant drug use, we have some serious questions which should be asked Vincent.

Thomas Aquinas

8:32 pm on Thursday, June 7, 2012

Rampant drug use in the schools?
I was under the impression that the drug problem was solved when a teacher who was dealing cocaine was dismissed.Am I wrong or are there more teachers dealing drugs to make end meet because of their meager salaries?

Drugs at the highschool and very little info from Olsen-Antonelli is the drug issue. The teachers are not involved with drug sales as far as I know but we can ask Angela all about the drugs and what she thinks about druggies of all sorts in our schools and driving high on our roads to and from Westford Academy this year, what was found anh how much in the drug raid? It's like that's top secret classified info the way it's been kept under wraps