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Meeting student needs and avoiding teacher layoffs was the prevailing sentiment among five of the six candidates for Haverhill School Committee who appeared Wednesday night at a forum sponsored by WHAV and Pinnacle Co-Working and Event Space.
Candidates, who are competing for three available at-large seats in the city’s Nov. 4 general election, faced off during the first segment of the event held at Pinnacle. The forum was broadcast live over WHAV 97.9 and live-streamed on WHAV.net. HC Media recorded it for later broadcast.
Attending were Penelope Guerrero, Josiah E. Morrow, Davis V. Nguyen, Fred A. Simmons and Daniel P. Spheekas. Toni A. Sapienza-Donais is also running, but was unable to attend the forum. WHAV President and CEO Tim Coco moderated the forum asking candidates to keep each answer under a minute.
Guerrero led off answering the first question about how she would balance giving teachers higher wages against the need to maintain adequate staff in a climate of tight budgets.
“I think every decision we make needs to put students first so I wouldn’t want to do things that would be detrimental to their education,” she said.
Morrow concurred, agreeing a top to bottom audit, line by line, is necessary. He touted his professional experience helping organizations manage budgets as useful in assisting with that task.
“A big part of my professional experience is working with businesses and organizations regionally everyday on their budgeting needs. And, in a similar way, we have got to look at the issue of prioritization,” Morrow said.
Likewise, Nguyen agreed a full audit is in order to understand how the district is spending its resources. He said his experience would come in handy analyzing the school system’s budget.
“All I know is that in my profession in accounting and finance, what I do is I take clients and then from there see where they are losing money and I help them save money which helps turn their around. So, they are making money at the end of the year. That’s what I would do with the school budget,” Nguyen said.
On a question about retaining the district’s paraprofessional staff, Simmons said education support professionals are invaluable, particularly in helping vulnerable special needs students and that the city has to find a way to pay them better.
“It always goes back to monetary, trying to get qualified people to stay. That’s the number one goal we need to do. They should be making a living wage or as close as we can until we have more funding coming in,” Simmons said.
One question about what measures the district should take to maintain the progress third graders have shown on the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System language arts test, Spheekas said the district must acknowledge the hit children took during the COVID-19 pandemic and continue what it is doing.
“I think continue doing what we are doing. Continue to provide the education that these kids deserve. I think we saw a real huge impact from COVID. You are looking at kindergarten kids, first grade, second grade. No one can learn to read on a computer,” Spheekas observed.
The candidates generally agreed with a recently approved School Committee policy that members should attend 85% of regular, subcommittee and union negotiation meetings.
The final day to register to vote is Friday, Oct. 24, by 5 p.m. Register online at the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s office or in person at the Haverhill City Clerk’s office in Haverhill City Hall, 4 Summer St. Voters can request a mail-in ballot through Tuesday, Oct. 28. Early voting gets underway Saturday, Oct. 25, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., at City Hall and continues Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Tuesday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.; and Thursday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
WHAV will air and publish more Friday about the five ward School Committee candidates who participated at Wednesday’s forum.