To the editor:

Last week's letter to the editor by Mr. McCrann was equal parts puzzling, sad, and misleading. Let me be clear that I choose my words carefully. It is the letter and its logic that I find puzzling, sad, and misleading - not Mr. McCrann himself. I believe him to be a good person, a good father, and a passionate citizen of the Town.

Moving to the contest of ideas, however, my puzzlement starts with that letter claiming individual "skills not values" are of foremost importance.  Contrary to the letter's follow-on sneer, committees aren't where "values go to die" - they're where values have to learn to live and play well with others. It’s also puzzling for an elected representative to hold out "Robert's Rules of Order" as well as "process, consensus, agenda-setting" as villains. What novel framework should we follow in poor “Robert’s” place? Variations of Robert's Rules of Order are the foundation of all democratic systems the world over, from small towns to the US Congress.

Which brings me to the letter's "sad" portions. In paragraph three, the letter chooses a litany of negatives rather than the School System's self-evident successes over the last four years. Anyone counting fairly ought to note how we weathered COVID with more students in person than many surrounding districts, opened a new middle school, changed school start times to actually align with medical recommendations, etc. Given his on-the-record votes, Mr. McCrann could rightly claim shared credit for all of these successes. But hey, such is the prerogative of a writer during an election: for me "half full," for others, "half-empty." At some point though it would be more helpful to discuss future progress rather than past complaints.

My sense of sadness deepened round about paragraph nine. How can the letter assert that "asking critical questions in public is socially difficult" (except perhaps by letters to the editor?) or that "peer pressure makes it hard to push the pause button?" At what point does the ability to clearly speak up, and then logically weave a common solution with others, not become a requirement for democratic office? Why criticize fundamental elements like "RIDE guidelines, and Open Meetings Laws" as if they are things that can somehow be escaped, ignored, or skirted?

Which brings me to the final misleading part of that letter: the deceptively simple plea to elect a three-person majority "to make changes to existing policy and bylaws."  At this point that letter is no longer just about process. Voters should be very curious about just what policies will be pursued once the underbrush of consensus and rules-based decision-making is "optimized" by the proposed troika. And so we are back to the arena of competing ideas…

This contest deserves the intensity it has. And yes, in a sense, I agree with Patrick that we should focus less on vaguely held "common values.” No one that stands before you or currently serves on the School Committee is a demon here. Policies, rather than platitudes or personal attacks, should be the heart of an election. Instead, everyone should pay more (not less) attention to what the candidates actually say their policies will be. This explains why some candidates were wholeheartedly endorsed by the Town's Democratic party and some were embraced by the Town's Republican party.  What policies people propose in their letters matter.

As in any election, local and national, please be informed and choose wisely.

Scott Douglas

Barrington

Editor’s note: Scott Douglas is the husband of Barrington School Committee member Megan Douglas.