To the editor:

Westport taxpayers: While seeking truth that is unchanging, exclusive, and void of inconsistencies, we often experience a chilling effect on free speech. For instance, did you know there was no actual count of the approval and disapproval votes at Westport Special Town Meeting in January 2018 that funded the new school project? I put a request to our town clerk for that number, and she responded: "Unfortunately, I cannot give you an actual vote count as the moderator declared it a 2/3 majority, which he is allowed to do." 

Very interesting, if not questionable, because voters were split between two locations due to overflow attendance — cafeteria and auditorium. Newspapers published photos of hand votes in the auditorium — appearing to be a majority, but what about the cafeteria? 

The importance of this latent discovery is that a 2/3 majority approval for the $97M debt exclusion was needed for a town-wide referendum in February 2018 requiring only a simple majority. While media falsely reported that Special Town Meeting voters approved "their share of the debt" being $59M— after subtracting the $38M Massachusetts School Building Authority grant — the actual ballot question in February of 2018 had no dollar amount. Voters assumed they were approving $59M, especially when the School Building Committee documented what the "potential" tax impact would be on that amount. 

So the unelected SBC had the full $97M at their disposal, which they subsequently managed to spend. And let's not forget the undefined programs voters approved in January 2018, with no discussion, and maybe even unbeknownst to them.

Circle back to Outcome Based Education (Mastery Learning, Outcome Driven Developmental Model, Competency Based Learning – the name kept changing) disseminated by change agents, such as the late Dr. John Champlin, once Education Reform was legislated in the mid 1990s. Vague outcomes focused on attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors reflecting quasi-political and ideologically correct positions rather than factual knowledge, skills, and cognitive academic results associated with classical education. Opponents to OBE discovered that its goal was to train students via assessments and remediation to give responses in non-cognitive realms that exhibited the psychological/social skills determined most valuable by the government. 

Fast forward to 2021 when we can't hide from Project 1619, Critical Race Theory, Green New Deal and carbon footprints, the arrogance of man-made climate change, world citizenship, destroying our Constitution — especially First and Second Amendment Rights, plus election integrity — in addition to ungodly gender identity confusion, dysphoria, and sexual orientations.

Since the $38M is a non-entitlement, discretionary grant, the money is contingent on implementing MSBA (quasi state) requirements determined by them as needed. Noncompliance can result in forfeiture of the grant money. Excess of any grant approved by and received from the MSBA shall be the sole responsibility of the Town of Westport.    

Need proof? Read the budget, scope, and sequence agreement templates that are on the MSBA website. Read the motion to Article 1 presented by the chair of the unelected School Building Committee at the Special Town Meeting on January 23, 2018. In other words, this familiar mantra applies to Westport: Go woke or go broke. All for the purpose of conforming lifelong learners by changing their (our) attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors to the predetermined outcomes of the quasi state.

Marilyn Pease

Westport