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By Janie Dretler, Vice Chair, Sudbury Select Board – I am writing this as an individual member of the Sudbury Select Board. These views are my own.
I write this with a heavy heart, and I hope these words find their way not only into print, but into the conscience of our community.
We have always prided ourselves on being good neighbors, folks who wave from their front yards, who check in on one another, who show up when it matters, who take quiet pride in the beauty of the town we chose to call home. Sudbury is a special place. That is exactly why it is so painful to watch what has been unfolding in recent months.
Some among us have responded to our neighbors’ most basic pleas: please see my child, please keep my child safe, please treat my child fairly, not with open arms, but with resistance, dismissal, and hostility. These families are not asking for special treatment. They are asking for the same warmth and sense of urgency that every other Sudbury family has always expected. They are asking that every child who walks through the doors of our schools, from Haynes, Loring, Nixon, Noyes, and Curtis to Lincoln-Sudbury, be treated as fully belonging here. That is not a radical ask. It is the bare minimum.
And yet, school committee members who have had the courage to ask whether every child in Sudbury is truly being served are now the targets of no-confidence petitions and Town Meeting Articles. We are not petitioning against neglect or indifference. We are circulating them against the very people willing to ask hard questions on behalf of overlooked children. The message, whether intended or not, is chilling: advocate for the wrong children, and we will come for your seat.
It does not stop there. Community members who have organized and lent their voices to families struggling to be heard are also being called out and pressured into silence. Sudbury has prioritized diversity, equity and inclusion for a reason. We have neighbors doing the quiet, unglamorous work of making sure every family feels they belong here, and the response has been to target them.
What’s happening in Sudbury right now is not civic engagement. It is intimidation dressed in the language of democracy.
Sudbury’s own schools proclaim a mission of enabling all students to reach their potential, in partnership with families and community. It is time we asked ourselves honestly whether we are living up to that promise, or just printing it on a website.
I think about the families we have stood beside at ball games and cheered with at graduations. I think about the parents we have chatted with on cold morning walks to school or at the bus stop, the ones we have laughed with at birthday parties, sat beside in bookclub, and waved to while dropping off at daycare.
These are our neighbors serving on elected boards and committees. It’s one thing to voice your opinion when you disagree with their decisions, but something else entirely to attack their character or intentions with false, distorted or incomplete information. One is participation, the other is harassment.
Before signing a petition or voting at Town Meeting, I would ask each of us to try something simpler and more human first. Pick up the phone. Share a cup of coffee or tea. Take a walk together on one of Sudbury’s many beautiful trails. It is remarkable what can happen when we choose conversation over confrontation, when we look our neighbors in the eye and actually listen. Disagreement does not have to mean division, and a signature on a petition is a much harder thing to take back than words shared over a walk through Hop Brook or along the Bruce Freeman or Mass Central Rail Trail.
The children watching all of this are learning something about who we are and what our values actually look like in practice. Let’s make sure it is something we can be proud of.
To our neighbors fighting for their children, and to those standing beside them: you are not alone. To everyone else: let’s be the Sudbury we keep telling ourselves we already are.