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The wave of civic unrest that swept through Sudbury this past spring appears to be rippling outward.
Just months after a nearly 1,000-person turnout at a Sudbury Special Town Meeting resulted in a non-binding vote of no confidence against the Sudbury Public Schools (SPS) School Committee, residents in the town of Sharon have petitioned for their own Special Town Meeting to address a strikingly similar grievance.
A certified petition, recently posted by the Sharon Clerk’s Office, officially requests that the Sharon Select Board call a Special Town Meeting. The subject to be placed on the warrant is vote of no confidence in five current members of the Sharon School Committee.
The rationale provided by the Sharon petitioners reads like a familiar script to anyone who followed the fraught Article 4 debate in Sudbury this past May.
According to the Sharon petition, the residents allege that the School Committee’s actions have “demonstrated a pattern of conduct inconsistent with the standards of transparency, community engagement, integrity and ethical governance that Sharon residents expect of their elected officials”.
The specific catalyst in Sharon centers on the committee’s conduct regarding the appointment of the district’s next superintendent. The petitioners claim this process has “eroded public trust, destabilized the district and disregarded the educational welfare of Sharon students and staff”.
This mirrors the language and sentiment of the Sudbury petition, which also cited a “pattern of conduct inconsistent with the standards of transparency, integrity, and ethical governance,” specifically pointing to concerns over state laws, conflict-of-interest rules, and potential Open Meeting Law violations. However, the Sudbury petition also came on the heels of a leadership change… the resignation of Superintendent Brad Crozier. There have been no formal determinations that the SPS School Committee violated the Open Meeting Law or Conflict of Interest laws.
The uncanny similarities don’t stop there. Earlier this year, the Massachusetts Legislature approved a recall mechanism for Sharon. Sharon’s version is similar, but not identical, to the recall mechanism Sudbury voters passed in May. Sharon’s recall provides grounds for recall and explicitly rules out recall based on the opinions or votes of the elected officials. “An elected official’s opinions or votes on any subject within the public body’s jurisdiction shall not constitute grounds for recall such that the elected official may make decisions within their authority without fear of recall; provided, however, that an elected official’s vote or actions that are found to be an intentional violation of the state conflict of interest law as set forth in chapter 268A of the General Laws or as described in 930 C.M.R. 1.00 – 7.00 shall be grounds for recall.” (Full copy here)
Sudbury’s bill can be found here.
Sound and Fury
In Sudbury, the no-confidence vote (Article 4) passed 452-295. The vote was entirely symbolic and did not remove any officials from their positions, but the same Special Town Meeting passed the recall provision that is now before the State Legislature.
The Sudbury proceedings were marked by long delays, technical issues, and severe breaches of decorum, including shouting, booing, and heckling inside the Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School gymnasium. Sudbury Moderator Cate Blake noted at the time that the articles presented “strong opinions on both sides, which can (and did) impact decorum.”
It remains to be seen whether Sharon’s Special Town Meeting will draw the same large and occasionally unruly crowd seen in Sudbury. As Sharon proceeds through a remarkably similar process to what Sudbury experienced this spring, local officials across the Commonwealth may be watching closely. Is the use of citizen petitions for symbolic “no confidence” votes an isolated phenomenon, or a trend?
