Last month the City Council voted, again, to ask the School Committee to release redacted versions of the PHS Investigation Reports. The next day, the new School Committee voted 6-1 to also release a redacted version of the reports.
I’m not going to get into my thoughts about this, partially because that itself deserves its own blog post that I’m not sure I’m ready to write just yet. However, I want to push back on an argument Councilor Warren made in supporting this vote that “there is no confusion in the
publics vote in the November election, they want transparency” (page 11 of the City Council packet that contained the minutes of this meeting), inferring that the voters wanted the report released and voted accordingly in the election.
I do not buy this argument as I believe the voters were not given much of a choice this past election. Most of the candidates either supported releasing the report (Batory, Muil, Buerger, Smith, and Barry) or didn’t say much about their support or opposition (Klein and McNeice). There were only two candidates who supported the past School Committee’s decision to not release the full PHS, Elias (who ultimately voted against the motion to release the report) and Yon (while she supported the motion she seemed to support the Committee’s handling of PHS during the election). If voters wanted to elect School Committee members that were happy with how the School Committee handled the PHS incidents, then they were out of luck.
This argument also falls apart when you take a deeper look at the election results, which is what I did for a talk I gave to the MCLA Political Science Club.
As you can see, McNeice was the highest vote getter, and was the highest vote getter in every precinct. I would argue that this support came from being very well known in the community for being a long time Taconic teacher. In 2nd and 3rd place overall were Elias and Yon. Already this refutes the claim that the voters were clear about their views on the PHS report because if that were the case then Elias and Yon wouldn’t have been high up, if elected at all.
But to get a better understanding of this support, you need to look deeper. Looking at the second place winner in each precinct, Elias was the 2nd place winner in every precinct except for 2B, where he was in 7th place, and 7B where he was in 3rd place. In both of those precincts Batory was the 2nd place winner. If there was true, widespread support of releasing the full PHS report and dislike of the School Committee’s handling of the PHS incidents, then Elias would have not been the 2nd place winner in these many precincts.
Taking a look at the 3rd place winners in each precinct, Yon was the 3rd place winner in 6 precincts, 1B, 2B, 3A, 4A, 4B, and 6A, and tied with Barry in 5A. Batory was the 3rd place winner in 3 precincts, 1A, 6B, and 7A, and tied with Muil in 5B. Muil was the 3rd place winner in 2 precincts, 2A and 3B, and ties with Batory in 5B. Elias was the 3rd place winner in 7B. I feel these results show a more mixed picture of what voters wanted in a School Committee in this election.
Additionally, if you take a look at Sara Hathaway’s numbers in her unsuccessful at-large councilor bid, she got 2761 votes, more votes than every school committee candidate except for McNeice and Elias. If voters were this dissatisfied with the former School Committee’s handling of the PHS reports, Hathaway would have not had such a large vote count even for an at-large councilor seat.
Ultimately, I think these election results really show two common themes in local politics: voters tend to prefer incumbents and familiar faces. No incumbent lost their seat this last election, and in the 2023 Pittsfield election only one incumbent lost their seat. For the amount of criticism both the city government and the school department get on places such as Facebook and the Berkshire Eagle, voters who show up to vote tend to be happy with the current state of local government in Pittsfield. I don’t feel these results really show support for any certain agenda or mandate to do something, voters just like stability and familiar faces in government.