Allan Motenko

Please share your skills, qualifications, and experiences that will make you a great member of the School Committee. Do you have a candidate website or social media page where voters can learn more about you?

I am running for three fundamental reasons. I care about the community of Sharon. I care about the Sharon Public Schools. And, I believe I have experience and skills that distinguishes me from other candidates in the race and currently on the School Committee.

I was  born and raised in Sharon. From the Early Childhood Center through SHS Class of 2002. This is my hometown, and though my family moved away when I was a sophomore in college, this has always been home. I moved back in 2022, and my 4 closest friends have also moved back to raise their families. It has been extraordinarily rewarding to reconnect with those in the community that helped raise me and meet new people who are maintaining Sharon as a great place to live. 

As was the case when I was the Student Representative to the School Committee and fully involved in every meeting during the 2001-2002 school year, the schools are the most important resource in this community. It is why people move here and stay. The schools are responsible for the dramatic increase in property values over the last 25 years, and the schools are also the backbone for the sense of safety and community that we value.

If the Sharon Public Schools were to become merely average tomorrow, our property values would crater, and our sense of security and community would be very different. And of course, most importantly, our students would suffer tremendously. 

I am running to ensure we do not become average. When I graduated in 2002, we were a Top 10 school district, but we are not now, and that needs to change. 

I believe the school committee needs to be asking for and reviewing publicly more metrics on academic achievement, including: literacy and math performance at the Elementary and Middle School levels; honors and AP performance at the HS; Special Education services throughout the district; and separately, teacher performance, teacher satisfaction, and teacher morale. We need to recruit and retain the best teachers, and we do not pay enough attention to these employee metrics.  

I have worked in the public sector for 15 years as a disability rights advocate and policy expert. This work, combined with my personal experience as an individual with a disability, and someone who had an IEP from the Early Childhood Center through graduation, gives me a unique insight into Special Education Services. Equal Educational Opportunity is still elusive for too many students in Sharon. It is rarely discussed by the School Committee, and SSEPAC does not have a seat at the table. 

I will prioritize parental input, accountability, and data-driven decision making to ensure our Special Education services meet the needs of all students.

I have also focused on Equal Employment Opportunity compliance and policy in my career. Applying the civil rights laws and principles of Equal Educational Opportunity has not happened as it should in the schools and it has not happened in the discourse at the School Committee level. This has allowed discourse that improperly puts different constituencies in the community against one another. The civil rights and parental rights of all members of the school community can be protected when equal opportunity principles, guidelines, and processes are correctly applied and accountability is expected. 

The Sharon School Committee has to deal with a budget deficit of $1-1.5 million dollars every year. How will you handle these difficult choices?

With budget deficits at the state and local level this year and worse deficits predicted across eastern Massachusetts next year (i.e. this is not just a “Sharon problem”), we are in the midst of at least a 2-3 year period of challenging budget decisions. 

I believe in zero based budgeting, which the school department did not do this year. It allows each line item to be evaluated for its relevancy, efficacy, and efficiency before a dollar amount is considered. I will advocate for this approach going forward. It will allow our district to look at the budget critically and proactively to identify potential savings that do not compromise our ability to deliver an excellent education to all students. 

Should more budget cuts be required, I believe in prioritizing those salaries and costs that allow for small class sizes in the elementary grades, preserve academic rigor as students move through middle and high school (honors and AP classes as but one example), and guarantees Equal Educational Opportunity for all students with disabilities. 

The school budget is 85+% personnel and 30% special education-related costs. This means it is harder each year to cut from the budget without hitting bone:  teachers. critical services, and legally-mandated services. This is a stark reality the town has largely been able to ignore because it has typically favored tax overrides to cover operating budget deficits rather than cuts. Sharon will continue to be faced with this no-win choice. 

In anticipating likely deficits, I will push for the School Committee to engage the STA for their recommendations. In addition to Dr. Botelho, they are the subject matter experts and stakeholders who should have the opportunity and responsibility to recommend to the School Committee how to tackle a deficit with the least harm resulting. 

I was incredibly disappointed this year to see residents and the school committee advocate for preserving teacher positions by eliminating administrator roles, only to have the STA urge the SC to save those administrator positions. However, the STA did not come to the table with any alternative recommendations of their own. They can’t have it both ways. I hope to engage them as a partner as the district considers potential cuts in the future. 

There will also be re-negotiation of the teacher’s contract within the next three year SC term. As someone who has been directly involved in public sector labor negotiations for nearly 10 years, I’d seek to bring my experience and relationship-building ability to developing a new contract that respects, rewards, recruits, and retains our best educators, while also allowing the town of Sharon to live within its realistic budget capabilities. 

Finally, I don’t think we can avoid at least TALKING ABOUT whether an override is needed in future years — if budgets continue to be millions short of needs. The town has raised taxes substantially in the last few years for the new high school, new Town Hall, new Public Safety building and more. The water bill has also gone up significantly. So, I understand the reluctance to raise taxes further. Really, I do. 

Over the last 25 years though, generally speaking, property values have tripled or quadrupled, and property taxes have essentially doubled. This doesn’t seem like an unreasonable trade off. An override must be worth keeping on the table, for now, as an option, to preserve the town’s most precious resource, and preserve property values if no other options prove satisfactory. 

Deleveling is a popular trend nationwide to eliminate advanced and honors classes. The Sharon superintendent has proposed to eliminate advanced math at the middle school and advanced science classes in early high school. What is your position on deleveling?

There are really two parts to this question. The preservation of honors and AP classes, which is critical; and, the intentional shoe-horning of students into a multilevel class, which I oppose. 

I have been a part-time college admissions counselor for nearly 20 years. I have read thousands of applications for Suffolk University, my alma mater. As such, I understand what it takes for students to get into Ivy League Schools (for whom Suffolk is a “safety”), and I understand what it takes for students to get into Suffolk when it may be their “reach” school.

The amount and variety of honors and AP classes that Sharon High School offers is one of the ways that colleges and universities measure the rigor of SHS. Therefore, it is important for ALL students - not just those students in honors and AP classes - that we preserve these classes. We want students at all academic levels to be viewed by colleges and universities as having come from a rigorous curriculum and highly regarded school.

Additionally, honors and AP classes are important experiences that push students, helping them prepare intellectually and practically for adulthood. Some students will take many honors and AP classes, while other students may only take one or two. Particularly for students who may take fewer of these classes, it is important that we preserve a wide variety of subjects; we should want as many students as possible to take even just that one class about which they are most passionate and prepared to do advanced-level work. 

There are times when it is reasonable to let (or risk) a student, who believes they are prepared for higher level work, to do so despite not having the pre-requisite grade or a teacher’s support.

But I do not endorse de-leveling because it swings the pendulum too far in minimizing the experience and perspective of educators. Moreover, it hurts students and teachers in practical terms. It is exceptionally difficult for teachers to teach a topic to two or three different levels of students at the same time. As a result, students are inevitably not receiving the level of education they could be. This is particularly true for the students at the college prep-level who may be less likely to be able to figure things out on their own when the class moves too fast and less likely to speak up. And students at the more advanced end are likely to become less engaged and potentially bored by the slower pace needed to bring along all students.

Each student’s appropriate academic placement should be made on a case-by-case basis, in consultation with the teacher, student, and family; there will be students for whom the jump is reasonable and some for whom it is not. But forcing teachers to teach a multi-level class, particularly at the High School, does not generally help students be most successful.

Many Sharon parents feel they are forced to hire private tutors or enroll in outside classes because either their child is not being challenged enough or is falling behind. What can you do as a School Committee member to help all children achieve their full academic potential?

Parents bringing in tutoring services because their children are not getting effective special education services have the most recourse through the IEP process to demand that the district meet the educational needs of their student with a disability. The School Committee has not done a good job seeking data on the effectiveness of Special Education Services or utilizing the input of SSEPAC, which is a subcommittee to the school committee. I would insist on both things. 

Parents seeking tutoring because their children are not effectively being taught how to read or perform basic math is an embarrassment to the district and must be fixed immediately. 

I am hopeful that new curriculum and associated new teaching methods will allow for rapid improvement in these core competencies. Again though, the School Committee will need to seek data on the implementation  of the curriculum, student performance data on these key skills, and solicit feedback from parents on how things are going from their perspective. It should be an area of accountability for Dr. Botelho and priority #1 for the incoming Asst Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction (who, hopefully, will be a highly qualified professional). 

For families seeking outside academic enrichment because their student is gifted & talented, and not being sufficiently challenged day to day in school, we must also do more. It is unacceptable to just take as a given that some students will be thrown busy work or largely ignored because they are too far ahead of everyone else. As part of the budget process, I will be asking what resources we can begin to build in to challenge our brightest students; whether some type of gifted/talented program is finally needed. From a Superintendent accountability perspective, and reviewing each school improvement plan and some programs of study, I will be asking about what steps our schools are taking to challenge and support our brightest students. By beginning to bring these questions out into the open, I hope to spur discussion and some action. 

Indeed, the need for this many parents to be seeking outside services and supports for their children of all academic abilities is not being talked about nearly enough at the SC level, and we need to acknowledge this and begin to ask our district leadership to address it.