Posts by David Scannell
Bob Baines’s greatest skill as mayor was to transform the daily details of running a city into something if not poetic then at least into something that transcended the smoke-filled backroom dealing city government is often associated with.
The charter revision was never adopted, but the city’s Board of Mayor and Alderman did subsequently approve a long-overdue salary bump for the person who captured the mayoralty in 2023, a bit of nuance the Ayotte campaign fails to note in its TV spot, thereby intentionally creating the false impression that Craig was feathering her own nest despite never receiving a raise as mayor.
Among those cut out of the curriculum, according to media reports, was Audre Lorde, perhaps the foremost Black woman poet of the 20th century. As famous as Lorde, who died at age 58 in 1992, is in certain circles, hers is hardly a household name, but there is a group of now-middle-aged Central High School graduates who are unlikely to forget their run-in as high school students with a woman whose work Ron DeSantis believes to be unfit for high school consumption.
As a longtime public school English teacher, I have a vested interest in whether this bill becomes a law. As someone trained in the law, I have profound reservations about its constitutionality. And as an active citizen in my community, I fear the bill will be used for nefarious partisan purposes that will have a significant chilling effect on the open exchange of ideas that is so critical to cultivating the next generation of active citizens, an outcome that I suspect is actually an objective of the bill’s sponsors. Â
If it were a city, it would be a big one – like New York. Its Times Square would be the spot where the ground floors of the James and the Burns buildings intersect. It is from a tiny, windowless office in that precise location that Selma Naccach-Hoff has chaired Central’s English department for roughly half of her 45-year career as a teacher and mentor to thousands of Manchester kids. It is from this perspective that she has watched the rich pageant of four generations of American high school students march by day after day.
Every two years, the citizens of Manchester elect their representatives to the mayor’s office and to the aldermanic and school boards. Parents, teachers, taxpayers and students should be made aware when the superintendent’s contract is going to be discussed and should have an opportunity to weigh in.