Editorials – Everett Leader Herald

Senator Hart for superintendent

We are proud to endorse Acting Superintendent of the Everett Public Schools Billy Hart to become the permanent superintendent. He is the right man, in the right place, at the right time, who knows what to do and how to do it when it comes to public school education.

Hart is also masterful at managing the politics of public school education in this city, where he is held in such high regard.

This is not to say we have deserted Superintendent Priya Tahiliani, who was placed on paid administrative leave pending the outcome of an investigation of a number of alleged complaints by unnamed school department employees in what appears to be a highly suspect action intended to discredit Tahiliani.

She cannot be dealt with until that investigation is conducted and the results written up for all to see. This cannot possibly occur before the end of the year.

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Senator Sal for the home team

No one on Beacon Hill has worked more diligently for this city recently in a high stakes play to bring the Revolution Soccer Team here than Senator Sal DiDomenico.

If the Revolution gain the right to place a stadium on the property used for generating electricity for the past 100 years on Alford Street on Lower Broadway across from the Encore Casino and Hotel, it will be, in large part, because of the senator’s influence and his hard work and for always keeping his eye on the ball.

Bringing a professional soccer stadium to Everett with all the add-ons is big medicine, as we so often like to say.

It is the kind of thing most urban cities would die for, and which Everett should welcome.

City hall is welcoming it. It appears Beacon Hill wants to make this happen.

No one from this city on Beacon Hill, or from any city, works with the tenacity and the strong will of Senator DiDomenico.

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Thanksgiving

Nothing about our lives, and about American life in general, is what it used to be.

Everything about our lives has changed, and rather dramatically, during the past 20 years.

The Internet and cell phone age upon us has caused a revolution in our society and in societies across the globe.

But some things, a very few things, remain the same here in New England and one of those holidays without change is Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving these days marks the moment when the rush to Christmas goes into overdrive.

In fact, there are already many homes with Christmas trees – although we haven’t yet heard any Christmas songs being played on the radio or inside stores…but that is shortly coming.

Thanksgiving remains a time to be grateful for our lives and all that we have. It remains, as most of us will agree, the one holiday that typifies life in New England.

Unbelievably enough, or not unbelievable at all, are calls by some indigenous people to do away with Thanksgiving.

We believe those calls are as inappropriate as not continuing the celebration of the holiday.

High school football games, turkey dinners with all the fixings with families gathered around dinner tables nearly everywhere and a few days off from school or the office, or wherever we tend to work, in large measure is what this holiday is all about.

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60 years and counting since the day the world stood still when JFK was killed

By Josh Resnek
Editor
The Leader Herald

A photograph of JFK I cut out of Life Magazine a few weeks after his assassination has remained with me for a lifetime.

I was 13 when he was killed in Dallas on a day those of us old enough to recall it will never forget.

That photo shown in the photograph accompanying this article reveals John F. Kennedy as most of us who lived through that era remember him – handsome, impeccably dressed, and looking quite unlike any president this nation had known up to the time he was killed in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

With all the troubles our government has been experiencing, nothing really compares to the fracture in the nation Kennedy’s assassination caused.

Killing an American president – and he likely died due to a government inspired conspiracy – is the rough equivalent of an atomic attack on our way of life.

When his brother Robert Kennedy died from an assassin’s bullet in 1968, the nation was being torn apart by radicalism and violence with the rich against the poor, whites against Blacks, women against men, and the old against the young.

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The ultimate jury

Last week’s election has proven that voting counts, that Everett voters think, that they vote for representatives that they believe will do their bidding.

Everett voters, we believe, were largely persuaded by events that have occurred here during the past two years.

Primary among them, is the public schools overcrowding issue and the controversy concerning Superintendent of Schools Priya Tahiliani, who was placed on administrative leave with pay.

The ongoing very public and contentious battle between the mayor and a great number of residents and parents of school children who wanted the former Pope John High School converted into a middle school to mitigate overcrowding, appears to be one of the causes of the dramatic turnover on the school committee and on the city council as well.

Most councilors were in favor and remain in favor of using Pope John as a school.

Tahiliani’s placement on administrative leave, is another issue believed to be a mover for change noted at the ballot box.

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