SLIDESHOW: Framingham Mayor Tours Christa McAuliffe Charter School

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FRAMINGHAM – Earlier this month, City of Framingham Mayor Charlie Sisitsky visited the Christa McAuliffe Charter School in Framingham.

Mayor Sisitsky took a tour of the multi-building campus, and learned about the regional public charter middle school based in Framingham, with First Lady Robin Kaye.

Ironically, his visit coincided with the one-year anniversary of the day he defeated the City’s first-ever Mayor, to become just the second Mayor in the City’s history.

The Christa McAuliffe Charter School accepts students in grades 6-7-8 through a blind lottery.

The school is an expeditionary learning one, in which scholar success “combines academic achievement, character and high quality work. The three cores of scholar achievement include Mastery of Knowledge and Skills, Character, and High Quality Work.”

Mayor Sisitsky and First Lady Kaye stoped by French teacher Karim Dao’s classroom.

The students were designing their own community. creating urban spaces with fire stations, schools, and neighborhood parks. Each group of students had planned out their own community on a map.

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The Mayor talked about urban planning with the students.

A retired Department of Public Works Director in the Town of Natick, he discussed road repair and customer service with the classroom.

“‘We fix the roads because when we don’t fix the roads, people complain, why don’t you fix the roads? So we fix the roads, but that leads to a temporary disruption to the traffic, and then we hear from residents about traffic. But once the roads are fixed, everybody’s happy again, until the next problem surfaces,” said the Mayor to the students.

The Mayor and his wife also visited teacher Rodney Ward’s math class, an adventure class in the gym space, and a drug awareness class. Interim Director Frederick Randall talked to the Mayor and First Lady about the curriculum and the hands-on learning across all subject levels.

For example, English Language Arts and Social Studies ELA and Social Studies are taught by the same teacher, at the charter school.

“There are regular cross-curricular connections and fluid movement between the two subjects. ELA curriculum includes novel studies, reading groups, and a writer’s workshop. Social Studies curriculum includes geography (sixth grade), ancient civilizations (seventh grade), U.S. history (eighth grade),” according to the school.

While going from classroom to classroom on his tour, Mayor Sisitsky asked the students “what do you think the Mayor does?”

One student said he makes “local decisions.” Another student said “you run the City.”

“All good answers. The Mayor does that and a lot of other things. Mayor is responsible for running the city, making sure everything that the services that the city provides done – like plowing your street when there’s snow. Fixing potholes. Picking up your trash. Providing parks and recreation. Even schools – half of the city’s budget goes to our school system. So we may have to make sure that we provide schooling for everybody,” explained the Mayor to the classroom.

Mayor Sisitsky asked the student to guess how big the City’s budget is?

One student guessed $200,000. Another student said $2 million. Another student said $30 million.

“Think bigger than that,” said Mayor Sisitsky.

$100 million said another student.

“Much bigger than that,” said Mayor Sisitsky.

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“The City’s budget is $360 million. That goes for all the departments. The police department, the fire department schools, public works department, the park department. All these people that work for the city get paid out of that budget. And it’s a lot of responsibility to make sure that everything gets done properly and the money gets spent properly. And the mayor responsible for all that,” said Mayor Sisitsky.

“The Mayor hires a lot of people to help him. Mayor can’t do all the work himself. So we have to hire people. We have to hire firefighters. We have to hire policemen. Hire a Police Chief. Fire Chief, Department of Public Works Director. A lot of people work for the city. The Mayor is responsible for making sure all those people do their jobs and everything gets done,” explained Mayor Sisitsky.

One of the student’s asked how do you become Mayor?

Mayor Sisitsky said he had to run for office, and he received the most votes last year, and now he will stay in office for a 4-year term that ends December 31, 2025.

But he explained to students that the start of his political life began with a school.

“I got involved in my kids’ PTO at Potter Road School. We tried to get a new sidewalk built behind the Potter Road School and nobody could figure out how to get it done. We found out that there’s a Town Meeting and a Town Administrator and a Town Finance Committee and all those people made decisions about different things that go on in the Town. And so I became more active, and I became a Town Meeting member. Then I was elected to the Board of Selectmen. When we became a city, I became a City Councilor and from there I became the Mayor,” said Sisitsky. “I worked my way up and through the years I learned a lot about the community, how the community works, and what departments do what things, and who the people are to do the work. And it’s a very complex operation, but once you understand how it works, it makes your job a lot easier.”

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The Mayor and his wife also observed a classroom where students discussed observations of the sky during different hours of the day.

Throughout the the Mayor and the First lady asked as many questions as they received. They both took an active involvement in each classroom they visited and engaged with students and staff.

Kaye said that her daughter was one of the first students at the school when it first started, and remarked on all the changes since then.

At the end of the tour, Christa McAuliffe Charter School’s Director of Admission and Community Outreach Gary Alpert asked the Mayor “We all have things that are challenging in our lives, whether we’re students or adult teacher family member. In your role, what do you find challenging and what do you find brings you the most joy?”

“That’s a great question. There’s a lot of things that keep me up at play. There’s so many different issues going on in Framingham, We’re working on the budget. We’re trying to get our water and sewer department straightened out. We’re trying to clean up a couple of different parks in the city. Mary Dennison, I don’t know if anybody is familiar with Mary Dennison Park, but that’s contaminated site and we’re working to clean that up. We’re in the process of buying the old railroad right of way over near Edgell Road and that’s called the Bruce Freeman Rail Trail. And we’re in the process of negotiating with the railroad company to buy that and we’re gonna be building a rail trail nice,” said Mayor Sisitsky to a classroom of students.

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“The school department is looking to build a new school then on the south side on Bethany Road. So we have to worry about buying a piece of land where we can build the school. Those are the bigger problems,” said the Mayor to Albert and the classroom. “And then I get phone calls from people with individual problems. Some people call and complain about their neighbors making noise. My staff answers the phone, and we try to solve problems.

“Some of the things that I really enjoy about the job is meeting people, like school kids and senior citizens. And we go, my wife and I go to many, many outside activities to meet people. And every time we meet people, we learn new things about different parts of the community. This is such a large community and it’s such a diverse community that everybody has different interests and one of the jobs of the mayor and the city government is to try to provide services for all of these different interests,” said Mayor Sisitsky.

The Mayor told the students it is not always easy to solve problems, but that his wife Robin, helped him solve one.

“I like to hear from people like you for new ideas and what we can be doing better. We can always do improvements. RI asked Robin when I first became Mayor, what can I do to make things better? She said, why don’t you improve the farmer’s market? I don’t know if you’re familiar with the farmer’s market down in Framingham Center Common. It’s great now. Her suggested changed made a big improvement this year from previous years because there was nobody coordinating it and nobody was making the proper arrangements to bring in different vendors and farmers and everything. And we changed that around this year. We changed the hours to make it more convenient for people. We took away the fees. We got rid of the fees that the vendors were paying to come there and we got more and more vendors and farmers and other people selling goods to come and it drew more people and it fed off of each other itself. And now people are very happy with the farmer’s market. So we’re gonna continue to do that, listen to ideas and make things better in the City,” the Mayor told the classroom of students.

While the students learned about the Mayor and municipal government in the City of Framingham, Mayor Sisitsky learned about the charter school, its curriculum, and its students.

The school is holding an informational session, via Zoom, for prospective students and their parents on Tuesday, December 13 at 7 p.m.

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Editor’s Note: Updated on December 7 to fix name.