Amherst, Massachusetts voters going to the polls today are being asked to fill five spaces on the city’s Regional School Committee left open after a controversy around the treatment of transgender students led to multiple resignations on the committee and the school administration.
Back in the spring of this year, students in a Amherst Regional High School journalism class did a deep dive into an alleged culture of transphobia they found at a nearby middle school, and their report in the school newspaper, The Graphic, led to serious investigations, which in turn led to the resignations.
Reports MassLive.com:
Three school committee members, Allison McDonald, Peter Demling and the panel’s chairperson, Ben Herrington, along with Superintendent Michael Morris, all handed in their walking papers within days of each other, MassLive previously reported.
All told, seven candidates are running for five, available spots on the panel. At a public forum last month, attended by six of the seven candidates, all vowed to make sure community voices were heard, and that the district’s next superintendent shared the community’s values of diversity and inclusion, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported.
Read the complete MassLive.com story about races to watch in today’s elections in Massachusetts here.
