Shrewsbury

Dear Neighbor,

I am your neighbor at 20 Hapgood Way. I have lived on this street for over a decade and have taught at WPI for 20 years. I think we need to better support our public schools. Cristina, my spouse, and I want to make sure that every student attending Shrewsbury school in the next ten years will receive as good an education as our two boys aged 17 and 19. This will not happen without action from the voters.

Did you know that under the proposition "2 1/2" law the Selectman can only raise taxes by 2 ½ % even if costs go up by more? Year after year (since 1982) the cost of schools has gone up more than that 2 ½ %. Only once since then, in 2014, have the Shrewsbury voters supported an override to support the increased cost of educating our youth. We, the voters, need to do this more often and we must do one now.

I am part of the campaign to support this override. I would share with you why I think you should care, and to answer any questions you might have. I was hoping to find you at home and to chat with you from the street (we have a pandemic going on so I will stay back and stay masked). If you have a moment I would love to talk for 5 minutes. Just give me a call. My cell is 774-239-6826.

My email is nth@wpi.edu. If you are already 100% sure you support this can you just text me as such! You can also express your support for “VOTE YES!” and sign up to help at campaignforshrewsbury.com/support

Sincerely,

Neil Heffernan

nth@wpi.edu 774 239 6826

20 Hapgood Way, Shrewsbury MA 01545

P.S. Since I am a professor I had to do my own analysis of the data and what I found shocked me. I pulled down the data from the Massachusetts Department of Education site that shows how much each town spends per pupil and Shrewsbuy is in the bottom 11%! In particular our funding is much lower than our neighboring districts like Northboro/Southboro (up at 61%) and Westboro (in the middle at 45%). Look at the data yourself by pulling the data here: http://tiny.cc/Shrewsbury2021. For more context listen to Joe Sawyer explain in detail this funding shortfall (http://tiny.cc/Sawyer-2021).