Word: shaplin
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Cambridge Civic Association, represented in the School Committee by minority member Judson T. Shaplin '42, associate dean of Education, has protested the appointments as "illegal" and collected over 11,000 signatures, which by law require a popular referendum on the subject...
There are two statutes in the General Laws of Massachusetts, however, which do somewhat confine the School Committee statutes upon which Shaplin is relying to obtain a permanent injunction against the appointments. Chapter 71, Section 38, of the General Laws reads: "it (the committee) shall elect and contract with the teachers of the public schools, shall require full and satisfactory evidence of their moral character, and shall ascertain their qualifications for teaching and their capacity for the government of schools." Section 59 of the same chapter also reads in part: A superintendent... shall be the executive officer of the committee...
...also refused at its January 17 meeting to grant a request from the Cambridge Council of PTA's to use the M.E. Fitzgerald School for its regular meeting. Instead, Sullivan referred the request to the Committee of Buildings and Grounds, whose chairman is pro-appointments committeeman James F. Fitzgerald. Shaplin, realizing that Fitzgerald would never call a meeting before the PTA's scheduled event, moved that any available school be used if the preferred one was inconvenient. Fitzgerald complained that this move was a "subterfuge," to which the more experienced Mayor calmly replied, "We'll vote it down." After...
...greatest vocal adversary of the PTA and the other opposition groups is the voluble Fitzgerald. The Committee-man alternately adopts a tone of righteous innocence or angry impoliteness, with the latter being more frequent. He at one meeting called Shaplin a "big bum," and has persistently complained that the Dean has "impugned all our motives." On another occasion, Fitzgerald had CRIMSON photographers ejected from a committee meeting. He insists that, examinations or not, Cambridge residents should be given preference for teaching positions. With just as much rigor, he opposes the merit system, claiming that it is the "greatest fraud ever...
Even so, state courts are hesitant to take actions which might tend to weaken the power of local school committees, or to set themselves up as "super school committees." Shaplin is by no means certain that his group will win its case, but he has a strong conviction that the school committees have too much power. At present the Dean has begun a survey of school legislation in other states as the basis for making proposals to the General Court urging the strengthening of state control over the public school system. In any case, the present controversy will have served...