The Gill-Montague Regional School Committee is hosting the final public forum on the Turners Falls mascot today from 5 to 7 p.m.
The meeting, which will be held in the high school auditorium and speakers and audience members will be expected to follow the same rules as the previous forum. Speakers will be limited to three minutes and audience members have been asked not to interrupt.
The board has asked speakers not to use video, or visual presentations when they speak. According to School Committee Chairman Mike Langknecht, those who spoke at the first forum won’t be allowed to speak at the second one.
Sign up to speak will start at 4:30 p.m. and go for one hour until 5:30 p.m.
Whether the school should keep the mascot, which is currently an Indian, has been debated by the public since a group of citizens approached the Gill-Montague Regional School Committee last May calling for them to change the mascot.
Since that time, school officials introduced and passed a proposal to create a review with public input to decide whether the school should keep the mascot.
Since the introduction of the proposal, community members have circulated online petitions either calling for the committee to get rid of the mascot, or to keep it.
In addition to the public forums, the committee is also hosting four “inquiry events” to get specific information about certain points of view on the mascot debate.
Those four events will run from the end of November to the beginning of January and are for the school committee and, unlike the public forums, the committee members will be allowed to ask questions. The inquiry events, which cover historical, multicultural/social justice, local Native American and Turners Falls alumni perspectives, will be open to the public as well.
You can reach
Miranda Davis
at 413-772-0261, ext. 280
or mdavis@recorder.com.