TURNERS FALLS — An advocate for restoring the Turners Falls High School Indian Tuesday asked the school board to immediately suspend its process to get a new mascot given the results of a nonbinding referendum recently held in Montague.
Chris Pinardi said he hopes the Gill-Montague Regional School Committee would come together with the community to restore the former nickname and logo.
“We stand ready to take any action necessary to make this happen,” he said at Tuesday’s school committee meeting.
The board declined to take such action, but plans to revisit its approach to the mascot selection process next month.
The meeting began with pleas on both sides of what has become a schism within the community to either continue the process to find a new mascot for the school, or suspend that process and restore the Indian. The committee voted to remove the Indian on Feb. 14. Three months later, in a nonbinding referendum, voters supported the return of the Indian by a 3-to-1 margin.
On Tuesday, the school committee unanimously approved previously generated criteria for a new Turners Falls High School mascot. Member Christina Postera called for the public to continue sending emails and information about how they would like the process to go forward. She said that the board has been proceeding carefully.
“Nobody was happy with the last process, that’s a given,” she said.
Newly appointed Erving representative Marisa Dalmaso-Rode, who is a nonvoting member of the committee, sought to address the comments from the beginning of the meeting during the board’s discussion.
Postera suggested having another working session on the mascot issue. School Superintendent Michael Sullivan will facilitate the meeting at the request of Chairwoman Timmie Smith. It will be June 20, from 6 to 7:30 p.m. The meeting will be recorded and open to the public, but not a formal regular meeting.
Newly elected Gill representative Shawn Hubert said he wanted to clarify some things that have been printed in local newspapers recently.
Hubert paused at the beginning of the meeting to clarify points made in a column by Chris Collins that ran in the Recorder’s editorial page on May 19. Hubert said a characterization that he, April Reipold and Cassie Damkoehler were forming a voting block to try to fire Sullivan was entirely false.
Hubert said he is not having private discussions of that nature with either Reipold, Damkoehler or anyone else.
“That’s not what we’re doing here, that’s not what I’m doing here,” he said.
In other business, the committee also discussed new solutions to the recent budget shortfall.
Two weeks ago, Sullivan withdrew his recommendation to combine fifth and sixth grade classes at Gill because the expected students in the sixth grade class increased.
Instead, he recommended that with the resignation of the current middle school/high school librarian, he will move the position to part-time while cutting days for certain guidance counselors at Gill and Sheffield.
Reach Miranda Davis
at 413-772-0261, ext. 280
or mdavis@recorder.com.