WILL THE "ITEM" TAKE GASS OVER THE GARDEN

Your editorial “Salad days for Lynn schools” requires corrections:

Since our beginning, the Item printed articles supporting the Ford School garden and the Highlands Coalition. We sincerely thank the Item for covering what we do in a struggling neighborhood.

The success of the Ford School garden, which we and students from LVTI built seven years ago, inspired several principals to request a garden. We thank the Lynn School Committee for expanding school gardens and setting down rules to manage them as 'science and nutrition' classrooms.

We are very disappointed in how the Ford School garden, the Mother of Lynn school gardens, was, without warning, mostly destroyed by Dr. Latham this week.

Your editorial raised important questions and statements:

1. Item:  “If you wanted the garden to remain there, why was it not planted this year?” Dr. Latham locked us out of the garden and said that a garden committee had to be set up. Ask her this question, not us.

2. Item: “Gass ...was given ample opportunity to remove those items (belonging to the Coalition).” When Dr. Latham and the School Committee assured me that the garden would remain, I said that we would donate everything we built and paid for to the school. Dr. Latham broke that agreement by sending a back-hoe to begin the destruction of 75% of the garden. Rather than see the garden boxes destroyed, we moved them to nearby Cook St. Park.

3. Item: “It would appear that the garden had run its course.” Ford students took vegetables to the Topsfield Fair, getting 22 ribbons, the most won by a group in the Fair's 200 year history ! The head of Food Corps stated that our garden was their best project in the USA. This year, the students begged to come to the garden, but teachers were not permitted to send them.

4. Item: “Nobody is discouraging anyone from the community from helping tend these gardens.” Under Dr. Latham's edict, classrooms were removed. There is no place to sit. For a community person to work there, they have to be CORI'd (good idea) and sign in at the office, which is closed on weekends and during the summer. There will be no community meals, as we had for GLSS elders and others. As a community garden, we helped closed a drug house near the school and found apartments for desperate families whom we met in the garden.

5. Item:  “Let's not paint Superintendent Catherine Latham as callous in this.” Dr. Latham, under the catchy phrase 'salad days,' has replaced a community garden with a school garden. We grew 31 vegetables, including long beans, bok choi, ginseng from Asia, calalou from Africa, purslane, potatoes, squash and corn from Latin America that are cooked, not served in salads. In the area left, far fewer vegetables can be grown. Nearly all salad veggies will be brought to the garden. How can 500 kids plant in an area left for 25 kids ?

Where Superintendent Kostan praised us, Dr. Latham has never gave us a work of praise. She has closed 24 programs at the school since Dr. Crane retired. She told children at our protest that the school had the lowest MCAS scores in the city. Eliminating tutoring will lead to lower scores, wouldn't you agree?

David Gass, Director

Highlands Coalition