Tag Archives: Baldwin

Vax Appointments made easy by Parent initiative

14 Mar

In overcoming obstacles of vaccination signups, parent volunteers were teachers’ secret weapon

By Tom MeekFriday, March 12, 2021

A sidewalk chalking at The Maria L. Baldwin School in the Agassiz neighborhood shows “love and encouragement” from parents, educators say. (Photo: Tom Meek)

News that educators and staff were eligible for Covid-19 vaccines as of Thursday was welcomed by school district employees, but didn’t address the dreaded task of trying to sign up and actually get an appointment. The horror stories are well documented from Phase 1, when seniors waited hours to sign up, then saw appointments vanish before their eyes as the time to book expired before they could enter required information.

At The Maria L. Baldwin School in the Agassiz neighborhood, that burden was lifted by an initiative led by parents Amanda Steenhuis, Nina Farouk and Angela Wong.

To date, the trio have booked appointments for more than 30 of the school’s 90-person faculty and staff, putting together a toolkit of best practices, hacks and key contacts with a central spreadsheet to help with the mobilization. Steenhuis called the work “relatively easy” – but scoring appointments means waking at 3 or 4 a.m. to get online, while still getting the kids off to school and taking care of other daily responsibilities.

“We found that it really took two to three dedicated volunteers searching at 4 to 6 a.m. for best results,” Farouk said. “Although over 20 people volunteered for the early morning, wake-ups were tough.”

Steenhuis, a defense attorney, said she’s texting friends, fellow parents and collaborators all day about vaccine appointments. “We call ourselves the Scheduling Psychoz,” she said.

“I want to cry”

The effort is not the first or only of its kind. Steenhuis, the parent of a third-grader in North Cambridge, learned of the idea from friends doing the same in Arlington and Lexington. Farouk, who has two boys at the school, saw similar efforts on Facebook. The two and Wong united and floated the idea by principal Heidi Cook, who embraced the effort.

The effort has resonated with the school and the community. “I don’t think the teachers would have gotten through it without the parent-led initiative,” family liaison Susan Tiersch said. The volunteers were thanked by one faculty member who, hearing the news of a scheduled appointment, told them, “I want to cry, what a wonderful way to start my day.”

“It feels amazing to know that you’ve helped someone access the vaccine,” Steenhuis said.

Parents supporting educators

More sidewalk chalkings at The Maria L. Baldwin School. (Photo: Tom Meek)

Parent-led initiatives in general have been a big boost to morale and the community during the pandemic, Tiersch said. “When we came back to school,” she said of the return to in-person classes for younger students, “parents had chalked up the sidewalk with messages of love and encouragement.” Parents last year also assembled 90 gift bags for Christmas in addition to the typical work of a parent appreciation week.

The difficulties of getting educator vaccinations may be about to ease.

“Hopefully things will get better with the site going live tomorrow,” Steenhuis said of online booking improvements promised for Saturday, “but where’s the fun in that?”

“We’ll still be up at 4 a.m. searching for those CVS appointments,” Steenhuis said.

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Agassiz, what’s in a Name

21 Jan

Support builds for a ‘Baldwin neighborhood,’ removing racist association of Agassiz name

By Tom Meek
Thursday, January 16, 2020
Cambridge Rindge and Latin School senior Maya Counter, right, leads a discussion Tuesday about changing the name of the Agassiz neighborhood. With her is Ann Charlotte Hogstadius, her mother. (Photo: Tom Meek)

A name change for the Agassiz neighborhood won unanimous approval this week at a community meeting, with the caveat by several voters that more conversation is needed.

The proposal to change the name to the “Baldwin neighborhood” comes from Maya Counter, a resident of the neighborhood and co-president of the Black Student Union at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School. But it’s not new – Counter, a senior, came upon the idea her sophomore year while researching a history class project and learning of the “flawed science and racist beliefs” of namesake Louis Agassiz.

It’s also not an idea new to the neighborhood. In 2002, a School Committee vote renamed the Agassiz School on Oxford Street to address the same discomfort; addressing the neighborhood name might have followed, according to people active in neighborhood politics at the time, had not many of the students and parents who pushed for the change felt burned out by the effort.

The neighborhood’s Maria L. Baldwin School was known as the Agassiz School until 2002. (Photo: Marc Levy)

There was little disagreement Tuesday about Agassiz and the context of his legacy. The Swiss-born scientist who lived from 1807 to 1873 was famous for founding Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, but controversial for pushing racially divisive theories as science. He believed in polygenism, the idea that human races are of different origins, and that whites were intellectually superior to other races. He has been discredited for his racism, and his belief in creationism lost out to the evolutionary theories of contemporary Charles Darwin.

His name was taken off the local elementary school in honor of Maria Baldwin, who in 1899 became the first black female school principal in the Northeast – “the most distinguished position achieved by a person of negro descent in the teaching world of America,” W.E.B. Du Bois said in 1917.

It was at the school that the Agassiz Neighborhood Council met Tuesday to give Counter the “constructive conversation” she requested, and a positive reaction by the approximately 30 neighborhood residents and staff in attendance.

Maria Baldwin, circa 1885. (Photo: Library of Congress)

Wider involvement sought

But there were concerns about process after Counter announced she had reached out to Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui and planned to present to the City Council at month’s end.

Many at the ANC meeting expressed a strong desire to be involved in the process and felt that one meeting in a neighborhood of approximately 6,000 residents – with only two dozen in attendance – was not enough. (To prepare for the meeting, Counter posted about the idea on the neighborhood social media site Nextdoor. As at the meeting, there was strong support for a name change, though also some challenges that “you can’t erase the past.”) Some people at the meeting were concerned that Counter was rushing to get the change done before graduation.

Some also floated the notion that perhaps the neighborhood was named after Agassiz’s wife, Elizabeth Cabot, a naturalist and the founder of Radcliffe College, and therefore the name might still be applicable. But correspondence from Charles Sullivan, executive director of the Cambridge Historical Commission, stated, “The Agassiz neighborhood was named after the Agassiz School, which is now the Baldwin School.”

No clear-cut process

Renaming a neighborhood lacks a clear-cut process, despite the recent change of Area IV to “The Port.” There too, race played a role, as residents believed the term “Area IV” was a police designation (it was created by the city facilitate analysis of the then upcoming 1940 U.S. Census). The change was made official by a City Council vote in 2015 after several rounds of community solicitation. In that situation too, not everyone felt the process had been inclusive enough, said Lee Farris, a resident of The Port who is active in civic affairs.

The Agassiz change may be simpler. A policy order by city councillor E. Denise Simmons approved unanimously in April asks the city to review the names of streets, schools and public buildings “that may be named in honor of those who have ties to the American slave trade” and work on renaming them “as soon as possible.” Agassiz, while not a slave owner and on record as an abolitionist, could be linked to slavery for espousing the beliefs that enabled it.

“Why keep it?”

There is already some eagerness for a name change among the hosts of the Tuesday meeting.

In 2007 the nonprofit that provides after-school services, runs the Maud Morgan Arts Center, hosts the Agassiz Neighborhood Council meetings and provides other community services, was rebranded the Agassiz Baldwin Community – a half-measure that doesn’t sit well with Counter. “Why keep it?” she said in an interview before the meeting, referring to the “Agassiz” part of the name. “He thought she was biologically inferior. It’s disrespectful to her.”

At the meeting, the nonprofit’s executive director, Maria La Page, agreed that having the name “Agassiz” upfront was a burden for an organization that holds inclusion at its core.

The Agassiz neighborhood is between Harvard and Porter squares and touches on Somerville, defined by Massachusetts Avenue to the west and Kirkland Street to the south.

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Old Pop

24 Feb

Rule about soda vending machines in schools can bend for vintage item that just popped up

 

By Tom Meek 
Thursday, February 21, 2019
A vintage Pepsi machine is on display after being found at the Maria L. Baldwin School. (Photo: Tom Meek)

As winter set in last year, parent Christopher Lim made an unexpected discovery among the custodial tools and snow removal equipment at The Maria L. Baldwin School: a vintage Pepsi vending machine.

The inert machine is on display outside administrator offices, sparking awe from passers-by who marvel at the mechanical simplicity, time-tested craftsmanship and classic Pepsi scripture. The irony of its discovery and current station: soft drink vending machines aren’t allowed in Cambridge Public Schools.

At first, the machine was thought to date back to World War II, but close examination of an attached distributor plate shows a 1954 patent date – which doesn’t preclude it from being older, but makes the earlier estimate less likely.

The vintage machine bears a message that also feels out of date in a Cambridge elementary school. (Photo: Tom Meek)

The machine probably arrived at the Agassiz neighborhood school by the hand of a custodian who retired more than a decade ago. Joseph “Buddy” Signorelli, assistant principal John Roderick said, “liked to drive around in his pickup truck and pick things up. There’s an old oval glass table out there too.” (Attempts to reach Signorelli for comment were unsuccessful.) 

The storage locker where it was discovered, while part of the school’s main structure, is accessible only from the outside, as it houses seasonal equipment and snow melting agents – likely helping the Pepsi machine remain hidden for at least a decade. For safety reasons, Roderick said, the machine has been taped shut.

Being stashed in storage with snow removal equipment helped hide the machine for more than a decade. (Photo: Tom Meek)

Lim had thought to sell the machine to benefit Baldwin Blooms, an annual fundraiser run by parents and friends to raise money for school trips. As is, the machine could fetch a couple of hundred dollars, maybe even crest a grand – but refurbished and working, it could be worth as much as $10,000. As of now it still sits in the school hallway, a nod to the past and a curio. “How much did a soda cost back then?” a curious elementary schooler asked. “Probably a nickel,” an accompanying adult replied. “Wow,” the child said.

Perhaps the machine might be good for remedial math problems and simple economic principles – such as inflation and cost of living increases.

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