Middle School Lottery

The Middle School lottery for fifth graders desiring to enter the Susan B. Anthony Middle School (SBA) next year has been tentatively scheduled for May 3.
The lottery is to be held in the City Council chambers and an outside auditing firm will conduct the drawing.
Before the lottery, there will be a chance for parents on both sides of the city to vent their frustrations to the School Committee. The meeting is scheduled for April 24th and already there are several parents who have asked for time to address the Committee.
The lottery will apply to all fifth-graders in the Paul Revere, Lincoln and Whelan Elementary schools who have chosen the SBA as their first choice.
Superintendent Paul Dakin said that the lottery decision by his administration and the School Committee has been very unpopular but necessary.
“We have a lot of angry folks at the Whelan School because they feel the middle school seats at the SBA should be reserved for them,” he said.
However, it’s gone beyond being just unpopular. Some of those angry folks have actually made physical threats via the Internet towards Dakin.
“When bodily harm is being threatened we will use the resources to find out what computer the threat came from,” he said. “We have all the resources behind us and we’ll find out where it originated. I can take the verbal abuse, but when someone threatens bodily harm, it’s unacceptable.”
He said they have narrowed down the actual computer it came from and it came from someone who sent the threat from the PC at their state job.
And all this over a middle school and perhaps 15 extra minutes of driving? Ok…