Featured below are letters and links our organization has created and circulated.
02-26-2025 – Testimony from Meenakshi Verma Agrawal to the School Committee Board
My name is Meenakshi Verma-Agrawal and I am the parent of 3 Framingham Public School students. This is not my first time here and not my last time here. I stand here representing not only my children but also all the students in our larger community in Framingham. I am also a co-founding member of Framingham Families for Racial Equity in Education.
My first statement is for the school committee regarding the DESE report. I am enraged in your inability to hold the FPS leadership responsible for the poor outcomes we see across the district. As a committee, every single one of you has failed our community of children. You should look at these DESE numbers with shame and ask yourself why an entire committee of people, who are representing children and families in this district, cannot hold Dr. Tremblay responsible for the outcomes of our students. Instead, he is publicly lauded and awarded contracts without any accountability. Any effort to reach out to any of you, results in a cut copy paste, likely AI generated response of the laundry list of items leadership has done to address these issues. I am representing all the parents who feel confused with your emails and false representations of the data. Say it clearly and with integrity.
The second statement is in regards to the meeting in May 2024 where I testified about how the district is hemorrhaging staff and teachers of color. You all ignored FFREE and that letter. That number was over 15 then, and now is close to 30. THIRTY people who could have been excellent educators and role models to our students of color and white children. We have been raising this issue and you all do not care. And now, FPS has been named in a lawsuit about discrimination and racism in the district. Are you willing to take my taxes and payout lawsuit after lawsuit because you are too scared to say how you feel about district leadership publicly?
FFREE gets anonymous messages from people who work in the district who have experienced direct retaliation for speaking up about their experiences. There is still no recourse. Now, with you renewing the contract, the Superintendent has carte blanche authority to do whatever he wants. Imagine being paid nearly a quarter of a million dollars and starting a podcast with your free time, all the while your staff, students and families suffer. Along with his team, who are left with individuals who cannot do their jobs. We have tried many times to hold him accountable, but his entire team, from Amy to Inna are experts in one thing: stonewalling parents and teachers, and bullying them into compliance, all the while pledging to care about the students.
Enough is enough. These two issues are emergencies. DO YOUR JOB. You all do not recognize the privilege of your seats and are letting politics take priority over children. We demand a public response to our requests.
02-14-2025 – 2024 DESE Report Card: Where Do We Stand? – Cleopatra Mavhunga
02-07-2025 – Letter from Esta Montano to the School Committee Board:
Dear School Committee Members,
I am writing to comment on district accountability data.
I hope that you will not ignore this email. Too much is at stake.
For those of you who do not know me, since 1995, I have worked in the field of education in a number of capacities. I am experienced and I understand the data. I have a firm grasp of teaching and learning and I stay current in terms of effective practices. I know that what I am seeing in the data is abominable. If you, as school committee members, cannot see this and are not poised to do something drastic about it, then this raises questions for me.
There is so much to comment on, and I have decided not to: you can look at these data yourselves. One area that I would like to call your attention to, however, is the fact that fewer than 50% of all 9th graders passed all of their courses. This is an outrage…this is an emergency. Also, you should look carefully at the ELL/MLL data. The scores have dropped at an alarming rate, and I attribute this directly to Aradhana Mudambi’s lack of leadership and the damage that she did to ELLs during her few years here. She took an outstanding program and destroyed it, to the detriment of our students. Although it is water under the bridge, and as has been the case with other positions, there was an opportunity to hire someone who would have continued an upward trajectory. She was not hired by FPS and she is in Revere now, where ELLs are thriving.
The numbers do not lie, and this calls for you and the community to take a closer look. We cannot keep doing the same thing and think that things will improve. We need to understand that there should be new and innovative ways of looking at teaching and learning in a supportive and collaborative manner. Also, these results have been severely impacted by the tremendous turnover in principals at the elementary school level. We cannot blame families or students. The onus is on the professionals. Among other things, teachers need effective PD that will help them to teach all students. They need support. Something is obviously not working, and it urgently needs to be corrected. Our students do not have the luxury of time.
I wonder what your thoughts are about the data and what your plans may be for implementing strategies that will yield significant change.
Thank you for your time,
Sincerely,
Dr. Esta Montano
12-14-2021 – FFREE Report Card – Framingham Public Schools Earn Poor Grades on Racial Equity Report Card
09-20-2021 – Letter to FPS regarding BIPOC District Representation
Framingham Families for Racial Equity in Education 