Editor’s note: Wellesley Middle School Social Studies students as part of a Civics Action Projects has this week taken over The Swellesley Report‘s letters-to-the-editor page. The students are well-versed in their topics, have carefully researched all angles, and are ready to present their opinions to the community. Thank you to the WMS Social Studies teachers for organizing this community-based project.

To the editor:

Hunger is a big problem that sadly affects many people. According to a Greater Boston Food Bank study, one-third of the Massachusetts population is food insecure. Luckily, there are many ways people can help.

In the Massachusetts House and Senate, Bill S.98 is in the midst of discussion. This bill establishes a Restaurant Meals Program as part of the SNAP program. The SNAP program stands for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps families struggling with food insecurity buy food at lower prices in grocery stores. With this bill, anyone who is part of SNAP can go to restaurants for lower prices and get higher quality food.

This bill is currently being discussed in the House and the Senate, and we hope that it is passed soon. Next, Bill S.44 is also in the process of being passed in the Massachusetts legislature. This bill proposes the establishment of community fridges in areas with high food insecurity, and also makes sure the food being given to community fridges is fresh and safe to eat. A community fridge is a working refrigerator in an accessible location to the public that any person or organization can donate to. If this bill were passed, many food insecure people would be able to access food more easily. Advocacy for these bills could immensely improve the nutritional situation for many families in our state. One way to advocate for the bill is to e-mail our State Senator and State Representative (Cynthia.Creem@masenate.gov and Alice.Peisch@mahouse.gov respectively) and encourage them to take action.

In addition, many food pantries also help with the problem of food insecurity. For example, the Wellesley Food Pantry supplies over 400 people with food to eat and basic items for their houses. They could always use more donations that include food or money to feed their clients with healthy, nourishing food. The Wellesley Food Pantry has bins outside of Roche Bros. and Whole Foods where people can donate items to be picked up and brought to the pantry. In addition, the Wellesley Food Pantry posts a wish list on their website containing items that would be especially helpful. Hosting food drives would be a great way to help them collect more items.

Furthermore, the Wellesley Food Pantry is hosting a food drive in partnership with the Post Office on May 11th. The idea is to leave food donations next to your mailbox or neighborhood mailbox. Then, volunteers will come to collect it and drop it off at the Wellesley Food Pantry. Donations from their wish list would be greatly appreciated.

Similarly, the churches of St. Paul and St. John have ongoing food drives. Donations to St. Paul go directly to the Wellesley Food Pantry while the donations to St. John go to the St. Katharine Drexel Food Pantry. Both of these churches have the Wellesley Food Pantry food requests on their bulletins. Additionally, these churches host a seasonal collection for the Bristol Lodge during Thanksgiving to provide Thanksgiving dinners. This is a very important cause, so next fall please make sure to donate to these churches to give people in need the opportunity to have Thanksgiving dinner.

In addition, St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Wellesley has an Outreach Ministry that helps combat food insecurity among other causes. This Outreach Ministry funds both domestic and international organizations that help people struggling with hunger and homelessness. To propose an organization to donate to, you simply have to go on the St. Andrew’s website and submit a grant application. Anyone can submit an application to fund an organization that they think will benefit people around the country and the world. Questions can also be asked at outreach@standrewswellesley.org.

These churches are located in Wellesley and are open almost every day to donate. This would be a simple, easy way to help.

There is no need to wait to take action. Supporting state legislation and donating to food pantries and food drives can immensely help. Please consider taking action to ease food insecurity and to improve the quality of many people’s lives.

Ellie Rankin
Wellesley Middle School student

Editor’s note: Wellesley Middle School Social Studies students as part of a Civics Action Projects has this week taken over The Swellesley Report‘s letters-to-the-editor page. The students are well-versed in their topics, have carefully researched all angles, and are ready to present their opinions to the community. Thank you to the WMS Social Studies teachers for organizing this community-based project.

To the editor:

We should remove MCAS as a diploma requirement in Massachusetts public schools. It is biased against disabled students, denying them their diplomas, and by extension, their future. As Massachusetts citizens we have a moral responsibility to support all of our students, yet sadly we are failing at this task.

For context, high-stakes tests, like MCAS, are tests that influence significant decisions about students and schools they attend. In Massachusetts, graduation is the largest decision MCAS affects, results are also often used to grant merit-based scholarships.

First, high-stakes tests are rarely seen in non-academic settings and don’t correlate with a student’s intelligence. “Data shows that students with disabilities fail large-scale tests at higher rates than other students,” (Great Schools 2023). Many neurodivergent or disabled students show competency in different ways, finding tests difficult. Massachusetts’ requirement of passing MCAS to graduate means disabled students fail despite knowledge of the curriculum.

Second, removing high-stakes testing for graduation will increase graduation rates for disabled students. 90% of the general student population graduates high school, but only 78% of students with special needs do. This gap is unacceptable and a clear failing of both our students and the equal education requirements established by the ADA. Moreover, the fact that only eight states still use standardized testing for this purpose shows just how outdated it is. How can Massachusetts claim to be a progressive state if we are still this behind the times?

By removing MCAS we would improve the conditions of disabled students. When determining if students should receive a diploma on a wider range of assignments, disabled students are able to better demonstrate their abilities. Furthermore, reducing the focus on high-stakes testing would give disabled students more opportunities to express their knowledge and potential in school. Moreover, the Massachusetts workforce would increase and a greater number of students could enroll in higher education.

As previously mentioned, scholarships to public universities are awarded using MCAS results. Disabled students tend to do poorly on these types of tests, lowering their chances of earning a scholarship. If MCAS stops being used for this, scholarships will be better awarded to students. Disabled kids deserve to go to college as much as any other student, yet they are currently being denied this opportunity.

Clearly, MCAS is not fair to students with disabilities. It increases dropout rates, lowers graduation rates, and denies disabled students the wonderful future they deserve. So please, write a letter urging our representatives to remove MCAS. Until this issue is solved Massachusetts cannot claim to be an inclusive state.

Devin Kiernan
Cooper Hart
Wellesley Middle School students

Editor’s note: Wellesley Middle School Social Studies students as part of a Civics Action Projects has this week taken over The Swellesley Report‘s letters-to-the-editor page. The students are well-versed in their topics, have carefully researched all angles, and are ready to present their opinions to the community. Thank you to the WMS Social Studies teachers for organizing this community-based project.

To the editor:

Our beaches, harbors, and docks are a huge part of Massachusetts. From the time the pilgrims landed on its shores to now, the ocean and its life have been crucial to how this state functions. But there is one major pressing issue, with tons of components that negatively effect it every day. And that issue is coastal erosion.

Erosion causes mass destruction of homes, docks, and other settlements around the shores of our state. Dozens of homes on shores of places such as Cape Cod are crumbling into themselves due to lack of support and stability. Before the next century due to sea level rise and the shores eroding away, the shoreline will move 100ft. inward, causing some beaches to be fully submerged at high tide.

Jetties and canals built in the early 1900s are causing shores to cave in on themselves, and have caused 5,600 linear feet in down drift erosion. By 2100, most peninsulas will be completely underwater during high tide. This is not just a few inches of water on beaches, this is people’s livelihood. Schools, homes, families, and communities will be severely affected by this. It’s been estimated that thousands of homes along just the Cape Cod and Nantucket coastlines are at risk of collapse or severe flooding. Homes that were once dreamy vacation spots, or the perfect family home, are now safety hazards to anyone living in them.

In order to combat everything on this list, we need to work together to battle coastal erosion. We have a goal to minimize erosion in Massachusetts coast areas, such as Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. To protect the marine life off those shores we need to spread awareness to people living in those areas, but also educate them on how to make a positive impact on erosion, simply from their homes. Things like planting vegetation along the shorelines, building fewer homes or other structures on or near the shores, preventing and cleaning up litter along beaches, and even building terraces in sloped backyards are all simple things that will positively help this cause. Examples like these are not out-of-reach goals, and can be easily done with minimal costs.

We are truly looking for your support as we continue on this path of action. By simply reaching out to your representative, or using one of many different action plans that can be done from your own backyard or at your nearest beach, you can make a change at a scale that is comfortable for you that will have a great impact on the environment. Together we can strive to change our oceans and coast’s future, and make a positive impact on the world.

If you are interested in reaching out to your representative, send them an email asking them to support the bill Bill H.775 that supports strengthening the research and prevention of coastal erosion on Massachusetts shorelines.

Lily Crawford
Jocelyn Thomas
Jasiri Cash

Wellesley Middle School students

Editor’s note: Wellesley Middle School Social Studies students as part of a Civics Action Projects has this week taken over The Swellesley Report‘s letters-to-the-editor page. The students are well-versed in their topics, have carefully researched all angles, and are ready to present their opinions to the community. Thank you to the WMS Social Studies teachers for organizing this community-based project.

To the editor:

Teenagers need time. My 8th grade Wellesley Middle School Civics group thinks that we should have a four-day school week. Students can have a lot of stress and so they need a three-day weekend. We would have extra time to catch up on homework, sports and most importantly, to spend time with friends and family.

Evidence shows that students can complete 100% of work in 80% of time. A four-day school week can also help people with mental health issues, which is very needed because one in every five people in middle school and one in four people in high school have mental health issues. If kids learn this way, they will be less stressed, get better grades and have a higher morale. This would lead to better learning and better grades to set us up for success.

In order to make this happen, we also need parents to have a four-day work week. Studies show that four-day work weeks work for kids and adults. Therefore you should go support Bernie Sanders’ bill in the Senate for a four-day work week.

Currently the state law is to have 180 days of school a year in Massachusetts, but our goal is to change it to an amount of hours per school year, so we can have a four-day school week. This will work by having eight hours and ten mins per day instead of an average of six and a half hours or seven. We will have 144 days of school a year but still the same amount of hours of learning with this change.

Overall this would help everyone: it would reduce stress, increase time to catch up on sleep, spend time with friends and family and give everyone more time for hobbies outside of school.

Andrew Barbary
Wellesley Middle School student

Editor’s note: Wellesley Middle School Social Studies students as part of a Civics Action Projects has this week taken over The Swellesley Report‘s letters-to-the-editor page. The students are well-versed in their topics, have carefully researched all angles, and are ready to present their opinions to the community. Thank you to the WMS Social Studies teachers for organizing this community-based project.

To the editor:

When we think about how we get around town or travel in general, there’s always one thing that comes up again and again. No, it isn’t that there’s always traffic or that the GPS is wrong about the route. It’s the fact that we almost always travel with a group of people that we know in a car. Whether it’s your family or your friends, public transportation isn’t often considered.

Right now in the greater Boston area, public transportation is rarely used, despite the environmental and financial benefits it provides to people. Even if people wanted to, it isn’t very accessible, especially when you aren’t in a major city. However, we have found an organization that is pushing for a change in the Boston area. The MWRTA (MetroWest Regional Transit Authority) is an organization that runs buses all around the MetroWest area including routes in Wellesley. However, none runs on the weekends.

One of the routes in Wellesley runs from the easternmost point of Wellesley and goes all the way to the other side of Wellesley, then to the Natick Mall. A recent experience I had was one weekend when two of my friends and I wanted to go to the mall but we had no ride. Since the MWRTA only runs on the weekdays we had no way to get there, and ended up not going. If the MWRTA was running on the weekends, we could’ve used that as our way to get there and back. This isn’t just a problem for me, in a survey we conducted for Wellesley residents, 64% of people said that they went to the Natick Mall on the weekends while only 15% said that they went on weekdays. This means that for the majority of people, weekday runs aren’t very useful and that weekend runs would provide much more value.

Next, the MWRTA should run on weekends for those who can’t or aren’t old enough to drive (often students) so that they too can get around on weekends. In this day and age, cars are most people’s main form of transportation, but not everyone has one. This is yet another demographic that would benefit from weekend runs.

By running Wellesley routes on the weekend, many more people will have the option of taking MWRTA buses. With these new riders, it would bring in needed income that could be used for service improvements, advertisements, extended routes, new routes, and more. Other benefits of increased riders are reduced traffic, lower carbon emissions, and much money saved.

Also, if you would like to help improve the MWRTA, something you can do to help is to simply use their services and spread the word. The MWRTA services are also FREE THROUGH JUNE so it won’t cost you anything to try them out.

Luca Bernhardt and Nathaniel Cody
Wellesley Middle School students

Editor’s note: Wellesley Middle School Social Studies students as part of a Civics Action Projects has this week taken over The Swellesley Report‘s letters-to-the-editor page. The students are well-versed in their topics, have carefully researched all angles, and are ready to present their opinions to the community. Thank you to the WMS Social Studies teachers for organizing this community-based project.

To the editor:

The Wellesley Middle School start time needs to be later. Our first class starts at 7:45am, before most adults have even left for work.

For too long schools have started before 8am, even when studies show that it can be harmful to learning and the students. In Massachusetts school start times are on average earlier than the rest of the US, making this especially important here. Massachusetts law requires 180 days of school, and 900 hours per year, but it doesn’t say anything about when it could start. In the past two years, more than a dozen school districts have changed their start time later, and we should be the next.

Studies show that developing teens need more sleep than elementary school students. Teens need eight to ten hours of sleep per night, while on average they get about seven. The most important part of teens’ sleep starts about three hours before they would have to wake up for a 7:30 am school day, again showing they don’t get the sleep they need.

Teens also can’t just go to bed earlier. When they turn about 12, their circadian rhythms change. Circadian rhythms are the 24-hour internal clock inside our brains, which regulate melatonin release. When it changes it makes the circadian rhythms not release melatonin until about 11pm, making kids not feel sleepy until then.

Furthermore if kids don’t get the eight hours of sleep they need, it can lead to serious health and safety problems. These include depression, anxiety, illness, injury, growth stunting, obesity, diabetes, and for high schoolers, car accidents.

In Newton and other school districts, they didn’t change start times in a month; in fact it took several years. The school system created a study group, which made the final decision after a few years of research.

Our final “ask” for the School Committee is to create a study group, like Newton did. We don’t think a group of three students can create that much of a change in a month, but we think an official group can, given time.

Nolan Coyle
Lucas Chen
Kyle Watson

Wellesley Middle School students

Editor’s note: Wellesley Middle School Social Studies students as part of a Civics Action Projects has this week taken over The Swellesley Report‘s letters-to-the-editor page. The students are well-versed in their topics, have carefully researched all angles, and are ready to present their opinions to the community. Thank you to the WMS Social Studies teachers for organizing this community-based project.

To the editor:

In our survey of Wellesley Middle School students, 90.5% of respondents had experienced some form of stress in the past two weeks. It’s no secret that middle schoolers are bogged down by all the homework put upon them. Here’s a solution to mitigate teenage stress: an unstructured break.

Because adolescence is an uphill battle, with hormones and extracurriculars stacked on top of schoolwork, a time to rest and get themselves sorted would truly be a benefit. 83.5% of 91 students who responded to the survey stated that schoolwork was a significant factor in their stress. Periods like FLEX and Study Hall end after a semester, giving kids significantly less time for work. Oftentimes, a student’s schedule is so packed that they have no time to go outside. A systematic review from the National Library of Medicine reveals that an increase in exposure to the outside increases happiness, and vice versa. Students need outside breaks.

72.6% of students surveyed wanted a recess period in the school day. While integrating a whole new period would be tedious and near impossible to get approved, there is a solution: unstructured Advisory. Advisory right now is a mess of a period, shunted to the middle of the day rather than a proper homeroom time. It’s unpredictable to students, switching activities based on school requirements that we are not privy to. So Advisory could instead become an unstructured period, where students can choose to work on homework, take a break outside, or even play a few games.

It’s the perfect plan to take pressure off of middle schoolers, and all it takes is adding the opportunity of choice. Take a walk, do work, or relax with friends. It’s free game with unstructured Advisory.

Sarah Kim
Wellesley Middle School student