Guay Appointed to Fill Vacated School Committee Seat

By Kim Siebert MacPhail

On Tuesday night, the Board of Selectmen and the School Committee met jointly to interview a candidate to fill the School Committee seat vacated by Noreen O’Gara. After a half-hour of questions and responses, the two groups unanimously approved the appointment of Ann Guay—the sole applicant—to the one-year position.

Guay, a mother of three, whose youngest child is a sophomore at Bedford High School, was repeatedly acknowledged as a strong and worthy candidate by members of both Boards. Her qualifications include years of volunteer work in the schools, serving on the Lane School Design Committee, on the fundraising team for the Playzone (the integrated preschool outdoor play area located at Bedford High School) and as an officer on the Board of the Bedford Education Foundation.

Guay, who is an attorney by training, also successfully worked to pass legislation that compels state and federal reimbursement to school districts specifically for providing services for low-income children with autism.

Regarding her experience with the children’s autism legislation, Guay said that it was one of the most difficult things she’s ever tackled, but that it made her better able to collaborate with those whose perspectives she doesn’t entirely share.

“It forced us to sit and collaborate with folks that didn’t share our views on much of what we were looking for: [they] didn’t necessarily think that program was the way to go, [they] maybe didn’t want to look at Medicaid— or thought, perhaps, it didn’t make sense to tailor the program to low-income children,” Guay said.

“It’s very easy to sit in a room where you agree with people, but where a lot of the work gets done is sitting and listening to folks that don’t share your views. Where we really learned was to listen to people who were coming at [autism] from a different perspective and I think that was very useful,” Guay continued. “[And] to sit in a room with people who say, ‘You know what? We don’t agree with anything you’re proposing [but] we’re going to lock ourselves in this room and figure out how to come up with a good system.’ Unless you can bring everyone to the table, you aren’t going to have a successful program.

“And I think, at the end of the day, it ended up being a pretty good program. What’s funny now, is that it’s one of the programs the State brags about when it’s talked about around the rest of the country. So, I’m really pleased with that,” Guay concluded.

Guay also believes that although the district has recently increased its ability to serve students here rather than in more expensive, out-of-district placements, Bedford could build more capacity for in-house Special Education.

“Over the years, Bedford has done more to build capacity in town so that it’s not necessary [as it once was for my son] to be bussed outside the community. I guess I’d like to see more of that. I think there are ways to tap into expertise in the area, to do it efficiently and more economically,” Guay said.

“My interest is really in low-income children and in children who face barriers,” Guay continued. “I’ve done a lot of work with children in Lawrence; I’ve done a lot of work with Haitian families in Boston. They live a very different life. They love their children just as much and they really want good schools too, but they don’t know how to navigate the system. I’ve loved partnering with them.

“The economy is coming back, but we have a lot of families in town who are struggling and who bring those challenges and stresses,” Guay added. “We have children who are immigrants in town who are refugees from communities that have seen horrible things. How do we help them [thrive] in school? I think Bedford’s done a great job, but there may be ways to build capacity [to improve that].

Guay added that her daughter, a Bedford High School graduate, emphasizes how well Bedford schools prepared her for college. Guay said she feels blessed to live in Bedford, where her husband was raised, and to have her children attend school here. The services her family received for their autistic son were beyond what many communities are capable of providing for their special needs children, Guay said.

“We’ve benefited from all sorts of services that we know we might not have been able to access in other communities and that’s through a lot of the hard work and dedication of administrators, teachers, school committee members and Selectmen for making this all work.”

“Seeing the Davis School through the eyes of a child who lives here temporarily has helped me appreciate so much how wonderful the Bedford Schools are, and yet I stand here tonight and I realize there are great challenges for us,” Guay added. “Schools are no longer simply responsible for providing an education for students; today people in this country look to their schools to solve many of society’s problems but they’re unwilling to increase funding for them. I don’t know how they expect it to happen, and that’s a real challenge.

“I am very interested to serve on the School Committee and hope I’ve given you a chance to learn more about me and what I bring to this position,” Guay said in conclusion. “I promise to work very hard on behalf of all the students in Bedford.”