Mass. lawmakers speak up for Holbrook boy displaced by fire, told to switch schools

The Holbrook School Committee granted the Evans family a six-month reprieve on Wednesday after initially saying their son had to move schools because he had been displaced from Holbrook to neighboring Weymouth by a house fire.

The decision followed a tense back-and-forth between Julie Evans and the committee, and may have been motivated by the appearance of some of the state’s top lawmakers, including House Speaker Ron Mariano, at Wednesday’s committee meeting.

The school committee told Evans earlier this year that her 11-year-old son would need to move schools in the fall, since the family no longer lived in Holbrook. The school district normally requires its students to live in the town, but Evans pressed them to make an exception to the rule — her son was vulnerable after losing his home, she said, and wanted to stay in school with his friends. Besides, the family’s new home in Weymouth was just 10 minutes away.

Evans wrote in a July Facebook post that she appealed directly to the superintendent of Holbrook schools and the vice chair of the school committee.

“They both told me there is no room for him,” Evans wrote, “although the budget for each year is completed every October, so technically my son is already accounted for.”

“I am a rational person and realize rules are put into place for a reason,” she continued. “But I do not think this is an unreasonable ask.”

So Evans contacted her local representatives, Sen. Patrick O’Connor and Rep. John Cusack. The lawmakers were sympathetic and reached out to the school district directly, Evans wrote on Facebook, but to no avail.

“Senator O’Connor’s office spoke with the Department of Education and was told there is no waiver that could override the school committee, but stated the school 100% could and should make an exception for my son,” Evans wrote.

So O’Connor and Cusack, along with Mariano and Sen. John Keenan, informed the school committee they’d be attending Wednesday’s committee meeting to plead Evans’s case.

During the meeting, Cusack implored the committee to “make an exception for a traumatic house fire that was less than nine months ago.” 

The district’s inflexibility was “very misguided,” Mariano said.

“We’re happy to sit down and have a conversation,” replied School Committee Chair Nancy Alterio. “I’m not going to discuss individual cases at the school committee [meeting].”

Evans told WCVB that after the meeting, Alterio agreed to let her son stay for six months, so long as the family demonstrates they are looking for housing in Holbrook. 

On Facebook, Evans celebrated the decision.

“There are some things that still need to be tuned up before paperwork is actually approved,” she wrote, “but it’s a sigh of relief that it is in arms reach.”

Holbrook schools’ superintendent and the school committee chair did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

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