Natick Report

More than you really want to know about Natick, Mass.

What Natick’s Commission on Disability does

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The Natick Commission on Disability is designed to look out for town residents. Anyone can file an accessibility complaint with this seven-member body, which reviews these issues and works towards more inclusive and accessible solutions. 

Paul Carew has served as Natick’s Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) Coordinator for the past 14 years. In this role, he is the first person to receive complaints about accessibility. These include sidewalks without a curb cut, a lack of mobility in town forests, and missing signs or faded markings in a handicap parking space. After receiving complaints, Carew travels to the area of the problem and performs an initial inspection. He summarizes these issues and resolutions and brings up unresolved problems to fix at meetings of the Commission on Disability, of which the ADA Coordinator is always a member. A disabled veteran himself—and Natick’s Director of Veteran Services, among a host of related positions—Carew is one of four disabled members of the Commission. 

In addition to Carew’s reports, each monthly meeting of the Commission includes a report from Chair Lori Zalt and Treasurer Aaron Spelker.

The Commission had a recent win: it secured a grant to conduct a professional audit of Natick to identify accessibility concerns in multiple areas of the town. This inspection started with the busiest public buildings in town, such as the post office, schools, and town hall. They will look at open spaces, including sports fields, tennis courts, and playgrounds next. 

morse institute library ramp

In fact, building more accessible playgrounds is a goal of the Commission’s. Currently, the closest 100% accessible playground is in Sudbury. Carew remembers being wowed by this structure. “It was amazing. They had everything a normal playground had, plus it was safe,” he recalled. In order to qualify as fully accessible, a playground must be “completely flawless as far as movement and stepping,” said Carew. It must be navigable by people in wheelchairs and those with mobility aids such as crutches and walkers, who need to be able to get in, out, and around the playground without tripping. 

The playground project is something the Commission hopes to get involved in, but it is currently working on another important goal: making Natick’s bathroom doors more accessible. 

Most public bathroom doors around town are not in compliance with the law. For instance, they don’t have an automatic door opener that can be reached by a person in a wheelchair on at least one bathroom for each gender. It is incredibly embarrassing for individuals who use wheelchairs to have to ask for help getting into the bathroom, Carew said. 

Even once they’ve gotten the door to the bathroom open, people in wheelchairs often face more accessibility issues. Stall doors are often not wide enough for a wheelchair to squeeze through. Further, there are often no sinks low enough to be reached from a wheelchair. 

According to Carew, the town government is very responsive when he brings up accessibility issues and possible solutions. 

town hall ramp

 

The Commission is working to engage more with the public. It has tables at events like Natick Days, and recently launched a redesigned website thanks to the efforts of three Natick High School students. These changes give Carew hope for the future of the Commission on Disability, which has far fewer members now than it once did. 

Carew said the majority of Natick residents are unaware that they have a Commission on Disability to serve their needs. He urges people to reach out about any issues they encounter. 

Carew can be reached at 508-647-6545 or pcarew@natickma.org

handicap parking space in front of town hall

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Natick student group advocates for Healthy Youth Act

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Here in Natick, a group of high schoolers has taken on one of the most divisive issues in our country today: sex education. This group, Youth for Sex Ed, was created to advocate for the Healthy Youth Act, a bill that would require a more inclusive and comprehensive sex ed curriculum in Massachusetts. The group aims to push this bill towards a vote, and, in the process, destigmatize the issues involved and teach their community about activism.

The Healthy Youth Act (S.268/H.544) would require Massachusetts public schools that already teach sex ed to provide “medically accurate, age-appropriate, comprehensive sexual health education,” according to the Healthy Youth Act Coalition. The bill’s three main components are making sure that sex ed is factual and age-appropriate just like any other school subject; consent-based so that students learn about healthy relationships early enough to stay safe and lower the rate of sexual assault on college campuses; and LGBTQ+-inclusive in order to stop leaving LGBTQ+ youth dangerously uninformed and unsupported about their health and identity.

Sobering statistics

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 10% of high schoolers in Massachusetts reported in 2019 that they’ve faced sexual assault. The rate is higher amongst lesbian, gay, and bisexual students in Massachusetts, 18.7% of whom say they have been forced to have non-consensual sexual intercourse, and 21.3% of whom say they have experienced sexual violence. The hope is that more comprehensive consent education would help lower these statistics by teaching students how to avoid perpetrating or becoming a victim of sexual violence and unhealthy relationships.

Further, 81% of LGBTQ+ students in Massachusetts reported that they did not learn enough about LGBTQ+ sexual health in schools to stay safe and healthy, according to the Healthy Youth Act Coalition. For LGBTQ+ students, health classes often range from irrelevant to misleading and stigmatizing, leaving them in a dangerous place when it comes to mental and sexual health. They often have to turn to the internet, but the information online is not always correct and does not always explain safe sex. “I don’t know anyone who has been completely satisfied with their health education, and if they were, it’s because they were in a privileged position,” said Hannah Schwichtenberg, the leader of Youth for Sex Ed.

The Healthy Youth Act represents not only the needs and beliefs of students; it reflects parents and other voters as well, as 92% of Massachusetts voters believe that students have a right to learn sexual education in high school, as reported by Progressive Mass. Even so, the bill requires that families be provided with information in multiple languages about their children’s sex education curriculum, and allows them to opt their children out.

The Healthy Youth Act was introduced in 2011 and passed unanimously in the State Senate, but it hasn’t even been voted on in the State House. Youth for Sex Ed is trying to change that.

Students seek change

When Hannah Schwichtenberg (she/they), a rising senior at Natick High School, first learned about the Healthy Youth Act, they knew they needed to get involved. She had always wanted something like the Healthy Youth Act while sitting through health classes that left her and her peers under-informed and under-prepared.

On their Instagram story, Schwichtenberg posted information about the Healthy Youth Act, and asked if anyone would want to help advocate for it. Students from Natick, Wellesley, and Ashland quickly responded, and Youth for Sex Ed was formed. “I’m grateful to have found a community that is genuinely passionate about this issue and wants to contribute to change and see it happen,” Schwichtenberg said.

Youth for Sex Ed was a runner-up in the first annual Erica and Jay Ball IMPACT Award competition, and was awarded funding for its efforts.

The group, which meets weekly, began by submitting testimony to legislators to stress the personal importance of a more comprehensive sex education. They then established a social media presence. Their big project, however, has been planning the Healthy Youth Act Summit, an event to “garner traction for the bill and help mobilize for it because what we’ve found is that support for the bill is really scattered,” as Schwichtenberg explained it.

This free event will be hosted on September 9 from 12–4 p.m. The location is still TBD—finding a venue that can hold enough people and is within their price range has been the group’s biggest challenge—but it will be somewhere in the Boston/Cambridge/Metrowest area that is accessible by public transportation. This community-focused event will begin with a gallery walk of tables where attendees can learn, activists can network, and cosponsors of the bill can meet their constituents. There will then be a speaker section, including a keynote address. The speakers will hopefully include cosponsors of the bill and health educators, who will talk about the bill and its importance. This will be followed by a panel of people with a variety of relevant experiences. For instance, there will be health educators, parents, and students with “a health class horror story, because everyone has one of those,” Schwichtenberg said. Audience members will be able to submit questions for the panel when they RSVP to the event. Finally, there will be a workshopping session where attendees will learn about lobbying and even send personal testimony to their legislators right then.

The summit is, of course, open to ardent supporters of the Healthy Youth Act and of inclusive sex education, but it is also welcoming of people who are unsure of where they stand and people who know nothing at all about the bill or the issue. The event will be centered around the Healthy Youth Act, and its political goal is to get legislators to make the bill a priority so that it can be voted on and passed. It also aims to create conversation around the topic of sex ed, destigmatize the issues involved, and help teach the community more about advocating for the issues that matter to them.

Healthy Youth Act Summit

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Natick town officials talk aboriginal rights with Nipmuc community members

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Natick town officials, including the town administrator and police chief, met with citizens of Nipmuc Nation on Wednesday in an effort to improve the the understanding of and respect for aboriginal rights by town employees and the public at large. These rights are cited in the state’s Executive Order No. 126: Massachusetts Native Americans.

The meeting was sparked by an incident in May, as reported then exclusively by Natick Report, in which Nipmuc Nation members harvesting Atlantic white cedar trees at Pickerel Pond in Natick were confronted by Natick police officers, responding to a call from a resident. Nipmuc member Andre StrongBearHeart Gaines, Jr., had arranged with the town’s Conservation Commission for himself and others to conduct the harvest, but the police had not been aware of this, as was obvious from a video taken by Gaines’s party. The incident was classified as “suspicious activity” on that day’s Natick Police log.

While generally satisfied with the meeting this week, which also included Conservation Commission reps and Natick’s new director of equity, inclusion, and outreach, several members of the state-recognized tribe of Nipmuc people, including Gaines, held signs outside of Natick Town Hall afterward to call further attention to aboriginal rights.  We spoke with Gaines and fellow Nipmuc member Pam Ellis, then caught up with Natick Planner/Conservation Agent Claire Rundelli inside Town Hall.

We reached out to the police on Wednesday by email for their take on the meeting, but have not heard back.

Nipmuc Nation protesters at Natick Town Hall

 

Ellis said the meeting with town officials, requested by the Nipmuc members, involved “talking about aboriginal rights and the importance of their acknowledgement and enforcement here in town. We talked about educating law enforcement about what those rights are and what they need to do to enforce and protect them as they would the rights of any citizen in the Commonwealth.”

Ellis added: “It was an opportunity to move forward.”

The town apologized for the situation in May, though Gaines said he was disappointed not to get an apology specifically from the police department.

During the meeting, those in attendance had their discussion after viewing a video of the May 5 interaction between the Nimpuc members and police that Gaines had shared on social media.

Ellis said she’d like to see the town address concerns along two paths: Legal and diversity/inclusion.

The legal concerns involve putting in place protocols to protect the lawful exercising of aboriginal rights that may include gathering cedar, medical plants, etc., as well as fishing, hunting, and other activities. Infringing upon those rights can expose communities to civil penalties, Ellis said.

Gaines and Ellis said Nipmuc members have found that state police, and especially environmental police, are much more aware of aboriginal rights than most community law enforcement organizations. “We offered to work with Natick to develop training… there’s not a lot out there,” Ellis said.

“Plenty of police officers can go through an entire 30-year career and never come upon an aboriginal rights issue,” Ellis said. “But just because the likelihood of coming across it is limited doesn’t mean you shouldn’t receive the training. If you’re going to protect and serve, you should protect and serve all of the citizens of the Commonwealth. We didn’t choose to become citizens of the Commonwealth, but we remain citizens.”

Diversity and inclusion issues cited by Ellis include understanding and appreciating certain aspects of Native American culture, such as how Nipmuc and other tribes see the land and their responsibilities to it. Ellis said she’d love sometime to see a wetu, like those built from the cedar harvested in Natick, displayed on the Common. “This would let people see the beauty and power of our culture,” she said.

What’s more, there’s a need to expose more of the public to the real and violent history of the Nipmuc people’s removal from this area, Ellis said.

“We didn’t disappear, we didn’t become extinct. We are here,” Ellis said, though added that there are relatively few members living right in this area (coincidentally, just then a Natick Public Works employee passing by identified himself to Gaines as being Nipmuc).

Gaines said the incident in Natick is the first aboriginal rights issue he’s aware of happening here, but Ellis added that situations happen across the state, and not just with the police. Natural resource officers, shellfish wardens, constables, and others have all had such run-ins.

Back in town hall, I asked Rundelli about how the meeting went, and she said it served as a starting off point for the town to acknowledge that the incident in May shouldn’t have occurred as it did. But it also started discussions of internal operations that the town will put into place to educate its employees and the public about aboriginal rights. This will include notification procedures to let people know, for example, about upcoming harvesting operations in the woods.

“We want to ensure that the Nipmuc feel as welcome as they can here in this community,” she said.

Such efforts could build upon other movement in Natick to confront its history with those native to the area, including the redoing of an outdated town seal and the pending removal of the South Natick Dam.

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Save the date: Natick’s Multicultural Day on Aug. 26

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The Natick Center Cultural District will host its Multicultural Day on Aug. 26 from 11am-2pm on the Natick Common.This event highlights the diversity and cultures in the community, and will feature traditional and contemporary music, dance, and food. 

If you are part of a group that would be interested in hosting a booth, please email the Natick Center Cultural District at info.natickcenter@gmail.com or call 508-650-8848.

Natick Multicultural Day

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Congrats to Natick Sons & Daughters of Italy scholarship winners, and Walnut Hill School pianist

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The Natick Sons and Daughters of Italy has announced the 2023 recipients of its robust scholarship program that includes four separate categories of awards. Scholarships totaling $11,000 were granted to eleven local senior high graduates.

Sons and Daughters of Italy, Natick

Francis J. Cristofori Memorial Scholarship Award

Sarah Mirzaee—Northeastern University, biology
Noa Weinhaus—Emory University, biology

Gloria Cullati Memorial Scholarship Award

Neha Kotturu—UMass Amherst, computer science
Arianna Morese—Bridgewater State University, marketing and communications
Louis (Louie) Linton—UMass Amherst, communications
Jessica Pfahler—Northeastern University, computer science

Francesco DeFrancesco DeSanctis Lodge #1411 Scholarship Award

Sinead Keyes—Bentley University, finance
Rebecca Justiniano—Emmanuel College, neuroscience
Gabriella Loftus—Roger Williams University, business law
Mary Dempsey—UMass Amherst, social and behavioral sciences

Anthony Ferlazzo Memorial Scholarship Award

Hayden Brown—Stonehill College, early childhood/elementary education

So if you’ve ever wondered why the social organization works so hard dishing up pasta every Wednesday night, among other fundraisers, it’s to support local students as they further their eduction.

Inspired? The 2023 application form is now available.

Walnut Hill School student takes top prize in piano competition

Accomplished pianist Seokyoung Hong has taken the top prize and Audience Award at The Cliburn International Junior Piano Competition in Dallas, Texas. The 15-year old Walnut Hill School for the Arts and New England Conservatory Preparatory School student won the $15,000 Bernice Gressman Meyerson First Prize and a $500 Audience Award in the competition, with an additional $2,500 to apply toward furthering musical achievement, securing cash awards totaling $18,000.

Walnut Hill School, Natick

Seokyoung Hong began his studies at NEC’s Preparatory School in 2022 with HaeSun Paik, co-chair of the College’s piano department and Prep faculty member. He has had several first or second-place finishes at international competitions in Korea, Switzerland, and the United States. Following two years at the Yewon School in his native Seoul, he moved to Boston to study piano at NEC Prep while also attending Natick’s Walnut Hill School for the Arts.

HaeSun Paik teaches at both the Preparatory and College levels at NEC and also teaches 2023 Wellesley High School graduate Katherine Liu, who will matriculate at Harvard in the fall.