Search for The Westfield News
WEATHER TONIGHT Mainly clear. Low of 38.
The Westfield News Serving Westfield, Southwick, and the surrounding Hilltowns
www.thewestfieldnews.com VOL. 85 NO. 62
DAYLIGHT SAVING TIME BEGINS SUNDAY AT 2 A.M. LOCALLY. CLOCKS GO FORWARD ONE HOUR.
75 cents
SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 2016
City man arrested after firing gun on Court Street
Jenny Sullivan, at left, was selected the Southwick-Tolland-Granville Regional School curriculum director this week. Also pictured are school committee members Jeanne McGivney-Burelle and George LeBlanc. (Photo by Hope E. Tremblay)
Sullivan selected curriculum director By HOPE E. TREMBLAY Staff Writer SOUTHWICK – The Southwick-Tolland-Granville Regional School Committee selected Jenny Sullivan its next curriculum director this week. Sullivan was among two finalists interviewed by the committee Tuesday. For the past two years, Sullivan has served the district as the literacy coach, and prior to that taught at Powder Mill Middle School. Although Sullivan has not been an administrator, she is currently an administrative apprentice and works closely with retiring Curriculum Director Maureen Wilson. Sullivan offered insight into the district’s curriculum needs during the interview. “Over all, we need to increase rigor,” she said. “And the level of questioning (students) is what I’d call a veneer. We’re not engaging them with deeper questioning and deeper thinking. And that’s not their fault – we have to train students in that kind of discourse.” Sullivan also said the district “has a lot to do in terms of curriculum mapping.” She told the committee that education was her second career and during the interview she drew upon her experience as an occupational therapist and cor-
porate team leader managing 25 people. Sullivan said she is favor of student centered classrooms and while she believes in standardized testing, there was “suddenly this immense pressure to teach to the test.” Embracing and effecting change was something Sullivan cited as a strength, and for a weakness, she said providing more useful feedback was something she is working on. Sullivan said she believes all teachers need to be accountable for all students, whether they are in special education classes or mainstream classes. “We do a good job with inclusion in the lower grades, but I’d like to see more in the middle schools,” Sullivan said. “I see a break down.” Sullivan was asked what she believes is good teaching, and what she does not want to see in a classroom. “I don’t want to see a teacher standing in front of the room talking for more than 10 or 15 minutes,” she said. “I want teachers working hand-in-hand with students. Students are passive, and we’ve created that.” Sullivan said she plans to remain a presence in the classroom in her new position. “I want to get to know our teachers better so I can help them better,” she said.
Some New England lawmakers propose leaving Eastern Time By MATT O’BRIEN Associated Press PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — As most Americans brace themselves for losing an hour of sleep this weekend, some corners of the country are considering bold alternatives to daylight saving time. California has a bill that would ask voters to abolish the practice of changing clocks twice a year. Lawmakers in Alaska and nearly a dozen other states are debating similar measures. Some lawmakers in New England want to go even further, seceding from the populous Eastern Time Zone and throwing their lot in with Nova Scotia and Puerto Rico. “Once we spring forward, I don’t want to fall back,” said Rhode Island state Rep. Blake Filippi, who hopes the whole region will shift one hour eastward, into the Atlantic Time Zone. “Pretty much everyone I speak to would rather have it light in the evening than light first thing in the morning,” he said. Opponents of daylight saving time argue that traffic accidents, heart attacks and strokes increase when we change time, and that contrary to popular belief, it does not save electricity. Shifting to Atlantic Time and never changing back would effectively make summertime daylight saving hours permanent, said Filippi, who made a public
health case for his bill at a Rhode Island State House hearing this week. Evening commutes would be safer with more sunlight. Wintertime lifestyles and mental health could improve. The biggest downside, Filippi said: Rhode Island children going to school in early January wouldn’t see the sun rise until 8:13 a.m. under Atlantic Time. But he argues that could propel school districts to start classes later, more in line with the wiring of adolescent brains. Inspired by long-shot legislation in Massachusetts, Filippi’s bill would have Rhode Island follow the neighboring state’s lead if it ever defects. He hopes New Hampshire, Vermont and Maine would then see the light. He figures there’s little chance Connecticut would join in, since so many of its residents commute to New York City. States can exempt themselves from daylight savings under the federal Uniform Time Act, but moving to a different time zone requires approval from Congress or the U.S. Department of Transportation, which must consider the effect on commerce. That raises perhaps the biggest challenge to this temporal secession movement in tradition-bound New England: Do its people really want to stand more with eastern Canada and the distant Caribbean than the rest of the eastern
United States? The effect on transit alone — forcing Amtrak and airlines to recalibrate schedules and commuters to change time zones whenever they cross the New York state line — could involve many unwelcome costs. “For commerce and transportation, it’s a terrible idea,” said Michael Downing, an English professor at Tufts University who wrote “Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time,” a history of the phenomenon. Downing doubts residents of Boston, Providence and Hartford would choose to synchronize watches with Canada over New York and Washington. After all, syncing up with New York’s banks has been so important that cities as far away as Detroit successfully petitioned to join the Eastern time zone decades ago, he said. Nearly half the U.S. population now lives on Eastern Time, but New England juts much farther east than anywhere else, giving it some of the country’s earliest winter sunsets. During standard time, the December sun currently sets as early as 4:15 p.m. in Providence, 4:11 p.m. in Boston and 3:45 p.m. in Frenchville, Maine. That’s nearly as bad as Anchorage, Alaska, where during the short Arctic winter, the sun sets as early as 3:40 p.m. Those who would abandon daylight
savings are fooling themselves if they think we can reward ourselves with more time, said Downing, who grew up in the Berkshires region of Massachusetts. “Even the heartiest of New Englanders have a hibernating instinct for three or four months a year” and won’t likely use the extra evening light to hang out outside, he said. “Most people in New England feel the stab of pain in the fall when we return to standard time. There’s no question. But I don’t think that will translate into willingness in December, January and February of not seeing the sunlight until 8 or 9 in the morning.” Health advocate Tom Emswiler helped plant the Atlantic Time Zone idea in the popular imagination with his widely-shared opinion column for the Boston Globe in the fall. “All of New England should adopt Atlantic Standard Time, but we don’t have a New England legislature so we have to start somewhere,” Emswiler said. Massachusetts state Sen. John Keenan, a Quincy Democrat, introduced a bill to form a state commission to study the idea. Emswiler thinks “it’s almost certain it’ll go nowhere” in the short term, but he hopes people now understand that “we do have an ability to change this.”
By CHRISTINE CHARNOSKY Staff Writer WESTFIELD – Eight units responded to reports of a man firing a gun near Berkshire Bank Wednesday night. Multiple calls came into dispatch at 11:05 p.m. Wednesday night regarding a suspicious man who was seen with a gun that he was firing into the ground near the Berkshire Bank located at 31 Court Street. Officers quickly got the suspect “on the ground” and secured the scene by 11:06 p.m., according to police logs. Jacob Samborski, 27, of 13 Laurel Avenue was arrested on charges of assault with a dangerous weapon. It was not clear why he was firing the weapon. Staff Writer Christine Charnosky can be reached at christinec@thewestfieldnewsgroup.com
WESTFIELD FIRE DEPT. PARAMEDICS
Drug related medical calls WESTFIELD — From Saturday, March 5, 2016 to Friday, March, 2016, the Westfield Fire Dept paramedics responded to the following drug related medical calls: 1 PATIENT GIVEN NARCAN
Prosecutor calls 4 affiliated drug gangs ‘alliance of evil’ NEW YORK (AP) — Authorities say 84 people have been indicted in connection with a ring that moved drugs and guns between New York City and New England. Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said Thursday that four gangs formed "an alliance of evil" to peddle cocaine and heroin in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. She said they returned from New England with guns. Authorities believe the group is responsible for 22 shootings in the Bronx. New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton says the gang members bought the drugs in New York and then resold them in New England for nearly four times the New York price. Prosecutors say 15 guns and 16 kilograms of drugs were recovered in the 18-month investigation. Of the 84 people indicted, 18 remain at large.