Town Notes
Published on January 24th, 2001
STONEHAM, MA - From California with love
Harry Lister, Stoneham High Class of 1944, saw a story in this paper about the need for private donations to pay for Town Common benches, and he responded all the way from California.
Lister wants to get “the Stoneham High Class of 1944” and a Masonic insignia inscribed on the plaque as well as his name.
Dog licensing
The Town Clerk’s Office at Town Hall, 35 Central St., will be open for dog licensing only from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday, Jan 27.
Passing the MCAS
The state has settled on a plan that will give students five chances to retake and pass the math and English portions of the MCAS exam. Students beginning with the Class of 2003 must pass these sections to graduate from Massachusetts public high schools.
Stoneham Superintendent Joe Connelly is at a meeting today to learn more about the details of the plan.
“We will also develop individual success plans for each student who failed,” Connelly said.
Stoneham High plans to implement after-school and summer hours courses to help students as well as adding some test prep into the regular school curricula.
Boston Regional Medical Center — another lawsuit
Creditors of the former Boston Regional Medical Center (BRMC), which declared bankruptcy in 1999, are suing the former Woodland Road hospital’s board of trustees, according to a report in the Jan. 23 Boston Business Journal.
Creditors are out $60 million, according to the report. (The Stoneham Independent is among the creditors.)
Creditors are accusing the former BRMC Board of Trustees with mismanaging the hospital. Specifically, the creditors allege that the Seventh-day Adventist members of the Board did not accept good offers from non-Adventist groups to buy the hospital but instead made a deal, with a company with Adventist ties, that led to bankruptcy.
The non-Adventist members of the Board are suing the Adventist members in a cross claim, alleging that the non-Adventist members had no control of decisions and, thus, shouldn’t bear responsibility to the creditors.
This suit is significant not only for those accused of responsibility for the hospital’s collapse but also for everyone in the not-for-profit healthcare community. Although for-profit boards of directors are often sued for mismanagement, the not-for-profit boards do not usually face such challenges.
Hannify and King, the Boston law firm representing the creditors is asking, in more elaborate words, “Why not?’ A trial hearing is pending.
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