Around New England

Milton Mother of Five Running for Local School Committee Calls Into Dan Rea’s Radio Show on WBZ

April 27, 2021

A candidate for Milton School Committee who opposes a school survey asking students about their sexuality and gender identity called into Dan Rea’s WBZ AM 1030 radio show Nightside on Monday night.

Susannah Hegarty, who is one of four candidates running for two open seats on the town’s school committee on Tuesday, got a warm welcome from Rea, who said if he lived in Milton he would vote for her. Hegarty also urged Milton voters to vote for a second candidate, Kristin Kociol.

Hegarty, who has five children, told Rea that the persistence of online classes in the Milton public schools during the coronavirus emergency led her to run for school committee, which under state law sets policy for the school district and also hires and fires the superintendent and special education director.

“I got sort of dragged into it because our School Committee handled really badly the return-to-school process in the pandemic. They really struggled with returning our kids to school. And I got involved because I wanted our kids to be back in the classroom. And that didn’t happen. So I got involved because of that,” Hegarty said.

“And then I have a sixth grader who suddenly received a survey in school asking if she was pansexual. And she came to me and said, ‘What is that?’ And I said, ‘Why is the school giving you this information about something that should really come from your family, when you’re ready? Which was not when she was eleven,” Hegarty added.

Hegarty called into the show because Rea was talking about the sexuality-and-race survey — “which I’ve been protesting for quite some time,” Hegarty said.

Tom Joyce, a reporter for NewBostonPost, was Rea’s guest during the 9 p.m. hour of the show. Rea said he picked the topic because he read Joyce’s news story about the Milton school survey in NewBostonPost.

Hegarty and Kociol were also mentioned in a column published Monday in NewBostonPost by Milton resident Kerry White, which criticized the approaches of two left-of-center candidates who are running as a tandem in the school committee race, Beverly Ross Denny and Elizabeth M. Carroll.

The Milton annual town election ballot lists candidates for School Committee in alphabetical order. So Carroll and Denny appear first, followed by Hegarty and Kociol.

Source: Image of a portion of a sample ballot of the Tuesday, April 27, 2021 annual town election from the web site of the Milton Town Clerk in Milton, Massachusetts.

Milton’s annual town election is Tuesday, April 27.

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