Here is the latest appeal to the Northeast Metro Tech School Building Committee - something to read while we await the Judge's decision on our injunction.

Nothing has touched the hearts and minds of the NEMT School Building Committee so far- and we will never be able to figure out why not ONE of them has had the mind or courage to initiate a change of sites. Perhaps this open letter might help.

Please know that we are working harder than ever while we eagerly await the Judge's decision to our injunction. The intensity of our effort and work cannot be over-stated. We are putting in long days and many hours each day scouring every corner and investigating every tip and accessing every single resource that is available to us to help save the forest AND have a new vocational school built on one of the alternate sites available!

Many of us are exhausted but we aren't giving up. Without your help, though, we would never have been able to get this far! Truly. But we all know that if the Judge doesn't see things our way, it will mean a long and expensive legal battle forward. We will continue fighting as long as we have your support and the support of the 7,300+ people who have signed onto our Petition to Save The Forest!

 https://www.change.org/p/voters-want-a-new-school-not-the-big-dig-stop-the-senseless-destruction-of-forest?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_34862535_en-US%3A3&recruiter=1176026978&recruited_by_id=808c3a80-5d07-11eb-a0f5-4ffebb2db00f&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_term=share_petition&share_bandit_exp=initial-34862535-en-US

You have been wonderful to us and we are using all funds wisely. Please know we are putting much of our regular lives on the back burner in order to focus our time and energies on Saving the Forest.

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Here's the Letter:

An Open Letter to the NEMT’s School Building Committee Members

I write to you from the heart to ask you to work to move the site of the new school from the forested hilltop to one of the alternate sites on the school’s existing athletic fields.

No doubt you’ve heard the arguments against building on the forested hilltop site: two species on the state’s endangered list; a pristine woodland that hasn’t seen human interference in a long time (as evidenced by its lack of invasive plants); wetlands including vernal pools that will be damaged or destroyed; animals who’ll be killed outright by tree removal and blasting, especially baby animals and nestling birds who can’t escape, and those who do escape but lose their homes; the enormous cost of site preparation (much of which will be borne by my city, Malden); the danger of flooding nearby neighborhoods. And, most especially, our urgent need to protect our remaining forests — and their importance in sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.

We need to protect our mature forests, now more than ever. But beyond these reasons, I appeal to your sense not only of the rightness of changing the site, but of how posterity will view the decision to build on the hilltop. In the not very distant future, people will view the destruction of this exquisite, beloved forest with dismay and disbelief that the Building Committee chose this location. They’ll wonder “What were they thinking? — Yes, they built a beautiful school — but it could have been just as beautiful had they built it on their existing athletic fields. Who were the people who made this disastrous decision?”

 So I ask you — will one of you have the courage to revisit the choice of building sites? It isn't too late to make the right decision, and you would get the support, admiration, and respect of thousands of people. Being on the right side of history means changing the site and preserving the forest. And nothing can compare with the knowledge, within yourself, that when it came down to it, you did the good, the valiant, thing.

Jane Robie

 Malden, MA