Offering a voice: while seeking to achieve a greater good
- Mark Jahne
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
by Mark Jahne
Editor
The Wethersfield Greater Good Collective is a new local organization founded to inspire action that supports this town as a safe space for social awareness, community connection and belonging.
Organizers said it was founded to foster community engagement and social awareness and continue the grassroots efforts started by other groups such as the now-defunct Wethersfield Social Justice Coalition.
Autumn Gordon-Chow and Marc Berube are the founders of this new group. She is a member of the governing board of the Wethersfield Historical Society. His community involvement includes serving as vice chairperson of the historical society.
“We were both involved in some capacity that the Social Justice Coalition in town did,” Gordon-Chow said. “We are doing a Human Library again in November.”
The first Human Library, sponsored by the SJC, took place in May 2025. Volunteers with interesting stories to tell serve as “live books” and share their backgrounds with readers.
The Greater Good Collective received a start-up grant and is working to become an official 501c3 nonprofit organization under federal tax regulations.
“We follow a new community-sponsored and town-supported model,” Berube said. “Part of our mission is to shine a light on things that need conversation.”
“We want to better the community. We want to make sure people feel safe speaking out about inequities,” Gordon-Chow added.
Its first meeting was held the evening of Aug. 5 at the Pitkin Community Center. The topic was education. Other topics will be addressed at future public gatherings.
They started by asking the approximately 30 people in attendance how they define equity in education. Most of the responses were directed to the elementary schools. One person said all the schools should offer students the same experiences but contended that’s not the case.
Some enable their students to participate in a Math Olympiad. Others allegedly do not. Some have kindergarten graduation ceremonies, Others do not. Parents claimed the same is true with such programs as after-school robotics and unified sports.
One parent asked if the upcoming renovations to the five elementary schools will be equitable. Another said the school playgrounds across town are not of the same quality.
Several said they feel that equity in local schools is more of a buzz word than a reality. Some parents brought along their children and a few of them spoke as well. There were also two Board of Education members and two school administrators in the audience.
One mother spoke about how she needs to hire legal help to get what she said her child deserves. She added that parents should not have to hire attorneys to fight for their childrens’ rights.
A mother raised concern that her son and some of his classmates did not complete the required math curriculum before moving on to fifth grade and now they need remedial classes because the teacher allegedly did not complete the curriculum by the end of the school year.
Her son told the group that the to build strong skills in mathematics begins in first and second grade. He said today’s fifth graders were caught up in the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown and remote learning when they were in those early grades.
Much of the discussion focused upon what the parents in the room said is a lack of communication from senior administrators at the Wethersfield Public Schools central office. They resort to social media to find out what is going on in the schools and added this is not ideal because information on these platforms can have a negative tone and may not be accurate.
They added that use of the Parent Square app used by the district to communicate with parents has declined under the current leadership.
The tone was not anger, but more a sense of anxiety and frustration over this alleged lack of communication. Questions were also raised about whether the school district is transparent in its policies.
One person said the town manager issues a biweekly report about town government and wonders why the school district doesn’t do the same. The general sense the group agreed upon is that equity requires communication and the fair allocation of resources. WL
To learn more look for the collective on Facebook, visit greatergoodco.org, or email greatergoodct@gmail.com.