Woodstock CT Café

“The recent efforts by the Woodstock Board of Education to enact legislation to change the Academy’s Board structure without a public hearing fall short of these standards.�

Once again, Mr. Alberts has lied. Will the public call him on this?

The truth of the matter is that Alberts knew of the Breen initiative as soon as it was delivered to the legislature. With knowledge of its existence, he chose to do nothing until the deadline for public hearing had passed. He could have easily approached the Education Committee co-chairs and asked for a public hearing so that the issues could be debated by both sides. He knew if he did nothing, there would then be no public hearing on the matter and he could claim “lack of transparency� as his reason for opposition. He could then avoid taking a public position as to the substance of the Breen memo, which is exactly what he has done. He has yet to state that “he� opposes the recommendations that Breen put forth. He has carefully chosen his words in the above letter and in other public venues so as to avoid stating that he opposed the effort to achieve equity between the Academy and K-8 systems. His statement on the radio was that “those who opposed� the change in Woodstock Academy governance could rest easy as the deadline for reporting bills out of committee passed yesterday. Query: Did Alberts include himself in that group? And now, he is saying that the BOE acted to prevent a public hearing. This is an outright lie!

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(March 30, 2007; 1:30 PM email. Admin)

Dear John & Becki:

Thank you very much for your input over the past few weeks regarding Woodstock Academy. I share your concern about the need to ensure that any changes to the governance structure of Woodstock Academy must be thoughtful, well-examined, and certainly open for public discussion.

The recent efforts by the Woodstock Board of Education to enact legislation to change the Academy’s Board structure without a public hearing fall short of these standards. For those reasons I have opposed the Board of Education’s efforts.

As you may already know, because of the efforts of your local legislators, State Senator Tony Guglielmo in particular, we have been able to ensure that the Education Committee did not pass legislation out of their committee before yesterday’s 5 PM legislative deadline. While there may still be attempts to introduce legislation on the floor of the General Assembly, the likelihood of this being achieved is remote.

Thank you for making me aware of your concerns.

Sincerely,

Mike Alberts

At the current time the Academy is the only supplier of services for public education in Woodstock and the town is forced to use some supplier, period. Barriers to entry into the marketplace create the situation where it is unlikely that there will be any other suppliers in the near future (cost issues aside there are still time factors on building facilities). Thus the Academy can find their profit maximizing price for services within the political constraints of the marketplace.

Education isn’t as strong a monopoly as a utility. The barriers to entry are not nearly as high (but still pretty high). There is room for other small niche market schools in the future; but they don’t exist today. This year the Woodstock BOE has one and only one viable supplier for education for all its students; this year the Academy has monopoly power over a captive customer base. At a future time there may exist alternate suppliers relieving that situation but as of today they are the only supplier in the marketplace. Read the rest of this entry »

A little bird at my birdfeeder told me that an agent of the Academy is setting up a pro-Academy blog site. But they don’t want to disclose the site to Cafe bloggers because they don’t want bloggers that have a different opinion. Certainly if we could learn the address to this new site, we would provide a link to their site just as we have done for the Academy website. From some of the statements below, the Cafe administrators think that this new blog site should be called “www.CPSacademy.com“

• It is apparent that the Academy has stacked its Board of Trustees with Woodstock residents of the CPS persuasion

• CPS representation on the BOT appears to be for ‘protection’ from the relentless attacks on the Board of Education and town operating budgets, but to the exclusion of the bill from the Academy – a kind of ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ relationship.

• These same CPS activists are the majority on the Trustee Nominating Committee presumably to guarantee that additions to the Board of Trustees share their political agenda and control the direction of the Academy.

• The Academy bill to the Town can be viewed as “taxation without (fair) representation.�

• The Academy is a “de facto natural monopoly�.

• Students in towns which send to the Gilbert School or Norwich Free Academy have more than one reasonable choice of local high schools to attend.

• Although the Woodstock ‘residents’ on the BOT claim to represent the town of Woodstock, one lives out of the country and does not attend BOT meetings (but may have the option to vote on certain matters by proxy), one pays no taxes in town and has no ‘official’ residence, and one exhibited a poor work attendance record while working in the Woodstock Public School System (information disseminated by CPS).

• Uniformly Academy Trustees and representatives distort the goals of the Breen initiative, and the role of the BOE in this initiative, to turn public opinion against it.

The other night I enjoyed the movie “Friday Night Lights” - a 2004 movie starring Billy Bob Thornton about the economically depressed west Texas town of Odessa and its ‘heroic’ high school football team, the Permian High Panthers. There is also a currently running TV serial by the same name with some of the same actors. The movie (and TV story) is interesting to me because the story is about an Odessa football team facing overwhelming odds culminating with a trip to the Texas state championships in Houston - no small feat given the popularity and brutality of high school football in Texas. But I am attracted to the movie, also, because of the memories evoked by the scenes of Odessa and Ratliff Stadium where a lot of the football takes place and where I had one of the most thrilling experiences of my life. No, I’m not dreaming of heroic fantasies for myself, but I am going to talk about something that is a part of me - a part of me that I think both Rich Foye and Francis Baran can appreciate in addition to the football.

In early June, 1998, I sat on the 50 yard line in Ratliff stadium (seating capacity of 20,000) as 500-plus seniors from Odessa High, mostly named Gonzales, marched onto the field in single file in long red robes. It was a warm splendid twilight evening, a night when football was mentioned only once. Yes, the Odessa High Broncos had beaten the cross-town Permian Panthers that year in football (fall of ‘97) against all odds - the only time in that decade and for years to come - a big deal for Ector County. Read the rest of this entry »

As I read Mr. Breen’s proposal it isn’t so much a bid to gain control as one to gain a voice. Since the academy is filling the role of the public high school in the Woodstock area they have become a de-facto natural monopoly. I.e. the barriers to entry to create a new public high school or a competing private high school at the same price point are so high as to make a competitive choice in high schools unlikely. This gives the Woodstock Academy monopoly power. As many monopolies (natural or not) tend to do the Woodstock Academy appears to be using its monopoly power to continue their monopoly status. In this case to force the Woodstock Board Of Education to enter into a long term contract that ostensibly serves mostly the Academy’s interests.

As happens with most monopolies that use strong arm tactics, the recipients of their attention are now seeking legislative and/or judicial relief. I don’t really feel that sorry for the Academy as they are now reaping a crop that they have been sowing for quite some time. Sure a large part of the real problem is the BOF’s 73-27 split in financing but that does not excuse the unfortunately reprehensible tactics of the Academy to continue their status as a monopoly for high school education in Woodstock. Read the rest of this entry »

REFERENDUM RESULTS - March 27, 2006

“Shall the Town of Woodstock adopt the ordinance presented at the March 13, 2007 Special Town Meeting as follows: Whenever a question on the call of a Town Meeting involves an appropriation or issuance of bonds or assumptions of debt, and the amount of such appropriation, bonds or debt is $100,000 or more, the Board of Selectmen shall submit such question to a vote at referendum?�

YES VOTES: 403 … NO VOTES: 257 …. REFERENDUM IS PASSED.

Percentage Turnout: 14% (660 OUT OF 4,675 VOTING)
Attest: Judy W. Alberts, Town Clerk

Also see Norwich Bull article

The recent editorial regarding Woodstock Academy certainly grabbed our attention. It seems to have grabbed the Academy’s attention also, due to the fact that they’ve hired a lobbyist to try and stop the suggested changes that were brought to the State Legislature. To us this says that there is something that the Academy is trying to hide. Or at least the Academy realizes that there are legal and/or financial and/or operational problems with how they work under the existing law. Clearly the Academy does not want these problems exposed or corrected.

What Mr. Breen is suggesting is quite simple: the sending towns should have an equal voice to the Academy’s appointees, when it comes to making legal, financial or major operational decisions. After all, the Academy is funded through local taxes and state money received by the sending towns. In other words, PUBLIC funds are being spent on a PUBLIC purpose (educating children), yet the PUBLIC does not have a fair say in the use or amount of those funds. The Academy simply tells its funding source (the PUBLIC), “Pay this amountâ€? regardless of how it affects their future students (K-8). Read the rest of this entry »

Based upon our new IP tagging capability we estimate that their have been at least 350 unique visitors to the Cafe over the last 3 weeks, and that visitation is increasing steadily. This is a conservative estimate that does not include one-time visitors from far off places, visitors that click in and leave without turning pages, and visitors from Google Images who come to the Cafe to see the pictures linked in various articles like the giant squid found in Taylor Brooke ( “…Salt For Brains”), the nuclear silo ( “Woodstock Goes Nuclear”), or Gizzy-Do ( “Pet of the Week…”). Admin

‘A taxpayer’ said something that I thought was an odd view of the situation between the Academy and the Woodstock K-8 school system, e.g. “Nonetheless, the presenting above article is greatly appreciated for … its idealism.� Thanks for the apparent compliment AT, but it’s the “idealism� part that struck me as odd. This is because the article entitled “What would change…� (below) describes essentially the situation that exists in most K-12 school systems – that is, coordinated oversight of a child’s public school education from entry into kindergarten through graduation. I doubt that few would label having what most towns have “idealism.�

I recognize, however, that the Academy has the potential to offer much more than the average high school. As the father of “My Son’s Vallydictorian Speech…� I would not advocate the demise of the Academy as many inflammatory statements by Trustees and Academy supporters like the ‘Dream Weavers’ have suggested… or hold the ninth grade students hostage at the middle school. I wondered if there was a reason why Mr. Weaver did not sign Mary Weaver’s statement in the Shoppers’ Guide. Could it be that he is still uncomfortable with the idea of a football program at the Academy?

Richard Foye was a first team All-American Center at UConn (Div. 2) in 1973. Handsome guy too.(Adobe Acrobat may have to open to see photo)

The inflammatory claims made by Academy representatives and athletic ‘supporters’ only persuade me further that the Trustees are either desperate or stupid… or perhaps they just feel that most of the town folk are stupid and will swallow whatever they say. To misstate over and over again what Joe Breen has proposed in newsprint and at meetings reminds me of … I hate to say it … a certain class of right wing regimes. Their repeated misstating of the Breen proposal is probably as much for their own incitement as it is for persuasion of the General Assembly. Indeed, their flooding of the General Assembly with these misstatements will only raise questions in legislators’ minds about the motivations of Academy advocates.

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Another Eastern CT town official speaking on the idea of having a Town spending cap:
“As an elected official in local government for almost 18 years, I will say that capping property taxes is not the way to reform property taxes… It is expensive to keep town services at a level expected by the citizens and keep taxes low. … The real problem is in educating the voters so that a consensus may be developed on town spending to keep up the infrastructure and provide the necessary services. It is not easy and not always successful. It is also difficult to get the message out so the voters understand the issues. There is no magic bullet and we will get what we pay for - however much or little that is. A cap on the local government’s ability to get the funds it needs to provide services will insure excessive expenditures when the infrastructure wears out …�

What would change?

The mission of the Academy would be expanded to enhancement of student performance within the entire K-12 systems of all sending towns. Presumably attacks on the Woodstock K-8 public school system by members of the Academy Board of Trustees would cease. The new expectation would be that ALL Trustees would take on roles to “advocate for the public education of ALL students� including those of the K-8 school systems of the sending towns - not just the students attending the Academy. This being so, decisions would not be made that take away from one school system to enhance another.

If the strategic objective for the Academy is to produce the best students and citizens through well-rounded, superior education, then it seems that the Academy would have a vested interest in considering optimal K-8 management and funding for each sending town during development of their operating budget. Perhaps under this merger of oversights, more cooperation, collaboration and cross fermentation would develop between the four K-8 systems and the Academy. One could even envision accelerated programs for gifted middle school students at the Academy as opposed to an ad hoc arrangement that has existed in the past. The ultimate outcome of this merger would be higher commitment to the highest quality education achievable for all of the students of the sending towns.

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Christine Johnston Lessig
14 Doctor Pike Road
P.O. Box 307
East Woodstock, CT 06244

March 21, 2007

Dear Chairperson Lindsey Paul and Woodstock Board of Education,

It is with deep regret that I am submitting my resignation to the Woodstock Board of Education effective March 22, 2007. It has been difficult to be a board member with the stress and adversarial climate that has existed for the last several years.

This decision was not made hastily for I have considered this action for the past twelve months. As a member of the Board of Education I have attempted to promote community engagement and I do hope that this spirit will continue. It has been a learning experience and I appreciate the opportunity to have served on the Board.

Woodstock is a wonderful town and has three terrific schools with dedicated and talented teachers and administrators. I wish the board well as they support quality education for the all Woodstock students, Pre-K -12.

Sincerely,

Christine Johnston Lessig