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

This BOE meeting held last night (3/22) is also covered in the Norwich Bull.

Just a few details as it is late… A magnet school from Willimantic presented info on adding core curriculum to their performance art program - 3 hours a day high school…. Jeff Gordon, the chair of the Municipal Finance Advisory Task Force gave an informational presentation to the Board …. The motion made last week (about clarifying the duties and responsibilities of the WPS BOE and the Academy) was discussed and, after several motions were proposed and discarded, but no motion appeared to be passed (CORRECTED. Admin) regarding Mr. Breen’s proposal to the Education Committee of the General Assembly. … Christine Lessig resigned from the School Board effective immediately. There were probably in the neighborhood of sixty in attendance, not many new faces, mostly regulars and semi-regulars representing the Academy.

Becki Leavitt

(submitted by ‘Why Not Us’. Admin)

The Gilbert School signed a contract with the Winchester Board of Education for a three year period beginning July 1, 2007. The Contract includes a clause for Mediation and Arbitration between the School and the Board on the issue of tuition. After the School establishes its tuition rate and aggregate tuition charges for regular education Winchester students, the Winchester Board can object and then the Board and School are required to first attempt to resolve any disagreements relating to per-pupil tuition rate by direct discussions and in such process, the School shall give good faith consideration to reduction of its per-pupil tuition charge to Winchester. At the option of either party, the parties agree to participate in nonbinding mediation to resolve their differences by a mediator they select, or if they can not agree, as designated by the State Dept. of Education. If no satisfactory resolution of the School’s per-pupil tuition rate is reached by direct discussions and/or mediation, either the Winchester Board or the Gilbert School, by a majority vote of at least seven of its members, can institute binding arbitration. The scope of the arbitration shall be limited to the following question: “Whether the Gilbert School per pupil tuition rate established for the next school year is reasonable”. The arbitrator is required to review several factors in answering that question including the following:

a. The educational needs, prior performance and achievement results of students of the School and the Board;

b. The interests and welfare of the parties, the students of the School, citizens of Winchester and the employees of the Winchester Board and the School;

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Lindsay Paul speaks up in the Norwich Bull today 3/22

Cafe visitation was very heavy yesterday 3/21 and it will be heavy today. Admin

· A group of people that oversees a non-profit organization
· A governing board elected or appointed to direct the policies of an educational institution
· A member of a board elected or appointed to direct the funds and policy of an institution.
· A group responsible for supervising a trust territory.

I noticed in the article on the Gilbert School that Gilbert has a Board of Trustees to oversee the endowment trust fund and a Board of Directors to oversee that management of the “School Corporation.� In my experience a Board of Trustees is the fiduciary body that oversees that management of funds according to the stipulations of a bequest or donations understood by a lender of a deed of trust. In the case of the Gilbert School, they have $4.3 million in endowment. The Norwich Academy has >$50 million in endowment. These funds are invested, monitored, and managed by Trustees to ensure that these funds are spent according to the wishes of the benefactor (the Trust).

“Even though the Brooklyn and Woodstock sending town Trustees voted against it, the Academy Trustees voted a $428 per student tuition increase at its meeting last night. For Woodstock, that will mean $200,000 of cuts that will have to come from its K-8 budget.” submitted by ‘Such Arrogance’

Woodstock Academy has a Board of Trustees whose primary role is to manage public funds. But these are not donated public funds. These funds are mandated by law and collected by taxation of property owners of Woodstock and three other towns. We citizens have no choice but to hand over the money – if we don’t, the Town takes our property and we may go to jail. Approximately 35% of the education funding of Woodstock comes from State funding that is collected through sales and income taxes. So most of the funding of Woodstock Academy comes from local taxpayers (at least 65%) and the rest from citizens of Connecticut that includes the further taxation of citizens of Woodstock. Read the rest of this entry »

Please communicate your feelings about Joe Breen’s initiative to members of the state legislature. Here is the contact information.

Both Mr. Higgins’ letter (see adenda) and Mr. Leavitt’s letter can be used as a template for any citizen that wishes to communicate their views to a state legislator.

Dear Members, Senators, and Representatives of the State General Assembly:

I am a resident of Woodstock and am writing to express my serious support of legislation in response to a proposal submitted to the Education Committee of the General Assembly by Mr. Joseph Breen, another resident of Woodstock, in February 2007, proposing changes in the Connecticut State Statutes under which Woodstock Academy has operated.

I am a father of a recent graduate of Woodstock Academy (in 2006) who was also educated in the Woodstock K-8 public school system. I have high regard for the Woodstock public school system, its leadership and its governing Board of Education. I also have high regard for the Woodstock Academy and have donated money to help fund their new Woodstock football program. In support of the intent of this program (a point of controversy in Woodstock), I have published articles on the merits of this program here at the Café. Furthermore, I hold Ed Higgins, a founder of the Academy Football Boosters, in high regard for his tireless effort (along with his colleagues) in fundraising for this program, as well as for Ed and his wife’s other contributions to the Town of Woodstock. In addition, I believe that Headmaster Richard Foye is well-intentioned and well-qualified as the leader of the Academy.

I have only met Mr. Breen, who submitted the proposal in question to the Education Committee, publicly once and was unaware of his proposal until it was published at www.woodsckctcafe.com in the second week of March 2007. This is not to say that I am unfamiliar with the issues that Mr. Breen has raised in his proposal. Herein, I wish to state my unwavering support in favor of all of the features of Mr. Breen’s proposal submitted to the Education Committee, i.e. his proposal regarding the mission, governance, major decision making, and domicile costs. I believe that the “Governance� feature of Mr. Breen’s proposal is the essential issue that the Connecticut General Assembly MUST address and rectify because of the fact that Woodstock Academy is almost completely dependent on taxpayer funding (in contrast to Norwich Academy). Each of these features of Mr. Breen’s proposal is re-stated below in two articles published at the Café.

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From the Gilbert Trust Corporation: “The current market value of the general endowment is approximately $2.5 million. The current market value of the restricted endowment, which is solely for distribution of yearly scholarships for alumni and students of The Gilbert School and other restricted purposes as stated by the donors of these funds, is approximately $1.8 million.
Thank you for your interest in The Gilbert School and The W.L. Gilbert Trust Corporation.”

The Gilbert School is one of three so-called “Academiesâ€? in Connecticut although the school calls itself “The Gilbert Schoolâ€? after its founder William L. Gilbert. This academy was founded in 1895, almost a century after Woodstock Academy. It was founded with a bequest that has been the basis for the school’s current endowment. Like the Academy’s mission statement, The Gilbert School’s mission statement is a highly polished and practiced statement of their vision of themselves. The school’s website www.gilbertschool.org is user friendly and pleasing to the eye, unlike the WA’s website that needs radical revision.

The Gilbert School is the designated high school for two towns, Hartland and the larger Winchester. Its student enrollment for the 2005-06 year was 479 (declining 7.2% over a 5-year period) while WA’s enrollment for the same year was 1141 (increasing 18.4% over a 5-year period). The Gilbert School is located in Winsted with Hartland up the road (north) and Winchester down the road (south) a few miles. If you draw a straight line from Hartford to the northwest corner of the state, Winsted is found at the halfway point on that line northwest of Hartford. Read the rest of this entry »