Woodstock CT Café

We are grateful to ‘Reality Check’ for pointing out a mistake in this article published on June 30th. Thus it has been revised accordingly. Admin

The per pupil regular education cost are as follows:
Woodstock Academy … $9,998
Woodstock Public Schools … $7,734

The Academy per pupil regular education cost is the tuition figure of $9,998 (ref.1). To determine the per pupil costs of the PK-8 system, we start with the total education budget of $15,003,565 (ref.2) and remove all the high school related costs of $5,720,685 (ref.3). This leaves us with a balance of $9,282,880. From this we must remove $1,595,095 (PK-8 special education), and $541,648 (transportation – exclusive of high school/sped transportation) (ref.4) costs because none of these are included in the Academy per pupil tuition. This leaves us with a figure of $7,146,137. This figure is then divided by 924 (ref.5) which results in a per pupil cost of $7,734 for regular education in the PK-8 systems. Read the rest of this entry »

Being responsible for the meeting on Wednesday night, I would characterize the events (of last night’s Board of Ed meeting). (See the rest of Frank’s comment under “Amidst The Turmoil...”) You all speculate as to the intentions or motivations of the WBOE members. Rather than speculate, why don’t you just ask us individually. We aren’t wallflowers who are hesitant to speak our minds. However, it isn’t the purpose of a WBOE meeting to express personal views or to ask the chair what the WBOE’s motives were. The WBOE doesn’t have motives, the WBOE is a meeting where we discuss issues and take action. Intentions and motives are the realm of the individual members.

So before you ask, I’ll tell you my motivations for voting to evaluate the 9th Grade Proposal. Over the last several years we have teetered on the edge of being able to provide what I believe is a minimal offering to students K-8. Students do need to develop holistically and we need to provide WMS students with a range of offerings in academics, athletics, non-athletic extracurricular areas, and in gifted and talented programs. All students need to have the opportunity to participate in some aspect of education where they can shine, and I believe, although we are all different, virtually every one of our students has some area of strength where they can rise above the rest and lead. Read the rest of this entry »