Woodstock CT Café

We have just posted the Academy’s 2006 Strategic (5-Year) Plan to the right on a separate page.

Frank Corden made the following statement in his article below: “We estimate payments to Woodstock Academy for 2007/2008 to be $4.9 million or just under one-third of our total education budget. This amount is larger than the TOTAL General Government Budget. With the pressure on the Board of Selectmen and the WBOE to look at all manner of items to keep spending low, it seems unreasonable to out-of-hand dismiss a means of managing the fees paid to Woodstock Academy.”

This statement and the first two comments that followed Frank’s article prompted me to revisit the Key Article (listed on the right) entitled “Ten Year Growth in Woodstock.” I realized that I had not properly addressed the reason why the total education budget had increased in 10 years by 22.1% (normalized dollars for the last 10 years), an increase that was higher than the total town budget (17.6%) and the general Town operating budget (18.9%). The overall growth of the Town budget was and is attributed to agressive and disproportionate growth in housing developments.

Below I detail some additions that I have made to the “Ten Year Growth…” article. These additions are paragraphs 4 through 6 of the quoted section below. The first three paragraphs are included to show the context, and to show the consistency in these calculations. Read the rest of this entry »

Each year as we approach the inevitable reductions in the education programs and classroom staff of the Woodstock Public Schools we get publicly lashed for not looking elsewhere for the funds. The WPS periodically assesses the availability of more cost effective alternatives for major expenditures including salaries, benefits, insurance, transportation costs and others. I’d be happy to provide additional detail on these efforts.

As an example, to address the salary costs, this year, after 2-years of work, the WBOE was able to offer an early retirement package to the faculty that was considered acceptable. Though that package will reduce our costs for faculty salaries, it’s regrettable in that we also lose the experience and skills of this dedicated group of teachers. The administration has worked diligently to recruit talented educators to take these positions and provide our students with a quality education.

A significant item not mentioned above is the fee we pay to Woodstock Academy to educate our high school students. We estimate payments to Woodstock Academy for 2007/2008 to be $4.9 million or just under one-third of our total education budget. This amount is larger than the TOTAL General Government Budget. With the pressure on the Board of Selectmen and the WBOE to look at all manner of items to keep spending low, it seems unreasonable to out-of-hand dismiss a means of managing the fees paid to Woodstock Academy. Read the rest of this entry »

As Mr. Romeo Blackmar exits from the WBOE this fall, I for one will miss him. Since I joined the board 4 years ago, I observed Mr. Blackmar’s commitment to the community and dedication to the children of our community and region. Mr. Blackmar has consistently emphasized one particular position that I have co-opted to assist me in my deliberations as a board member. With all due respect to several critics of the WBOE, the board members are elected by the citizens who vote in the election but board members are tasked by the State of Connecticut to represent those citizens;
1. Who are denied a voice in politics,
2. Who by virtue of their age aren’t old enough to vote, and
3. Whose opportunities (and missed opportunities) aren’t limited to the next year or two but rather will last a lifetime.
That is the board members are charged with representing the best interests of the Town of Woodstock’s CHILDREN.

And there have been, are, and will be times when the interests of our children are contrary to interests of the voting members of the community who elected us. Read the rest of this entry »

Short memories and inaccuracies allow for the convenient forgetting of the bond default. That issue alone has been a big part of the cause for the long-term bad feelings between the Town and the BOE. The bond default was initially brought to light by Mike Alberts during a Board of Selectmen’s meeting when Mike was 2nd selectman, not by Delpha Very as many would like for the world to believe. This is a fact that wasn’t known by anyone that did not attend that BOS meeting. The default was later brought back as an agenda item at a future meeting. Delpha Very, as 1st selectman running the meeting, brought the default forward and Mike Alberts sat there quietly allowing her to appear to be the ‘bad guy’.

The bond default by the Academy was also known about by the prior Selectman administration headed by 1st Selectman Ernie Wetzel, but the default was never acted upon since Wetzel was getting the special treatment of a private personal gym from the Academy. Wetzel will tell you he spent $’s investigating this default but there is no record of this expenditure and direct questioning of the prior town council (lawyer) proves this out also.

The Democratic Town Committee apparently had no idea that Ms. Wholean was so entrenched with the Academy but they should have made that connection since Jim Kaeding, her husband, was the then head of the Academy Board of Trustees. The DTC put her name up as a 1st selectman “place holderâ€? to keep the CPS folks from petitioning into that slot, never thinking that she would attempt to actually win. You see, the DTC had invited Delpha Very to one of their meetings and wanted to place her name on their ballot because they liked what she had been doing as 1st selectman. However, the State Election Commission would not allow that (a Republican on the Democrat ticket) so in went Ms. Wholean as a “place holder”. Jim Kaeding saw this as an opportunity to put her in as 1st selectman and then use her as a puppet to promote the Academy’s interests. Read the rest of this entry »

Who was the First to Isolate a Gene?

It was Garret Ihler in Charlie Thomas’ lab at Harvard in 1968-69 before the advent of recombinant DNA. The paper, appropriately titled “Isolation of Pure lac Operon DNA�, was published in Nature (vol. 224 pages 768-774) in 1969. This paper, certainly, was fresh in the minds of Nobel Prize winners, Dan Nathans and Hamilton Smith at Johns Hopkins, a few years later as they developed restriction enzymes to cut and paste defined DNA fragments (Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1978).

Ihler’s work started molecular biologists thinking of the benefits of molecular cloning of recombinant genes. Although lac is an E. coli (lactose) operon consisting of three structural genes (encoding the enzymes required for metabolism of lactose), lac is a single transcriptional unit with one gene promoter and two regulatory domains (for the repressor and operator). Ihler’s paper points out that purification of individual genes would permit investigation of their mechanisms of transcriptional control and expression. Read the rest of this entry »

First, and foremost, I apologize to the Long Range Planning committee and the Board for not attending the meeting on the 28th. I had a committment out of town and thought that I would be able to return to Woodstock in time to vote on the 9th grade proposal. Unfortunately, I was not able to get back into town until after the vote had been taken. My presence would have not changed the vote. Had I been there I would have voiced my opinion in opposition to the 9th grade proposal. Having attended the community forum the night before the BOE meeting and having heard the voice of the community members present, I realized how politicized the entire process had become. When the committee first met I thought we had set ourselves a very challenging agenda and had committed ourselves to a very tight timeline. As the committee’s work progressed I began to see how the opposition voices started to make political “hay” out of the issue. Several other factors, the WA contract talks, Prop. 46 lawyers fees etc. all started to creep into the discussions on the 9th grade proposal. Hearing comments about those issues in relation to the proposal struck me as ” out of order.” I did not think then, nor do I think now, that those issues should have been introduced into the discussion. When innuendo and obfuscation are the order of the day any further discussion become fruitless. Read the rest of this entry »

I need to weigh in on this-though I am not in this fight having opted out by sending my children to private schools…something which I am extremely satisfied with, and extremely happy not to be emotionally attached to this on-going battle.

I know both you (Ernie) and Frank to some degree but would certainly not pretend to have anything other than an “outsiders” prospective on these discussions except as an interested citizen who feels like I should participate to help the town. I utilize this web site to stay informed-since my business schedule and children often prohibit me from attending any regular meetings.

I would really appreciate more factual based information to help me truly understand the issues/problems and potential solutions- rather than simply questioning people’s honesty- or suggesting people “tricked” voters about their stance on Proposition 46…in particular…when I believe you actually backed a “referendum” to overturn 46 several years ago? I understand this was a political initiative to supposedly get a final decision out on the table but claiming Frank “tricked people” about 46 seems rather hollow after running that movement. Read the rest of this entry »

Ernie Wetzel,

You Trustees never cease to amaze me. Business goes on with your distortions of the budgets and the behavior of your BOT heroes. For the last three years the BOT has engaged in all kinds of unethical and inappropriate behavior with their handling of education in Woodstock. They have spent all kinds of money on lawyers, wasted the BOE’s time and money, and have gotten nothing for all of their efforts. What they have done is harmed the childrens education in this town over the last year. They should be spending their time getting us more education with the money they have, which has been plently. They operate like heroes behind closed doors to spin their webs. But at the moment of truth like on the vote for the 9th grade proposal, they prove themselves to be cowards and wimps like they are, using the CPS goon squad as a front for them. James Kaeding the architect of alot of this and his sidekick Margie Wholean well now we know, mentally missing in action. The Academy’s contract proposal is representative of the waste of time and money over the last two years at least. What a poorly thought out and investigated idea. This is how the Academy operates and all they know how to do well is raise tuitions and cause trouble. Read the rest of this entry »

Ernie, you constantly and profoundly amaze me. You out of hand dismiss facts that are inconsistent with the message you’re trying to send without any justification why you don’t agree.

You have served on the BoE and as a selectman. You know the issues and the situation yet continue to use invectives, and misleading statements to fan the flames in this community. You are a leader of this community and if you put half as much energy in to synthesizing a vision for us to embrace and then developing the actions necessary to making it happen, we would be much better off.

You’ve intentionally created the environment we operate in for no obvious benefit that I can see. You work to paralyze the community, not move it forward. Six years ago, I supported you. That’s a mistake I profoundly regret. And when you look at the leaders in this community, there are many others who feel the same.

Do what you were elected to do as First Selectman those many years ago, work toward improving our community, not harming it. Read the rest of this entry »