Woodstock CT Café

This article was published at the Cafe on August 24th 2008.

One has to wonder if this is/was the ultimate goal of Powers, Shultz, and Wholean.

In the Opinion (snippets below), The Judge used words like “pure folly”, (not)”sincere”, “disingenuous”, “baseless”, “shifted their argument”, and “common sense” to characterize Powers’ case.

Then there is the FOI case perpetrated by Shultz using a document passed to him from the office of the First Selectman (Wholean) obtained by her own FOI lawsuit against the BOE while she was First Selectman (Shultz’ own testimony in June). The reality that the leadership of the Town Hall was passing documents to private litigants to be used against the school system shows how devious our Town leadership was a year ago. This should not be forgotten when Ms. Wholean tries to regain the First Selectman position in the next Town election.

The contradiction in Powers’ case should be obvious to all. Over the last four years he was requesting (“demanding?”) more services from the Woodstock school system including the addition of a staff member while doing everything possible over the last three years with his defunct “Coalition Website” and now his Untruth website to undermine the school system. If the choice of a common lawyer (Robert Skelley) is any indication, both Shultz and Wholean are parties to Powers effort.

Powers was quoted in the February 23rd 2007 Villager article “My bigger concern as a taxpayer, is that the town is spending all of this money on legal defense and this is how the lawyers conduct themselves.” In a second lawsuit he had accused Shipman & Goodwin BOE lawyers of misconduct during his first lawsuit that drew all of the same conclusions of this third lawsuit in Federal Court (an appeal of the first lawsuit). The second lawsuit was thrown out unceremoniously. His quote above shows the irrational beliefs that form the basis for all three lawsuits, and Shultz and Wholean’s FOI lawsuits as well. He is criticizing the BOE and ultimately the Town for defending itself against his own lawsuits.

If Powers follows up with another appeal there ought to be a counter-suit to recover damages to the taxpayers.

Snippets from the Court’s Opinion:

This is decidedly not a case in which a school turned a blind eye to a child in need. To the contrary, Mrs. Fulco acted conscientiously, communicating regularly with Mrs. Powers and utilizing special strategies to help A.P. succeed. In fact, Mrs. Powers admitted in her testimony that she was pleased with A.P.’s progress in the fourth grade.…in fact, according to Plaintiffs’ counsel at oral argument, A.P. has never been diagnosed with ADD

Although the Parents claim that they did not know they had this right, all evidence points to the contrary.

It would have been pure folly for the school sua sponte to convene a PPT and make a decision on whether A.P. was eligible for special education services before learning the results of the evaluation.

Read the rest of this entry »

Powers asked the BOE leadership to step down in August 2007 in relation to his lawsuit. This article was published on August 10th 2007.

In his Letter to the Editor published today (August 10th in the Villager) Craig Powers blames Lindsay Paul for “nearly $100,000″ in legal costs that have been placed in the 2007-2008 budget. He calls this “simply outrageous for a town” the size of Woodstock. Looking back at the 2006-2007 fiscal year, I faintly recall that Mr. Powers sued the Woodstock School System because he felt that Woodstock taxpayers should foot the bill for his unilateral decision to send his son to the Rectory School in Pomfret – that’s you, me, and all other residents of Woodstock. It’s odd that Powers fails to mention this in his Letter to the Editor. The cost of Powers lawsuit against the BOE has never been publicized, but it must have been substantial. Keep in mind that you, me and the rest of the residents of the Town have been paying for Mr. Powers’ vendetta against the school system.

Given that Ms. Wholean just sued the BOE (Docket #FIC 2007-352), no wonder the BOE feels the need to brace for this coming year’s round of lawsuits. Powers, Wholean, and Mr. Shultz and their so-called “coalition” are conducting their vendettas against the BOE at taxpayers’ expense. The difference between Ms. Wholean’s litigious acts and the Powers/Shultz litigious activities is that, in my opinion, Ms. Wholean is using her attacks on the BOE for political reasons at the taxpayers’ expense. Read the rest of this entry »

The Pomfret Voice Bites the Dust“The Last Post – To my friends and fellow residents of Pomfret,In an effort to create more lines of communication among all of us I had created this site and paid the nominal costs in hopes of helping us all. Despite my several pleas to use the site for positive open discussion it,primarily, became a place for negative criticism and in some cases slanderous posts. The site has been a constant administrative headache and is costing me more time than I have or am willing to devote. Therefore the site will come to an end this weekend. I wish you all well and hope someone else will create a better venue in the future.” Pomfret Voice Admin May 23rd, 2009.The negative Canterbury Blog has also shut down.

There’s more going on at the Cafe than meets the eye of most Cafers. Take “ANN” for example who occassionaly leaves negative comments. ANN is not Anne of Green Gables; ANN is an acronym for ANNARCHY. When you think of Ann don’t think of the female gender…hmmm, I wonder who this could be?

The Cafe has many visitors with only a very few ever leaving comments. Nearly every week we are surprised to find new people who visit the Cafe because they tell us so. We’ve always been curious about whose visiting or how many are visiting and we usually report this on a quarterly basis. But it has become clear that more and more Internet surfers have found ways to hide their IP (Internet Protocol) address (like our friend ANN), and so our StatCounter is not picking these people up. Thus using our StatCounter, we are seeing only part of the story.

Our host is BrightEgg, and they have from time-to-time given us information on activity at the Cafe because they have been surprised that the Cafe is the most active website they host. In February after one year of service, they told us that the Cafe had over 1 million page turns at BrightEgg in our first year with them. We were surprised too because our StatCounter was reporting much less.

The difference in the two measurements is that the StatCounter measures Internet traffic while BrightEgg measures activity directly off of their server computer which is bound to be accurate. Internet data compilers like compete.com measure Internet traffic and tell us that we have about 1000 unique visitors each month, but this measurement is highly error-prone because we are at the limits of detectability by their methods.

If we measure activity at the Cafe directly off of our host server for the month of May up to May 29th we see the numbers shown below:

We have some understanding of these numbers but do not fully understand them. We are not saying that there are 6000 unique visitors each month who are interested in Woodstock and are avidly reading articles at the Cafe. For example, searching images on Google has become more and more popular around the world, and we have always been aware of outsiders coming to the Cafe because some Arab searched an image posted at the Cafe like Scarlet Johansonn who played Jennica Heifer in “Hollywood Comes to Woodstock”.

“Unique visitors” is simply a unique IP address being detected (over 6000 in May). The larger number of 15,233 visits is all the times all IP addresses have entered the Cafe; so many of these unique IPs are coming back. We tend to think the “Pages” or “clicks on any page” is the most interesting data.

Below are graphs of the day-by-day activity in May at the Cafe in terms of visits and page turns measured directly at our server or by our StatCounter.

Read the rest of this entry »

Cafe Elves have been working feverishly to manufacture these precious works of art. Each of these signs is hand-crafted (I’m sure you couldn’t tell). No two are identical. Since the elves expect these to become valuable collectors’ items after June 9th, the elves have decided to make only a limited number of these for distribution. After the referendum you can have these framed and hung in your study…or even sell them on EBay to the highest bidder.

Just think about it…How often do voters that normally vote YES get a chance to vote NO? Likewise, the voters that normally vote NO like the 123 that voted NO in the budget referendum will now have to train their grimey hands to fill in the YES oval. This will not be easy for them to do because of the long-standing habit that they’ve developed.

Also, be careful if you put one of these signs out because the CPS members will steal them and save them for the next referendum vote.

If you desperately need one of these Vote NO signs, the elves can make it happen ( contact the elves at woodstockctcafe@gmail.com ).

June 2009

This month, the Woodstock Board of Education would like to announce the Woodstock Education Foundation’s (WEF) fourth annual spring event, A Midsummer’s Night, which will be held on Saturday, June 13th.  This event will kick off with a late afternoon Poetry Jam featuring students from the WEF funded 2008-2009 Public Speaking program at 4 p.m., with each student performing a piece recently done in competition.  Public Speaking is just one of the twenty-plus programs funded annually by the WEF.  Parents, families, friends, and community members are welcome to attend this free afternoon event and enjoy milk and cookies provided thanks to a generous donation of the beverage from The Farmer’s Cow and Fairvue Farms.  A Midsummer’s Night will continue with an evening event from 6:30 – 9:30 p.m., which features dinner from the Vanilla Bean, a silent auction and cocktails.  This fundraising event is being held at the home of Valerie and Philip Law in Woodstock.  The attire is summer casual.  Tickets for the evening are $40.00 per person and must be purchased in advance by June 9 (see contact information below). 
  
The spring event is one of the Woodstock Education Foundation’s top fundraising activities for the year.  Funds raised from both this event and from the WEF’s annual appeal in the fall are used to support a variety of school and community programs and partnerships.  During the 2008-2009 school year, the WEF was able to:  purchase a Smart Board interactive whiteboard for Woodstock Elementary school; fund programs featuring visiting professionals and performers at both schools; and fund extra curricular activities including the chess club, a fuel cell competition, the student literary publication, and the annual 7th grade Civil War week. Read the rest of this entry »

by Teacher’s Point of View 

Speaking of letters, did you read the letter by Powers in the Villager today? Here’s a quote from it:

“Mr. Rosendahl’s accurate and lengthy commentary that appeared on these pages last week regarding the history and actions of this board reveals just some of the issues that should be of concern to every parent and taxpayer in Woodstock. All of the topics that he covered are those that can be verified with documents”

So let’s do this. Verify the following of Mr. Rosendahl’s ‘accurate’ information for me, Mr. Powers:

“• Approximately 60 teachers send a letter of no confidence to Dr. Baran. Dr. Baran states that the teachers are calling him a liar. Chairman Paul sweeps this under the rug and it is never mentioned again.”

I guarantee you won’t be able to. There was no “no confidence vote”, and certainly no letter with 60 signatures on it. Go ahead and produce evidence of this vote. People would be wise to research information before they publish their ‘facts’. They could not only hurt their cause, but find themselves in trouble, otherwise.

It’s interesting that Mr. Schultze (Oops I mean “Shultz”) makes the giant leap that Ms. Paul has been commenting and writing articles at the Cafe…and that the Cafe is a BOE Blog. In mentioning your name, Mr. Shultz, I have always prided myself in spelling your name correctly because I have seen it published on many legal documents. Since one of us attended the BOE meeting last night, a copy of your letter was provided to us just as it was to anyone else who attended that meeting.

I don’t know of any instance where Ms. Paul has ever visited the Cafe or contributed to the Cafe. However, I do know of others that have mis-spelled your name. It’s become apparent to me that they are doing this to show their lack of respect for you. These serial mis-spellers will be gratified to know that this gets under your skin .

John

YES – 675 (85%)

NO – 123 (15%)

Low turnout, about 100 an hour. Keep your fingers crossed! Go vote if you haven’t…

Today’s Budget Referendum is from noon to eight o’clock. Make sure you get down to the town hall and cast your ballot. If the budget doesn’t pass we will have to make more cuts. This proposed budget is less than the current budget. Don’t let your vote go uncounted.

This was part of Newcomer’s comment under “Just in From the Town Meeting”

by Newcomer

Let me try a metaphor with a little personal story below. Take the example of a school yard bully, since it’s clear after all of this time that the BOE feels bullied by CPS and all of the FOI’s, lawsuits, personal attacks, etc.

How do we teach our kids to deal with a bully at school? Most of us advise a child to either ignore the bully or try to talk their way out of the situation. Only as a last resort and if all else fails should a child consider returning physical violence in an effort toward self-defense. Right? Fighting is always the last resort. And now for the story. I was bullied in 7th grade for several weeks by a kid I didn’t even know and for a reason I still don’t know to this day. Not only was I the only girl in my family, I was an only child. My father handled it the way he would have with a son back in the day. He took me outside and taught me how to fight. My mother hit the roof and when I came back inside, I received a good, long lecture all about how I should ignore the bully until she goes away or try to talk it out and get to the bottom of it. I tried this for weeks, three at least, and the bullying not only continued, it got worse until one day, the girl threatened to beat me up after school. The morning of the scheduled “fight” I happened to be at the top landing of the third flight of a stairway in our school. I was just about to head down to my next class when I saw the bully coming up the same staircase, about to pass by me. Of course, she had me in her sights. I waited for her to reach the top of the landing and as predicted, she came right toward me. Seconds later, there was a bully lying at the bottom of the staircase and she never bothered me again. As a matter of fact, the next time she passed me in a corridor, she even smiled at me. Problem solved. Read the rest of this entry »

by Ron

We that are willing to stand up and be counted on one side or the other of issues see a problem with those that are unwilling to present their views and debate. It is very apparent that the people that signed the petition don’t want to show their plans and are leaving the rest of us to guess at their agenda and motives. So be it.

They are using what a democracy allows within the rules that govern our town/state.

My personal view is that they want to overhaul the board and change the way we can replace people because they think this will service their views best.

Those that help present why the rules are the way they are should be voicing this as the real reasons for not changing. I understand the learning curves with the rule/laws that are currently in place. There is a HUGE learning curve to ensure that we as a town fill in all of the correct forms for the state and not federal required data. This gets no better once you start to understand real contract rules (limited disclosure requirements) let alone privacy laws.

I also believe that people signing the petition don’t fully understand the charter of the BOE (Kids education is the primary requirement) are and if I understand it correctly that as a member of the Board you will have swear an oath to meet these requirements. Notice that this oath is not to the town’s financial well being but to the kids! I hope that these petitioners understand all that goes into the responsibilities that the BOE are under.

John Penny’s Article in the Norwich Bull this morning:

http://www.norwichbulletin.com/news/x2085732101/Meeting-on-Woodstock-school-board-leaves-loose-ends

Stephen Rechner: “How are we supposed to vote intelligently if no one is telling us the reason for this petition?”

Dean Audet: “If this passes, it throws out a valid election,” … “What’s to prevent another group from submitting another petition? We’d have referendum after referendum and nothing would get settled.”

From A Voice: “It was enough to make up my mind. Their opinion is we did it because we could. No merit, No way.”

by JK

Honestly, I think I should be angered about going to a meeting that was called due to the actions of the petitioners and hearing nothing from them. Instead, I’m left wondering why no petitioner stood up to explain their position.

If I signed a petition, and there was a town meeting to discuss it, I would feel obligated to answer other citizens request for an explanation of my actions.

Someone commented something to the effect that people with an opinion can show up and vote. I already did vote at the elections.

Finally, this petition may be legal, but there are lots of people who are willing to use existing laws and loopholes therein to act in an unethical manner.

It was a very interesting meeting as town meetings go. Surprisingly what was interesting was that when asked to explain the proposed ordinance, Craig Powers had no comment… Preston Shultz was mum as well, and Dave Richardson’s brief response was but to reference that Rosendahl’s letter in the Villager pretty much said everything.

There were some comments from the assembled legislators of the town (that’s us of course). I would say that there were a couple of comments in support of the proposed change and probably a couple of comments against, but most of the comments were questioning why we were even assembled – that, for the most part, fueled by the complete unwillingness of those who are proposing this change being steadfastly silent.

It was, in a word, weird.

The Bars on the furthest left are activity on Memorial Day, the middle two sets are for May 26th and 27th, and the bars on the right are for May 28th, yesterday.

Blue = Unique Visitors & Green = Page Turns. This suggests a lot of reading.

These figures are an under-estimate of visitation because many visitors have masked Internet Protocols. Hits directly from our server suggest that we are getting 2414 page turns a day on average in May.

Thanks to Con’s advice we upgraded the rules of engagment for posting at the Cafe. See the uppermost link on the left sidebar. One of our rules is as follows:

“Using multiple pseudonyms…” to express varied points of view.

Heretofore, Cafe Admin will identify alternative pseudonyms of individuals when comments are posted. There are currently three individuals who are using this chaotic technique. Anonymity is okay but this notice is fair warning that this practice of using multiple pseudonyms will not be tolerated in the future. One can change their pseudonym from time to time if he/she wishes, but frequent commenting under multiple pseudonyms will not be tolerated. Admin