Woodstock CT Café

from George

Tuesday night’s vote was not easy for me. As you and many Cafe visitors know, I am very much pro education and in recent years have always voted (at times in the minority) in favor of proposing a BOE budget higher than what we had asked the BOE to come in at. I unfortunately cannot agree to any large increases this year given the economy. I shared with everyone present Tuesday night my own financial hardships and I know there are many families in town who are in the same boat. The BOF has the following responsibility under the town’s ordinance:

“The Board of Finance is the budget-making authority responsible for financial and taxation matters, presenting the annual operating budget and special appropriations to the Town Meeting for its approval, and for establishing the tax rate.”

Unfortunately this year we all felt it was time to exercise our veto. Now, with that said, I believe (and you can confirm this since you were there) there was a request to place a poll directly on the ballot, where voters will be able to indicate why they voted yes or no on the budget. I spoke with the town clerk and suggested that there be several options provided for both a “yes” and “no” vote.

Kevin, as you well know yourself, one of the biggest frustrations to serving on any board or commission is the apathy on the part of the towns voters. Tuesday night was the first time in many months that we had public participation. Unfortunately, that participation was not truly a cross section of the voting public. It was the Town and its employees and the school board and their employees. Out of the crowd, we had about a half dozen or so citizens, but then again, I know just about all of them and it offered no fresh perspective to the issues. So, yes we will have a public hearing and yes, I, personally am open to changing the proposed budget if we can get enough input from citizens. Other than that, all I can recommend is for everyone to contact the BOS to encourage them to place the exit poll on the ballot. If the budget fails to pass, and it is due to the belief by the majority of the town’s voters that it severely impacts education, we will have no other option than to raise the amount budgeted and put it back to the voters.

We are in a tough economy this year, as in the past three years, and my crystal ball aint workin! Its not about BOF vs BOE, it is the mess the state, the nation and the world is in at the moment, and as the governor has stated, it is a time of shared sacrifice, and that includes all levels of town government. The town’s voters will ultimately have to decide this issue.

Read the rest of this entry »

from Kevin

There was a massacre at the BoF meeting tonight. They directed us to cut about $470k from our budget (They didn’t provide the public their handouts so I don’t have the exact amount).

They had this vote without allowing any citizen feedback despite being requested to do so before the meeting and by Lindsay Paul at the beginning of the meeting. It played out like a well orchestrated event with massive cuts being directed at the BoE.

The upshot of the deal is we will be making large cuts to the education budget this year. I don’t see a lot of ways forward with this that don’t involve laying off educators.

Politics belongs to those who make themselves heard. The sad fact of the matter is that people who support education do not make themselves heard while people who do not support education make themselves heard very effectively. We’ll do our best not to make it any uglier than it is going to be.

There will be a BoE meeting next Monday to discuss how we are going to cut our way down to the BoF’s request.

Thanks,

Kevin

This post represents my personal opinions and in no way should be considered an official act of the BoE or that I am speaking on behalf of the BoE in any way.

from A Student

Now that this subject has come up again and I’ve thought about it more, I have to wonder if hiring additional teachers to decrease class size would work. Additional classrooms would be needed; the additional teachers would need their own classrooms to collect “overflow” from the existing classrooms. When I went to the elementary school, I don’t remember there being any. Heck, there wasn’t even a music classroom at one point; Miss Langer would come into our classroom with instruments on a cart (this was in 2000-2001, I believe, maybe 2001-2002 as well). I don’t recall any empty classrooms in the middle school, either. It’s been a while since I’ve been in both schools, so perhaps there had been a decrease in the amount of classes and there are extra rooms available at this point.

I also have to wonder if a SmartBoard in every single classroom is necessary or if they’d all even be used. The Academy has SmartBoards in the four classrooms in the Bicentennial building and I have never once seen them used (actually, yes, I have — to be wheeled in front of the windows to keep the sun out when the lights are off, but blinds have been installed for this year so the SmartBoard is out of the job). These SmartBoards are on wheels; I remember that the few SmartBoards the middle school had in my time were wall-mounted. If the SmartBoards that have been added more recently are on wheels, couldn’t they be shared between classrooms if moving them isn’t a production? I also find it extremely hard to believe that every single teacher is willing and technologically-skilled enough to use a SmartBoard all the time and to its full potential, and even if every single teacher were to use one, that they’d all be used simultaneously.

Hopefully they do end up keeping the buses in the budget; the current fleet is becoming increasingly problematic (as a matter of fact, I just passed bus 14 abandoned by the intersection of Woodstock Road and Dugg Hill Road this afternoon), and I would love to see recent trends in maintenance costs (presumably increasing), as well as possible fuel cost decreases with the few new buses we have been getting offering greater fuel economy.

Am I favoring buses over more teachers and SmartBoards, which certainly have a more important affect on education? Certainly not — I’m just skeptical about where they’d put the new teachers and the necessity/practicality of the SmartBoards.

Approve | Reply | Quick Edit | Edit | Spam | Trash

Dear Woodstock friends,

Tonight (7:30 PM) is when the Board of Finance will direct the Board of Education to make cuts to the proposed 2011-12 budget.

Please come and speak your mind. The BOE has requested “Citizens Comments” be heard prior to the BOF deliberations and vote. It is so important that they hear what our parents, citizens and taxpayers want in our school budget.

Some members of the BOF have said that they will not support a town budget up to the maximum allowable limit by Proposition 46.

Here are some considerations:

· The BOE has requested a 3.72% ($577, 924) increase for 2011-12.

· For the prior two years, the BOE has maintained an essentially flat budget to the town.

· Next year’s requested increase includes 3 new teaching positions to reduce projected class sizes of over 24 in grades 1,3 and 4. This year they are already above 24 due to the addition of 27 new students over the past few years.

· The requested increase would also cover two new (leased) busses ($60,000) and special education cost increases ($292,000).

· Funding at the maximum allowable by Prop 46 would increase the mil rate by approximately 0.6

· Let the voters decide! Why arbitrarily require reductions below the Prop 46 threshold? Give voters the opportunity to fund education to the maximum allowable under the ordinance.

· Woodstock remains in the lowest 5% in per pupil spending per town in the state. We spend less per pupil than the surrounding towns of Pomfret, Eastford, Brooklyn, Putnam, and Thompson, and less than our DRG average (according to the CT Dept of Education). See exhibit in the WBOE 2010-11 budget package.

· Woodstock’s per capita taxes rank among the lowest in the state (151st out of 169 towns) according to our town auditors.

· And yet, our students perform above state averages on the CMTs, and we continue to meet the federal law No Child Left Behind’s annually escalating thresholds of adequate yearly progress in our general population students. Our educational dollars are well invested.

· Regrettably, the BOE budget request does NOT include items such as an expanded foreign language program, a technology teacher at the elementary school, mobile laptops for the elementary school, or adequate Smartboards to every classroom.

Please ensure the board of Finance hears your voice. If you cannot attend, you may submit a letter, but you should request that it be read aloud (or give it to a friend to read).

Thank you. This is the kind of small action we can take that can make a difference for our schools.

Lindsay

from John

In his Letter to the Villager on Friday Dave Richardson mentions the “slight of hand” that our town leaders use to present their budgets with the clear implication that our officials are deceiving the taxpayers and public (see the Bull Frog article below).

Here is an example of how Richardson is actually doing this to the readers of the Villager:

He states in the Villager “With a student teacher ratio of just over 12:1 (that’s student per certified teacher) already 20 percent lower than the state average, or that for the Academy, and among the lowest in the state, they were looking to add three more teachers …”

The only thing he is almost correct about is the student/teacher ratio in Woodstock as it is a little over 12:1 at 13.4:1 students to certified teacher. The state median for schools is 11.5.

Richardson fails to point out how this number is calculated. To arrive at this number you take all of the students in the district and divide this number by all of the certified teachers in the school system. This would include anyone with a teacher’s certification including mandated special ed, guidance councelors, and possibly even the superintendent and principals. This calculation does not tell you the student teacher ratio for the regular classes in the K-8 or the Academy which is the critical issue for the vast majority of students, usually well above 20:1.

His other information is competely false. If you look at the bottom 23 non-district schools and districts which number 196, the Academy and the Woodstock K-8 schools are among the worst in student teacher ratio in the bottom 12 percent of all schools/systems in the state. Woodstock Academy is 174th out of 196 (bottom 11.2%) and the Woodstock K-8 is 183rd out of 196 (bottom 6.6%).

As I said Richardson belongs to a group of mathematically challenged nay sayers in Woodstock.

One of the concerns expressed by teachers and others at the meeting Saturday morning was their concern that students will believe anything that they read on the Internet. Well this concern should be extended to what you read in the Villager, a paper that doesn’t seem to care about the validity of statements made in Letters to the Editor and Anonymous Sound-Offs. Consider the source of the information before you swallow it, especially if the source is from Bull Frogs and Spring Peepers.

I found the new look of the Academy website and the January Newsletter very appealing. The newsletter is full of very positive things going on at the Academy. I have to admit that I have not gone to the Academy website in a long time.

from Becki

Yesterday, John and I had the pleasure of attending the Community Conversation About Education – Educating Woodstock’s Students In a Global Society held at the middle school and hosted by the Woodstock Board of Education, the Woodstock Association of Teachers, the Woodstock PTO and The Woodstock Education Foundation. The event cost was covered by a grant from The William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund.  Daycare for participants’ children was provided by Ms. Gray’s Childhood Development class (students) from Woodstock Academy.

The event was fairly well attended and, while I didn’t actually count heads, I’d guess there were somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 attendees. We gathered at 8:30 for a catered breakfast and registration. After a short power point presentation, we then broke up into smaller groups for our discussions. Each group had a trained moderator and note taker, neither of whom were allowed to participate in the group’s discussion. Several people were ‘floaters’, moving from group to group to listen to the discussions as they took place. The floaters also were precluded from participating in the discussions as well. Among the floaters were Superintendent Baran and Headmaster Caron.

There was a wide swath of groups from current Academy students, recent WA grads, teachers (from elementary through collegiate level), school staff, parents, BOE members, and other community members. We started with a couple of basic ground rules and it was made clear that our goal was not to come to consensus, but rather to have everyone’s opinion voice. Disagreements were welcomed, as long as the disagreement was about the idea and not the person voicing it.

The goal of this kind of community dialogue was to “bring together a diverse group of community members to talk through issues and ideas about education”. I would have liked to see a wider range of attitude and backgrounds, but this was a great starting point. The conversation in my group was quite stimulating and thought provoking. I was particularly please to have two WA students in the group, both of whom were very well spoken, intelligent and contributed thoughtful insights. Read the rest of this entry »

The links are now fixed. Thank you A Student.

An alternative title to this article is “The Spring Peepers of Woodstock.” see DBrownie’s comment.

This is the time of year when the frogs start croaking in the swamps. I was reminded of this when I examined the letters to the editor in the Villager today. There was Dave Richardson croaking over the budgets put forth by Alan Walker, First Selectman, and Anthony Walker (no relation), Chairman of the Board of Education. Let’s face it, Richardson and his mathematically challenged cronies will never be satisfied unless there are no taxes at all.  I’ll just quote what he says a few times to give him a voice here.

“… it is clear from the (BOE) budget that has been put forth by Mr. Walker (Anthony) and the BOE that those expectations were based on pure fantasy.”

“Chairman Walker (Anthony) gives us the same old story…”

“…this is more than the same slight of hand that we have seen many times before from Mrs. Paul (former BOE chairman).”

From Simone: “I would like to mention that my son is in seventh grade, and at the middle school. In all of his 7 years in the Woodstock school system, he has never been in a class with less than 22 other children (and most times it was more). Dave Richardson mentioned a 12:1 ratio of (certified) teacher to student in our school system. Where did these numbers come from? Is Dave Richardson just making this stuff up? This just adds to his non-credibility in my book.”

I could go on and on but I won’t dirty up the Cafe with this crap.

We should be thanking Anthony over and over again for growing into the job as chairman of the BOE and learning to balance the value of children versus the costs of education. Thank you, Anthony, and thank you, Lindsay, for the fine work that you have both been doing for the town and its children, and putting up with the likes of nay sayers Richardson, Powers, and the others.

Then there is the Letter by Harold Reeves of Danielson who compares “illegal aliens” to termites. I could not help thinking that he feels this way about anyone who comes from afar.

There was a strange article about the new town website also. No one quoted in the article wanted to name the spade who constructed the first website under the auspices of Deep Pockets Wholean. This ridiculous website was put together by none other than Steve Rosendahl who likes to express his ire by throwing wads of paper at people. The story of the first website has already been told here at the Cafe, see “Beware of Snakes at the Official Town Website.”

I almost forgot, there was a Croak addressed to Dave Hosmer Chairman of the BOF, from Preston S(c)hultz last week that was hard to decifer. Must have been a personal joke (only to him). There are probably 30-40 articles at the Cafe about Mr. Shultz’s activities. I’ve taken pains to spell his name correctly because he is sensitive about how people spell his name. So you can search “Shultz” and find all of the articles that I have written about his devious activities. Here he speaks about the correct spelling of his name – what an  i … intellectual.

The Cafe never forgets. John Leavitt

All Woodstock citizens are encouraged to participate in this event, which is sponsored by the PTO, the Woodstock Education Foundation, the Woodstock Association of Teachers, and the Board of Ed. Childcare provided. Space is limited. Please RSVP right away to the contact as shown below.

A nation-wide TV communication network in all fire departments – FireRescueTV.

Mariah (right) and Stephanie Corey (Academy Grads) in Miami last week. Mariah is Director of Marketing at FireRescueTV.com.

Today I heard a few of the campus supervisors talking with the librarian about the issue, so at least it isn’t being ignored by the staff. One of the supervisors said, “They need a place to go” to the librarian. I feel bad for the librarian… she’s stuck between keeping a quiet, orderly library and providing a place for the seniors to go. Now I guess it’s a question of what, if anything, the Higher Powers decide to do. from A Student

from John

Now that we’ve solved the zucchini flower problem we should turn our attention to the Senior Lounge at the Academy. Being a senior in high school is special so these dedicated students, who are about to embark on their adult professional life, are deserving of a special place to go besides Sweet Evalina’s. Also, ‘A Student’ will become a senior next year; he is especially deserving given his contributions here at the Café and we want him to have a good start after he leaves Woodstock.

A Student’s idea of having a Senior Lounge seems reasonable since the seniors are barred from congregating and messing around in the library and study halls. The Academy should find a good size room where a Pool table, possibly a Billiards table, and two Ping Pong tables can be set up.

What is the rationale for having such a resource for seniors? As those of us who went to college and excelled already know, these sports – Ping Pong, Pool, and Billiards – play an important role in college life. Two exemplary residents who can speak about this are Ernie Wetzel and me. Ernie and I went to the same college, Bethany College in West Virginia (I swear this is where Animal House was filmed). Bethany touts itself as “the small college of distinction” (we called it “the small college of extinction”). Ernie was an outstanding soccer player and captain of his team and I was an all-conference tennis player (which helped me to hone my skills for Ping-Pong). In our spare time we went to class. Ernie graduated from a very good Economics Department and I majored in Chemistry and Math. Although I wasn’t on the Dean’s list I scored 20 percentage points higher on my graduate record exam in Chemistry than any of the 15 Chemistry majors that made Dean’s list. This resulted in a fully paid Fellowship to grad school. Both Ernie and I attribute our success in college and afterward to our diligent Pool, Billiards, and Ping-Pong playing that sharpened our brains, heightened our math skills, and kept us in shape. We had to play a lot of Ping-Pong to work off those quart bottles of 3.2 beer that we imbibed at Emily’s Beer Garden. Isn’t this the way it is at all colleges?

Woodstock seniors could be given a valuable head-start in life and the college experience if the Academy would provide this facility. In fact, the Academy might become famous for preparing their seniors to excel in college. I can recall being completely lost in my first days in college. If I had had the worldliness to look for the Ping-Pong and Billiards facility, I would have felt right at home.

Ernie has a very nice pool table (his legacy from Bethany). Given his dedication to the Academy, I’m sure he would be willing to donate his Pool table. We might even call the Lounge the “Wetzel Senior Lounge”. I will keep an eye out for Ping-Pong tables and lounge chairs at the dump. We might even find some nice lamps there also. I can also donate my Henry Miller collection and my father’s Trevanian collection for the Lounge library. I bet seniors don’t even know that Trevanian lived in East Woodstock in the 1980’s before moving to Provence (Rodney wrote “Eiger Sanction” and a number of other best sellers, and wife Diane has kept in touch). With this nice library all to their own, seniors could widen their horizons to help prepare them for college. Perhaps other Academy benefactors could also contribute to the Lounge in helpful ways; in fact, this may help seed the endowment eventually. Those of us who can’t afford much could help in other ways, like Newcomer occasionally providing fried zucchini flowers in June.

Fifty Years ago I was a senior at Norwalk High School (left to right):
1. Graduation rehersal, 1961. I’m the purple arrow and my other close friends are identified with arrows.
2. Actual graduation, 1961. I’m front center. My best friend Paul is on the right.
3. We had pretty cheerleaders too. Tinny Adams (Cindy) was my date for the Prom.
4. Bethany Tennis Team 1966 President’s Athletic League conference champs. We had no trouble taking care of Pitt and West Virginia. Yes, it took me 5 years with a year off in the middle. Note my unique racket design that gave me a winning spin on my serve. No one could touch my serve.
(click to enlarge)

From a comment under Ron’s first article posted on March 14th about lighting: “A Student makes the point that the Academy doesn’t know what to do with the wandering seniors. This is possibly because they have over grown the buildings. They don’t provide them with a senior lounge. The WA ought to be looking at space for these students as A Student says. The problem at the Academy is not lack of Athletic Fields. It’s over growth of their aging facilities and capacity.”

from A Student

There’s another issue that has arisen at the Academy: What happens with Seniors with privileges? They are banned from being in study halls because too many of them were in there to socialize and mess around. Now, possibly for the same reason, the library is limiting the amount of Seniors that they let in for any given block. Seniors are also required to get a pass at the beginning of the day on a first-come, first-served basis, which is an issue with those who do not arrive early enough. It used to be that the Seniors with privileges could sign in no matter what, and if a class came in to use the computers, the class had priority if space was limited and the Seniors would have to sit at a table and work on something else, or chat quietly (though they’re usually not quiet).

Every day for my study hall, I get a pass at the library, sign out of study hall, and go to the library where it’s quieter, there are computers should I need them, etc. I never have problems getting in because all the library staff know that I’m in there to work, and if I’m not working, I’m silent, and if I get kicked off the computer, it’s not the end of the world. Regardless, I was looking forward to having privileges next year and not needing to bother getting a pass to go the library and then walking to my study hall just to sign out of it for attendance purposes.

So, where’s a Senior with privileges supposed to go besides the library Read the rest of this entry »

from Ron

One of the stumbling points with the sewer line (I am trying to remember discussions that I had with someone from the Woodstock water resources arena) is that they needed to go through the land they now own. Coming directly up route 169 is a deep and expensive digging and grading required.

Also remembering from past conversations, is that WA at that time could not afford new expense (read bond/loan) to cover the sewer expense because of their existing bonds from their first major expansion. I believe that this bond/loan has been paid off. So I also don’t understand why they are waiting. Interest rates are low, but the money people (banks) are not lending…

I agree that fixing the sewer line and upgrading and expanding the classroom space should be first on the importance list – but if you need to borrow money, but can you dip into that pocket twice or is it easier to go in deeper once and make sure you have everything covered?

What I have tried to explain is another view where if you can’t sell WA to other students that have choices then the enrollment will drop. WA needs to maintain their enrollment numbers or increase them from the non-guarantied sending towns. As some have pointed out WA and the sending towns have some enrollment figures dropping over the next 2-4 years. Costs are going up. If you where running the business/school how would you try and make the costs stay low? Read the rest of this entry »