Woodstock CT Café

from Con

Money does not equal Character and lack of money does not equal lack of Character.

And I am arguing that such an assumption alone completely ignores about 10 other equally important factors. These factors are always conveniently ignored by those who argue that being poor is self-inflicted and deem themselves somehow as ‘more than equal’ to the poor – after all, how could they otherwise so easily sit in judgment of the poor. These same people would never suffer any other American to sit in judgment on them, would argue that no one has the right to judge me!’, yet talk out the other side of their mouth when it comes to the poor.

There are equal numbers and percentages of middle class people who ALSO lack “native intelligence, self discipline, and a good work ethic”. Why are they not poor? If you cannot see that and then answer that, this discussion will have zero affect and I would suggest you really examine that middle class and challenge yourself to determine if there truly is that huge difference in the CHARACTER of the people.

It is the worst kind of self-serving fallacy and sophistry to FIRST judge the people and THEN find all manner of support for that judgement and accompanying conclusions about how they are responsible for their lot in life. Why is it that only the poor are singled out for such judgment? That begs far more questions than ‘what right does one American have to judge another merely because that other is poor’? Read the rest of this entry »

Frank Baran has been a very good Superintendent of Schools since he took over from Linda Galton almost ten years ago. During this period, the school system has performed well in state standard testing. The tables below show that during Dr. Baran’s tenure the Woodstock Middle School 8th grade has edged ahead of Pomfret in recent years in many areas of testing, especially in Math and Sciences (compare the tuition rates for Pomfret and Woodstock in the article below). When the Cafe first started comparing state test scores with those of surrounding towns’ school systems, Woodstock was uniformly out scored by the Pomfret School system. This relative improvement has happened in spite of  the following facts:

• Woodstock public schools are one of the lowest funded school systems in the state which has 184 school districts –  23rd from the bottom (lower 12%).
• For the past several years teaching positions and/or teaching assistants/coordinators have had to be laid off.
• Increases in Academy tuitions have reduced funding for the K-8th grade students.
• Repeated time consuming harrassment of the administrative staff with FOIA requests and complaints from Preston Shultz and Craig R. Powers.

The high level performance of the K-8 grade school system is supported by the 8th grade performance in CMT testing which is memorialized at the CT State Department of Education website.

Turn the page for more stats. Read the rest of this entry »

from John

This is the most current list of the per pupil expenditures for 184 state school districts for the 2008-2009 shool year. Some schools have been added to this list since I last looked at this data taken from HERE. The number of schools rose from 169 to 184.

Woodstock is ranked among the 23 lowest funded districts (lowest 12%) in per pupil funding out of 184 school districts. I have shaded local school systems light purple. I have shaded notable school systems in Fairfield County in orange where I grew up. I graduated from Norwalk High.

Loadstar and LibDem exchanged views about Weston so that school system is here. Deep River is where Kim Caron was superintendent before becoming Academy Headmaster.

I will be posting more data about school performance later today but this data can stand alone – it speaks for itself.. Let it be said that Woodstock’s K through 8 system has managed to out-perform all area schools with one of the lowest per pupil budgets in the state.