Woodstock CT Café

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.

The Academy has recruited 38 Chinese students. My understanding is that these students pay about $40,000 in tuition to come to school at the Academy. No doubt the presence of international students should enrich the social and intellectual environment at the Academy. The Academy was offering approximately $1000 per month to local residents who took in Chinese students. It appears now that the Academy wants to use these nearby houses as dormatories. This particular house is located on the northeast corner of the intersection of Old Hall Road and Route 169.

January 19, 2012 Regular Meeting Minutes
PLANNING & ZONING COMMISSION

Section X. CONTINUED UNFINISHED BUSINESS (moved in agenda order)
c. #SP579-08-09m Woodstock Academy Student Housing issue – Boarding house at 599 Route 169

Richard Baron, fire marshal has issued a report dated January 5, 2012 that states the maximum student occupant load for the building would be 15 and there are other requirements of smoke and heat detectors, fire alarms, required lighting, outside stairs going to the second floor. There is a small apartment and there needs to be a door installed so the house parent would be separated.

Terry Bellman, building official has also provided a letter which states that currently the building code only allows a maximum of six students on the first floor of the building, because the apartment on the second floor has a tenant which constitutes a mixed use and therefore requires fire separation. Once the tenant vacates the premises, there will be modifications required to meet the building code and then additional students, a maximum of 15 for the entire building, will be allowed at that time. Zoning regulations do not contain a definition for student housing and there isn’t really a category for this type of permit. Fortin would like to discuss this at the subcommittee meeting.

This use may not be permitted under PZC regulations. There is discussion on how this student housing might fit it into the regulations and how to move forward in a way that makes sense. It is recommended that the Woodstock Academy propose a text amendment.

Joseph Campbell of Woodstock Academy and Attorney Cotnoir are present to answer questions. Attorney Cotnoir is working with WA to create this text amendment and it will be submitted at the next regular meeting. It was decided that a Notice of Violation, which is the first step in the process, should be issued to Woodstock Academy letting them know that there is a violation.

The time frame between a Notice of Violation and the next step in the process should allow WA enough time to get this text amendment and a subsequent application submitted for consideration. Mr. Campbell stated for the record that there are six students living at this address currently. There are nine new boarding students expected for the new semester, but they will be living with local families. The third house that was purchased for student use by WA is currently empty, according to Campbell, and will remain that way until this is
resolved. [At least two of these houses are on the hill. Admin]

from Trish Lustila

I just wanted to let everyone know that Tracy has lost her battle with cancer. She passed early this morning. To all that knew her and loved her, she will be forever in our hearts and forever missed.

“For those of you who don’t know her, Tracy was always the smiling face of the special education office at the Woodstock Elementary School…”

from A Student

I just found out that Mrs. Thompson has passed away…. Truly unfortunate that such a wonderful person’s life has been taken away prematurely, especially considering what she had been going through. My condolences to her family; they’ve had a rough few years. I hope that they may find peace soon.

I’ll always remember her as one of my favorite staff members at WES. I believe she was the preschool TA back in the day. She was also a good family friend.

Her service will be at East Woodstock Congregational Church at 10:00 am this Friday.

This was first published on April 25th 2006 at the Cafe in response to Wetzel’s attacks on the K-8 school system. It’s an eloquent one-time statement by an unidentified Cafe’er. Admin

by Cyssan

You ask why parents of school children did not support the Amendment (to repeal Prop 46). I’m sure parents did support the amendment- the question really is, why does it appear as if some parents voted “no” at the polls? Part of the answer to that question is that parents have limited information. The only newspaper in town is littered with inaccuracies. Both sides of an issue are never explored in any depth. Parents can’t get accurate Minutes to town meetings because they are not posted on web sites or easily obtainable. All the parents I know work for a living and can’t attend meetings that run to midnight. They hear (or hear about) uninformed ranting citizens at Town Meetings who have a questionable level of understanding of what Prop 46 actually says. This is about communication; this is not about parents sharing your opinions and questioning accountability.

You appear to be uninformed about public education in general (to Wetzel), but specifically the Woodstock education system. You are not to be blamed for this. The lack of accurate communication is an issue. Your comments suggest to me that you are a business person- with perhaps a finance backround. In my experience, an average citizen with a business backround often assumes that education is a “business”. Likening an educational system to a factory and a child as a product, as you have done, is an inappropirate analogy. Lets stop that. There is no ‘product’ as a result of education and no monetary value in a child. There is no balance sheet at the end of the term that shows profit or loss or cost of goods sold. There is merely a human being who hopefully learned to think, reason, and communicate well enough to perpetuate a responsible society that can best govern its needs. If that was easy to evaluate, there wouldn’t be as many ways to measure how well or how poorly schools live up to their primary task. Quite simply, success is measured differently for each child and schools succeed in some way every day. Some children and some schools may be ‘average’ on one scale and extraordinary on another scale. Success, however measured costs money. Please stop trying to simplify the inherent uniqueness of education. Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s not forget that learning a foreign language can open up many possibilities for a career in our global society. I’ll use my grandfather as an example.

from John

I know this from personal experience. I took four years of Latin at Norwalk High and a little bit of French here and there. I was not a great student but I would become a great student in Latin when my Grampa came to visit. We would sit down on the couch and read my Latin lesson together – I remember doing this with Virgil. Then I would go to high school and impress everyone with my fluent Latin translation. “Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris…”

My Grampa, Arthur Leavitt, is one who made a career and life as a linguist. He was a scholarly man who could speak and read at least eight languages. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1902 and got a job in the foreign service as a translator. He was first stationed at the US Embassy in Constantinople. Constantinople became Istambul after the First World War. Read the rest of this entry »

from Newcomer

I’m not a professional educator so this is only my opinion based on my own experiences as a student way back when (to Another Teacher).

I studied a foreign language in public school beginning in grade 7. In those days, the city I was raised in didn’t use today’s middle school system of grades 5-8. We had a junior high system of grades 7-9. Foreign language instruction was part of the daily standard curriculum for all 3 years. All students had their choice of Spanish, Italian, or French.

We didn’t have immersion programs. We studied a language the old fashioned way – by studying vocabulary, conjugating verbs in their various tenses, learning about agreement of nouns to pronouns, etc. It was tedious at times, but I learned a lot more about English by studying Italian than I did in my regular English classes because by grades 7-9, we were diving into literary classics such as Johhny Tremain.

I can certainly understand the concerns that you mentioned but I think the Superintendant’s idea has great potential. I think the key to his idea being successfully implemented will require very careful planning. By that I mean that I think the current English/Reading/Writing (apparently called L.A. nowadays) program should be re-evaluated as well. In my humble opinion, studying a foreign language should complement the study of English. I’d love to know why no one diagrams a sentence anymore. I can remember being taught sentence diagramming for nearly all of grade 4. It’s an extremely basic way to learn grammar and parts of speech. It also makes sentence construction for creative writing a lot easier if you know how to build a sentence, word by word. I keep waiting for one of my kids to bring home sentence diagrams for homework but it hasn’t happened yet. An exercise like that taught either the year before or in the second 1/2 of the year of studying a beginning language and then continuing to 2nd year language would go hand-in-hand if the lessons between the foreign language class and the English/L.A. class are coordinated in advance of instituting these proposed changes. Read the rest of this entry »

from Kevin

From WA Parent: Curious about Kevin’s (and others’) response to Connecticut receiving a C- and ranking of 26 out of the 50 states on the national report card that was published in the Bulletin and many other sources yesterday. Connecticut has one of the highest average teacher salaries in the country. (I believe only California is higher.) Is it reasonable to expect better results? Tops in spending for an average grade doesn’t seem right.

From JK: WA Parent, I believe the C- rating for teachers was a bit misleading. The rating was for laws related to teaching and teacher evaluations.

That’s a fair question. For those of you who may not have it, here is a link to the report in question:

http://www.edweek.org/media/qualitycounts2012_release.pdf

We are listed as a B+ and ranked fourth for school finance so that is certainly true. As you state we are also a C- in K-12 Achievement as well. Looking at that, two questions immediately come to mind:

- Is a C- particularly bad for K-12 Achievement when compared to the other states?
- What exactly does K-12 Achievement mean in this paper?

To answer the first question we find our C- K-12 Achievement rank is 16th in the nation. Not great but well about the nation’s average score. Most states were in the Ds with only three states in the Bs.

The second question is much more interesting. How does this paper define K-12 Achievement? The paper states:

The K-12 Achievement Index, which evaluates state educational performance on 18 individual indicators that measure: current achievement, improvements over time, and poverty-based disparities or gaps.

So this isn’t just test scores. It is things like funding distribution disparities and improvements over time. Everyone also may not know this but each state has their own standardized tests. That means for any the NCLB tests it is impossible to try and compare scores because the tests are of different difficulty levels.

What I do find very interesting is the category of “Chance for Success.” This is defined as:

The Chance-for-Success Index, which grades the nation and states on 13 indicators capturing the critical role that education plays as a person moves from childhood, through the K-12 system, and into college and the workforce.

Wow, that’s the category I’m interested in. Test scores and funding distribution is all well and good but I want to know how successful we are being in moving the children through the educational system, college and ultimately into their careers. Incidentally Connecticut’s score is a B+, ranked #4 in the nation.

It has always been my position the adequate funding is necessary but not in and of itself sufficient.

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 Kevin

It’s 2012 and I’m going to make a few predictions on what is going to happen on the Board of Education this year. I’ve been watching the issues and votes of the members for several years and have a good idea of the direction that the RTC has been pushing. This is the first year that they will be able to implement their agenda.

1) The Woodstock Academy contract will be passed with the Woodstock Academy substantially getting everything they want (chance of occurring: 80-90%). This will be a travesty for the town.

– The current version is for ten years and keeps auto-renewing for another ten years. It will be very hard to get out of once we realize how large a mistake we made.
– The current version does nothing to protect the town financially. In fact it is much worse as it has a clause that essentially allows them to charge back any capital cost to the town whenever they want to outside of normal tuition cost. They want a new $45M building? Just charge the town. According to the latest version of the contract they can do exactly that. (the contract allows us representation on such a planning committee but says nothing of the makeup of that committee)
– Still no more representation. I unfortunately think that will never change.

2) To the extent that there are any positions that need to be eliminated, the coordinators will be on the chopping block (chance of occurring: 50-70%). I’ve heard time and time again from teachers and administrators how crucial these positions are but they have been a favorite target.

3) The superintendent’s contract will not be renewed or the position will in some other way be eliminated (chance of occurring: 99.9%). They almost did this last year but were thwarted by one vote. This will be one of the last acts in Craig Powers revenge on Dr. Baran for doing his job in relation to SPED and Craig’s child. If he can’t win in court, he will get revenge by going after Dr. Baran. For years Craig has been using Mr. Rosendahl, member of the BOE and the RTC nominating committee, to only allow Republican RTC candidates who are hostile to the Superintendent. Now they have all the votes they need. They will at least not renew his contract and if they can get away with it they will try a more permanent solution earlier before the next election.

Those are my predictions. None of these things will be good for Woodstock. We’ll see if I’m right.

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.

We saw Ernie Wetzel’s success story (below) in the Marines (WA 2008). Here’s our daughter, Mariah (WA 2006) in a business meeting dressed in a business suit at MN8 near Cincinnati OH yesterday (blue arrow). It would be nice to have information on other WA graduates. MN8 is recruiting individual firefighters.

Here is Danielle Frate (WA 2005), Mariah’s cousin – a Graphic Design Artist at Davis Advertising in Worcester MA. She majored in Graphic Design Art at the Academy. She graduated with high honors from ESCU in 3.5 years.

We wish we had more opportunities to talk about the directions and accomplishments of Academy graduates after leaving Woodstock. Admin

See the article in the Villager on page 3 – an interview with Ernie Wetzel Jr who joined the Marines after graduating from the Academy in 2008. Ernie and brother, Zack, were on the first WA football team in the fall of 2005. Our daughter, Mariah, was the team manager at the time. Father Ernie Wetzel (right) was elected Woodstock First Selectman in November 1999 and served two terms from 1999 to 2003.

The following article was published in August 2006 in anticipation of the first Varsity Football season at the Academy. In the first season in the fall of 2005, only Junior Varsity Football was played.

‘All the players were stars on this day…’

On Monday evening, September 26th, 2005, Woodstock Academy Centaurs launched its first football team in 80 years kicking off the season against football stronghold, Fitch Falcons of Robert E. Fitch Senior High School from Groton CT. This was a junior varsity game composed of Freshman, Sophomore, and Junior student players. The inauguration of our football program was made possible, in part, by the fundraising activities of the WA Booster Club. Through their tireless efforts, $30,000 was raised to purchase the necessary equipment for the football team.

Becki and I, both avid college football fans, attended the game uncertain of what kind of football we would see. For the last three years we have attended nearly all of the UConn home football games at Rentschler Field to watch UConn quickly emerge as a top-notch college football team. Over the years we have also attended many football games at other high-powered colleges like Stanford, Air Force, and Pittsburgh to name a few. So we braced ourselves primarily out of concern for our untested players.

Our team kicked off to Fitch to start the game. Within a few minutes Fitch had moved the ball 70-yards down the field by completing three long passes to score the first touchdown. Then Fitch kicked off to Woodstock. We then proceeded to move the ball back up the field grinding out yardage in a long sustained drive that reached the Fitch 30-yardline before stalling. This pattern more or less set the tone for the night in a game that ended with Fitch winning by 45-13.

This score did not reflect the quality of the game played by the Centaurs. Fitch was obviously a solid, seasoned team with a top-notch quarterback who could pass like a varsity starter. But Woodstock matched up well in grit against Fitch for most of the game. My impression throughout the game was that we were seeing high quality play. Our quarterback John Norman (#4) and tailback Adam Gumula (#20) impressed all with a solid ground game through the center of a much larger opposing line. Adam also punted and kicked field goals/extra points. The sound of players colliding on each play was impressive yet no player on our team struggled to get off the ground play after play. Defensive high points came when Zach Berquist (#56) single-handedly downed the larger fullback at the line; then Ernie Wetzel (#57) sacked the quarterback in similar fashion and intercepted a pass; and then Zack Wetzel (#30) wrapped himself around the legs of the Fitch halfback in a flying tackle to force a fumble right in front of us. Martha Wetzel jumped up and down in sheer joy as the Wetzel boys impressed us all with their outstanding play. Many other parents were also watching their sons intently as they performed on the field. In spite of the fact that we were losing throughout the game, the prevailing attitude along the sidelines by the team and the 50 or so fans was that this was a win for Woodstock. All the players were stars on this day and their satisfaction and joy in their accomplishments was obvious to all.

Hats off to Head Coach, Jemal Davis and his coaching staff, Bernie Norman, Jonathan Knowles, and Greg Smith, for putting together a solid team that will grow into a strong varsity program in its second year. John

Other football stories.

We took these pictures today (Saturday Jan. 7th).
1. From the west end of the field on the south side. Note the terraces for seats that are unfinished. The field has been covered with synthetic turf with lines for all of the possible sports.
2. The center of the field with the WA logo.
3. The west end of the field.
4. The stone barrier on the edge of the woods at the west end.
5. Looking to the west end of the field from the east end.
Read the rest of this entry »

by Snuffy 

The Academy Trustees have followed a consistent path for many, many years. Their goal has been to make the school politically and financially independent – predominant – over Woodstock’s public education system, its fiscal system, its land use regulation, indeed its entire political system. The Trustees have filtered their political minions into both town’s political parties and the key town boards – BOS, BOF, BOE. Most disgusting, they have supported and aligned themselves for years with the anti-public education propagandists of the CPS/Truth/Coalition, the Academy’s political “fifth column”, which hammers away relentlessly at the BOE with invariably false allegations of financial waste, fraud and abuse.

At this point, the Academy has achieved such complete political hegemony over the town as to make the relationship quite comparable to the status of an empire with its colony. The colony’s resources are usurped by the empire at will (i.e., the bond/guarantee to reconstruct the school; the sewer financing; the annual tuition) and on terms dictated unilaterally by the empire. When the relationship with the colony is no longer of use to the empire, the empire simply abandons the colony, as has been suggested by two former Trustee chairmen (Kaeding and Mussamecci) in reference to the school’s obligation to continue serving Woodstock’s students for ten years after the payoff of the bonds, without regard to the school’s role thereafter.

If the BOF is asking the BOE to develop a 0% overall budget increase, after normal inflation of 3%, this amounts to a 3% reduction in K-8 costs in inflation-adjusted dollars. If the Academy budget projects a 3% increase, and the Academy budget represents 1/3 of the overall BOE budget, then the BOE is being asked to reduce its K-8 costs by 4% in inflation-adjusted dollars. In this economy, this trend will likely continue for a period of years.

But the difference is much greater. The Academy has for many years padded its budget with expense contingencies and capital reserves, so they have a large buffer to get through a lean year or two without impacting services. The K-8 system, on the other hand, under the relentlesss pressure of the Academy-supported CPS/Truth/Coalition, has cleaned every crumb out of its cupboard, peeled off the paint for its nutritional value, then disassembled and burned the cupboard itself for heat. Read the rest of this entry »

from Kevin

The following Officers were elected at the December 15th, 2011 BOE meeting:

Chair of the Commission: Anthony Walker – for a second term.
Vice-Chair: Stephen Rosendahl
Secretary: Sara Harkness

Julie Woodland was elected to fill Scott Sincerbeaux’s seat.

From John Dlugosz: “Congratulations to Julie Woodland for being appointed to serve on the Woodstock’s Board of Education. Much thanks to Wendy Bradley, Melita Monahan and Lisa Veach for also stepping up to fill the vacancy on the board.”

PLACE: WMS Music Room

Add Lisa Veach to the list of candidates.