KL Board Buzz

Schloat seeks to build consensus - Ledger

It is no secret that I am a big fan of Warren's. I used to lean on him for advice when I was a rookie BOE member. He was a tremendous help to me for which I am grateful. He will do a fine job, I have not doubt. Nice article.

“My job is to make everyone else successful, on the board and administration,” Mr. Schloat told The Ledger in a recent interview. “If I do that, then the school district will do just fine. It’s just a strong group, and my role is for them to be able to all feel a part of it. I don’t think my personal opinions have much to do with it.”
Read More Ledger.

WSJ.com - The Declining Value Of Your College Degree

It is too bad there are not more studies to validate the return on and college education. Is the extra 150K spent on a private vs public education really worth it?

A four-year college degree, seen for generations as a ticket to a better life, is no longer enough to guarantee a steadily rising paycheck.

WSJ Read More

The CDC issues alert on artificial turf - Consumer Reports

Useful information and recommendations. Thank Bob D for the link.

The CDC issues a public health alert on lead in artificial turf: Consumer Reports on Safety.

Jocks Against Bullies SI

We've moved beyond stolen milk money to the Mean Girls who post slut lists on MySpace. And yet, the go-to bully of blame is still seen as the jock of movie lore -- see Heathers or Revenge of the Nerds. Did catcalls of **** and lipstick twins hurled by jocks at Columbine really push Klebold and Harris too far, or were the killers simply narcissists in trench coats? Did Gill, at Dawson, feel alienated by the glamorization of the jock culture, or did he seek an easy target for his rage? He posted this on Vampirefreaks.com: "Why does society applaud jocks. I don't understand. They are the worst kind of people on earth."

Read More at: Point After | Jocks Against Bullies.

Congrats to Warren Schloat and Mike Gordon

As they are elected President and Vice President of the BOE. They have another busy year ahead of them as the district is in the midst of the most substantial reshuffling at the administrative level in a generation. Good luck to all and I thank them and the rest of the Board for their time and effort.

Increase teacher pay in manageable way - Detroit News

Scrap unsustainable salary hikes for better reward system

Mike Reno

Teachers' pay has followed a single salary schedule -- or "step system" -- in which years of teaching experience and college credits alone determine pay raises. Yet shifting expectations, limited funding and increased accountability in education are challenging the viability of this outdated pay system in Michigan.

Under the current system, teaching professionals -- many of whom deserve higher compensation -- are held hostage in a bizarre pay structure that ignores their skills or effectiveness. It artificially rockets up salary early in their career, only to see it stall once they're seasoned.

The step system isn't good for schools either. It can cause district payrolls to grow faster than annual funding increases, leaving districts little choice but to lay off teachers, increase class size or make other instructional cuts.

Read More: Increase teacher pay in manageable way Detroit.

Board discontinues continuing education program

Bad move. To be devils advocate, there are many programs that don't "run in the black." Shouldn't the school house occasionally run programs that benefit the whole community even if they lose a little? I can think of many other programs that "lose money."

Continuing education classes in Katonah-Lewisboro will no longer be kept afloat by the school board, due to the fact that their cost significantly outweighs revenue by thousands of dollars.

A discussion at the July 1 school board meeting — where the decision was made to cut the program — was centered around a guiding question: “Will Katonah-Lewisboro schools continue to provide an adult education program for approximately $10-30,000 annually?” In other words, even after tuition checks are sent in, the program needs the school board to allocate anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 per year in order to help it pay off both fixed costs — those costs up front to run and advertise the program — and the variable cost of class instructors.

“We haven’t been able to make it run in the black,” said Jocelyn Humphries, assistant superintendent for human resources and administration, who attributes the problem to low enrollment.

Read Article.

Griffin would 'cultivate a sense of belonging'

Dr. Christopher Griffin, most recently director of guidance at Blind Brook School District in Rye Brook, will begin as new director of guidance on Aug. 11, at both John Jay Middle School and John Jay High School.

More from Ledger

New Vision for Schools Proposes Broad Role

I don't know where to start except to say, fascinating reading.

By SAM DILLON

Published: July 14, 2008

Randi Weingarten, the New Yorker who is rising to become president of the American Federation of Teachers, says she wants to replace President Bush’s focus on standardized testing with a vision of public schools as community centers that help poor students succeed by offering not only solid classroom lessons but also medical and other services.

New Vision for Schools Proposes Broad Role - NYTimes.com.

Education - School Official in Dispute With State on Severance - NYTimes.com

Here's a doozy! Reminiscent of the settlement with KLSD and Joe Fletcher which made the front page of the USA Today 15 years ago. Luckily, most boards are sharper now and these contract provisions don't appear very often.

AFTER 38 ½ years of service, Barbara Trzeszkowski reported for her last day of work on Monday at the Keansburg Board of Education. If her contract with the district withstands a number of legal and governmental challenges, the superintendent will ease into retirement with a $740,876 severance package that the state’s top education official compared to the “golden parachute” awarded to retiring Fortune 500 executives. In the next few weeks, Ms. Trzeszkowski, 60, was scheduled to receive $14,449 for unused vacation days, the first third of the $170,137 she had amassed in unused sick days, and the first 20 percent of $556,290 in severance pay. This was in addition to the $103,889 annual pension she was to collect from the district for the rest of her life.

Education - School Official in Dispute With State on Severance - NYTimes.com.

5 best — and worst — state tax systems

New York makes the worst ten but not the worst five. Who saw that coming?

5 best — and worst — state tax systems .

Full list

Our Towns - Build a Wiffle Ball Field and Lawyers Will Come - NYTimes.com

Those damn kids and their fields. :o)

GREENWICH, Conn. Vincent Provenzano, 16 years old, experienced his Kevin Costner moment one Sunday afternoon in May after a thrilling day of Wiffle ball in a friend’s backyard. He came home, gazed at a field of weeds, brush and poison ivy in an empty lot off Riverside Lane, turned to his friend Justin Currytto, 17, and proclaimed: “If we build it, they will come.”

After three weeks of clearing brush and poison ivy, scrounging up plywood and green paint, digging holes and pouring concrete, Vincent, Justin and about a dozen friends did manage to build it — a tree-shaded Wiffle ball version of Fenway Park complete with a 12-foot-tall green monster in center field, American flag by the left-field foul pole and colorful signs for Taco Bell Frutista Freezes.

Our Towns - Build a Wiffle Ball Field and Lawyers Will Come - NYTimes.com.

Fields would not be in play until 2010 - Ledger

It sounds expensive in addition to being slow. Worse, the repair fund is of very limited use to address the project. Why not do projects sequentially from inter-fund transfer over a period of time...say 700-800K per year? With the money being returned from the surpluses, the budget impact would be small. I wonder if it is possible to return some of the repair reserve to taxpayers now that we know how narrow  its uses?

Written by Matt Dalen   
Thursday, July 03, 2008

Although the Katonah-Lewisboro School District has a $5.5-million plan to rebuild the athletic fields on the John Jay campus, work wouldn’t begin for a while. Even if the district votes on the proposal in December, the earliest possible vote, shovels wouldn’t be in the ground until at least late in 2009, according to Assistant Superintendent for Business Michael Jumper.

“Government works really slowly,” said school board member Peter Breslin. “We’re talking about 2010 to get this thing done. That’s just the reality.”

Architect Russell Davidson of KG&D Architects presented the latest proposal for the reconstruction of four fields — the baseball and softball fields next to the middle school driveway, the rectangular field behind the middle school and the rectangular field in the “pit” behind the high school. MORE

In Schools, How Tight Must Discipline Be?

The Times article raises some important questions. Our BOE considers our revisions to  the code of conduct in the months ahead.

    ...educators forget that they are “ethical as well as intellectual teachers” and that schools must work out with students a code of appropriate conduct that teachers can use for “teachable moments.

Miss. classrooms work to integrate the arts

Sounds like fun.

Miss. classrooms work to integrate the arts | The Clarion-Ledger.

Peer Review System for Teachers Spreads

Why not in New York? I have always been amazed that peer feedback  (and student feedback in the secondary schools) have not been an integral part of the tenure process and of staff development. I suspect if you polled teachers, most would favor it. I wish NYSUT saw it differently.

by Claudia Sanchez NPR

The teachers' union in Toledo, Ohio, has spearheaded a controversial policy to purge the school district of incompetent teachers. It's called "peer review" and no school system in the country has been doing it longer than Toledo. Teachers' unions are often blamed for protecting educators who are burned out or should never have been allowed to teach in the first place.

Every year for the past 27 years, a panel of Toledo administrators and teachers has met behind closed doors to discuss teachers who've been deemed "incompetent."

Under peer review, a team of master teachers called "consultants" meticulously monitors and evaluates teachers in several areas: how they prepare, plan and present lessons, how well they know the material they teach, how
they engage and discipline students — even a teacher's punctuality and dress are scrutinized.

A recommendation to terminate a teacher for doing poorly in these areas can be overturned, but it almost never is. A teacher can appeal, but that's rare too.

Read More.

Good news for taxpayers, fund balance info...

From Peter Breslin

"we discussed disposition of the 6/30/08 surplus. We are now proposing to return $3 million to taxpayers this year. The rest is going mainly to encumber for a pending settlement of the Suppt. Staff contract (2+ years of potential retroactive raises for 350 people), plus a tax certiorari reserve- we have over $1MM of new and fertile claims from Waccabuc Country Club and Four Winds. See the presentation on this subject at:  FUND BALANCE PRESENTATION

School board grants tenure to 21

Congrats to all.

Written by Matt Dalen
Monday, June 30, 2008

Earlier this month, the Katonah-Lewisboro School District granted tenure to 21 employees: 15 teachers, four teaching assistants, one social worker, and one administrator. The tenureships were awarded by the school board at Tenure Night, an annual celebration marked this year with live music and desserts.

Read Ledger Article.

Audit faults Briarcliff schools on $2M set aside

BRIARCLIFF MANOR - The Briarcliff Manor Central School District improperly set aside $2 million in June 2007 for purchase orders that didn't exist, and also failed to seek out competitive bids for a handful of purchases, according to a recently released audit from the state Comptroller's Office.

Read More

Board hires two administrators

Written by Matt Dalen

Saturday, June 28, 2008

The Katonah-Lewisboro School District has two new administrators, leaving only the position of director of special services empty going into the new school year. At its meeting on Thursday, June 12, the school board appointed Monica Bermiss as assistant principal at Lewisboro Elementary School and Emilie Ruglis as school business administrator, second in command at the business office and a position that has been largely empty since last summer. See Ledger Article