Here are some COLD, HARD, FACTS that can NOT be disputed! 3

This year’s Region One budget for the Superintendent’s Office

Look at all the figures, then….look at line 17, follow it across to the right…it’s a 6.26% raise for the Superintendent this year $9,265.00 INCREASE!!!! Send this link to as many people you know who vote in Region One….this is disgusting….please read our posting on the salaries for other Superintendent’s around Region One at the following link

http://regiononereport.com/2012/03/31/mr-harts-numbers-vs-the-real-numbers/

…ours is not underpaid….and does not deserve a 6.26% percent raise in these economic conditions, with almost every barometer of success DOWN in Region One…. lets buy some new microscopes with that money! DEFEAT THE BUDGET till the administration raises are pulled, and they all honor their existing contracts.

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Mr. Hart’s numbers vs. the REAL numbers 2

From the Litchfield County Times:

Mr. Hart said that the ABC Committee’s work in developing the pay recommendations had been “solid.”
“I can speak for the thoroughness of it,” he said. “When 45 people come together and evaluate performance and say the superintendent is doing a fabulous job, it’s hard not to be in agreement with that.”
He said there is no way Region 1 can divorce itself from what is happening in other school districts, which pay their administrators higher wages. “We can’t ask them to sit here and not have an increase when it is all around us,” he said, adding, “I realize people beyond the school certainly have questions, but many feel our administration does an admirable job and should be compensated.”

Here is the REAL information regiononereport.com found out about adjoining school districts in Connecticut as compared to Region One…..

Here is the real truth about salaries around Region 1:

Winchester Public Schools, Superintendent $135,480 (No assistant superintendent)  1,452 students

Region 6, Superintendent $162,000.00 1.035 students
Region 7, Superintendent $147,000.00 NO RAISE THIS YEAR (No assistant superintendent)   1,160 students
Torrington School District $142,500.00 NO RAISE THIS YEAR  4,349

Now, lets compare….the figure shows our pay is right in line with the adjoining regions without the increases.

Region One Patricia Chamberlain a 2 percent increase, a one-year contract extension to 2015, five more vacation days, amounting to 25 days total, and three more personal days, for a total of five. The proposal also continues to pay the annuity included in her salary. Her salary will be $160,407.  Around 1,000 students
Region One Assistant Superintendent Diane Goncalves will earn an additional 2 percent, bringing her salary to $135,502, a one-year contract extension to 2015 and a $2,500 annuity ( $138,002 total salary).

Our Assistant almost makes as much as Torrington’s and Region 7’s Superintendents!

Once again mis-information or, better yet, dis-information from our Region One Board Chair…

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To Region One Board Members….the tide has turned……remove the new contracts for the administration if you want to pass the budget. 1

Last year was no fluke…if the administrator’s NEW contracts are not pulled from the budget, it will be defeated!  If the administrators honor the contracts they signed last year, the budget will pass…and then take the money we  save and buy new microscopes like Scooter Tedder spoke about. Lets spend any extra money on the kids, not the administrators who already have binding contracts!

Please click on the link to see a history of results…

ReferendumResults

Statements for Region 1 Board of Education Special Meeting March 28, 2012 –Gale Courey Toensing 14

On “Chair Comment” (to Phil  Hart)

Now that you’ve set the precedent of providing one member of this board with the opportunity to be on the agenda to comment in public, from this time forward there must be equal time set aside for any one member or all members to be on the agenda to comment in public.

Without provisions in the statutes or our own bylaws giving special status to any one member – and there are no such provisions – then all members are necessarily equal with equal rights of participation. If there’s time set aside for one member to be on the agenda and comment then there must be equal time set aside for every other member to be on the agenda to comment.  If one member has that privilege, than all members must have that privilege otherwise you’re violating 500 years of common law, parliamentary law, state statutes, our own bylaws, and the equal protections rights of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

On Pay Raises and Contract Extensions:

I will vote again, as I did last year, against pay increases, more days off, and contract extensions for the administrative staff  because to vote for these increases, in my opinion and according to my conscience, would express alack of consideration for the taxpayers of Region 1. The recession has not gone away. We are still living in a time of economic and political peril. There is instability, uncertainty and saber-rattling in the worldm making it impossible to know what the next few years will bring even in terms of the cost of fuel. We know there are some very wealthy taxpayers in Region 1. We also know the majority of people are not among them. The majority of people are hardworking employees, some of whom have lost their jobs, some of whom have lost or may lose their homes, many of whom make well below the middle class median household income of around $50,000 for a family of four, and most of whom have not had raises for the past few years, or whose raises have not even met the almost 3 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index. By contrast, there’s no hardship in the administrators’ present compensation packages which range from over $100,000 to more than $160,000. Region 1 taxpayers will be asked to bear an additional tax burden for necessary and mandated repairs to the high school building. To ask them to pay for raises for people who already earn so much money is, to me, unthinkable. Any budget increases at this point should be directed toward improving student learning.

On Free Speech; Advocacy and Opposition

The Region 1 Board of Education is a body politic and a corporate political subdivision of the state and therefore it is governed by the political process in the same way that the state is.

With respect to the people who participate in the political process, there can be no proper restraints placed on them with regard to speech or advocacy or opposition to public policies.   Our budget is a public policy. In fact, ourpolicy book says:  “The Regional School Board regards its annual budget as a basic policy document through which the District’s plans for the improvement of the secondary school program are expressed.”  To claim, as some people have claimed, that once a majority of this board votes on an issue then everyone on the board is required to “speak with one voice” is as unconsidered as it would be to say that a member of Congress or the Senate could not advocate against a majority vote that passes legislation – or even to try to overturn legislation after it passes as we see this week in the SCOTUS oral arguments over the  health insurance law.

Also, when we’re elected we take an oath of office to represent our constituents to the best of our ability. With respect to the oath of office we have a duty to advocate as we see best.  Oaths are about truth. So it’s not that we’re just permitted to speak the truth as we see it, we have a duty to do so. In other words, if you think something is wrong you have a duty to your constituents to stand up against it. History buffs may recall Abe Lincoln’s Cooper Union address during a presidential election when he said words to the effect that if he, Lincoln, did what Senator Douglas thought was right, he’d be perjuring himself on his oath of office.  Douglas wanted to extend slavery into what they then called the territories and Lincoln was against it.

To say that a person on a board has to advocate for the majority vote, that a minority view has to shut up and not express and, yes, even lobby against a majority vote that he or she is against, is in fact a seditious notion.Additionally, there are numerous lawsuits that have been lost over attempts to gag school board members from exercising their right of free speech to advocate against majority decisions by their board colleagues;.

 

God, Mark Twain wrote, made idiots for practice, and only then proceeded to make school boards Reply

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From The Register Citizen March 24

God, Mark Twain wrote, made idiots for practice, and only then proceeded to make school boards. Governor Malloy seems to concur, proposing, among his education reforms, to deprive school boards of the authority to hire and fire teachers and instead vest that authority exclusively with school superintendents.

As a practical matter this probably wouldn’t make much difference, since most Connecticut school board members long have been mere ciphers, taking direction from the superintendent they hire rather than giving him direction. And why not? These days a Connecticut school board can’t do much more than sign off on contract arbitration awards for their unionized employees. Most of a school budget is formally considered off limits to democracy, constituted by the “fixed costs” of employee compensation, transportation, and utilities, and most matters of ordinary school administration are tightly constrained by either state or federal law. So these days Connecticut’s school systems pretty much run themselves — often into the ground.

But there’s a problem with the governor’s proposal in principle, and that principle is quaint old democracy. If a school board’s authority is to be even more limited than it is already and if the public’s ability to influence the direction of its schools is to be reduced to nothing, there’s little reason to have school boards in the first place. In that case the superintendents themselves should be elected, though of course they would never accept the accountability that would come with that.

The governor’s proposal underscores a big problem with public education in Connecticut — that so little of it is public. Removing hiring authority from school boards will only give board members another excuse to shrug helplessly in the face of complaints, and public education already is full enough of excuses.

Looks like most of our Region One Board, eh!?

Read the full story here….scary stuff…..

http://www.registercitizen.com/articles/2012/03/24/opinion/doc4f6e7cdc6b6e7691654001.txt

Patricia’s mean, nasty and not accurate side erupts again last night…. 2

Patricia once again showed her fangs, nasty attitude, and wrong information as she did last month, this time with long time Kent Principal Ed Epstein…claiming that Epstein had a three-year contract when he retired…Ed had 22 one year contracts before that one three-year retirement contract.  She said she knew that to Ed after the meeting last night.  Again, classless, arrogant, mean,and not truthful by our superintendent…her true colors show thru.

Phil Hart and the Region One BOE said our Superintendent is underpaid compared to the other districts…LOOK at this story from The Republican-American today….AGAIN more untruths and mis-information 4


Kloczko merits an ovation
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New city school head brings passion for children to job

BY KEVIN LITTEN 

REPUBLICAN-AMERICAN 

TORRINGTON — The Board of Education on Wednesday confirmed Cheryl F. Kloczko as the district’s new superinten­dent of schools and was greeted with a standing ovation from an audience of about 30 teachers and parents.

The board also announced Kloczko’s salary as $142,250 an­nually, the same salary paid to former Superintendent Christo­pher G. Leone who left the dis­trict in August. Kloczko said in remarks Wednesday evening that “for all you teachers and community members, we’re in this together.”