It was no April fools joke. The main item last night was the announcement of the ABC recommending to the Region One BOE three-year contracts to the top administrators with a 2% raise each year of the contract, opening up new contract talks in 2015.
Well, I am happy with the three-year contract(with no opener until 2015) if the current contract that the administration has stays in effect for its full length.
But, with our economy in the condition it is in, with Sharon’s budget up by over 17% this year, with North Canaan paying about $390,000 more to Region One this year, with declining enrollment in the Region, with Region One adding three positions while laying off 4 teaching positions, etc…etc…
Is it really the time for the ABC to recommend to the Region One Board to offer a 2% raise every year for three years?
Really?
And Chairman Phil a request….please stop your useless, lengthy, comments (thinly disguised attacks) on board members that happen not to agree with you. It is very unbecoming.
*****The meeting will be posted on the CATV 6/Robin Hood Radio Tv YouTube site later this evening, and on-air on CATV 6 tomorrow evening, and here on this website by tomorrow morning.
Marshall, you’ve been misinformed — or rather uninformed — about the contracts. But what’s new about that? We are, after all, talking about the top two administrators made famous in the still unresolved Pingpank Report and the Region 1 Board of Education majority that rips off the high school students and the taxpayers of the region by unconditionally, unquestioningly — stupidly — rubber-stamping almost everything the administrators want.
If the people of Region 1 approve the proposed budget with the three-year contracts with 2 percent raises each year that the board majority approved last night, those contracts wouldn’t start on July 1, 2014, as you think. The new contracts would VOID the existing contracts that end June 30, 2014, and begin the new three-year contracts on July 1, 2013 — meaning THIS YEAR — and extend them out to 2016. In other words, instead of trying to “extend” the existing contracts for two years — WHICH IS WHAT THE TAXPAYERS OF THE REGION OBJECTED TO SO STRONGLY LAST YEAR — the ABC Committee, no doubt under the tutelage of the superintendent, did an end run around that “extension” scenario and recommended “new” contracts to begin this year, but arrive at the same three-year destination.
But how would you or the public know that? Board Chairman Phil Hart, otherwise known as “Dear Leader,” did not provide the public with that information. Nor did the superintendent. But that’s par for the course of this administration and this board majority.
Stay tuned. More to come.
I urge the taxpayers of Region 1 to attend the public hearing on the budget on Wednesday, April 3 in Room 133 at the high school at 7 pm. — Gale Courey Toensing, Falls Village representative on the Region 1 Board of Education