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Deschooling Society
11 months ago
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
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7 comments:
Rumor now has it that the "new" softball field on the suspect landfill will be removed. As we pointed out in the Valhalla Voice, the back stop for the new softball field sits in play in the baseball centerfield. When team benches, ondeck areas and fan bleachers are added, the softball field starts to extend toward the baseball shortstop.
This is certainly good news and another indication that the board is reading our website www.valhallavoice.com Too bad these issues continue to cost the taxpayers to correct the mistakes of an incompetent administration.
We are shocked to read the latest letter home to the MS HS parents telling of student fights, excessive drinking and drug use, unsupervised weekend events, weapons, and harassment among a “healthy cross section” of Valhalla students. These incidents are somehow impacting on “our ability to remain focused on the business of educating our students”.
Focused? This is a district where unethical behavior and skirting the law are commonplace. A district where budgets are padded, where the superintendent and business manager negotiate $1 a year leases without board of education direction. Where buildings are leased to Park Avenue corporation at $1 a year in violation of the New York State Education Law. Where “off the books” deals are made to dump contaminated fill on school property with no records kept. Where an unneeded $300,000 artificial turf field is purchased through an equipment lease agreement to evade the legal requirement of a taxpayer referendum.
This is a district that no longer has a track because we are waiting for a million dollars in foreign money from a pyramid scheme involving the cousin of the dirt broker who brought thousands of tons of untested landfill onto school property.
No this can’t be happening in ethical Valhalla, where board members are so keenly focused on their, excuse me, “the” children.
Wake up parents, there are no grown ups home. Through a series of very bad decisions, The HS gym is at the 3rd graders school, the High School track is missing, the new baseball and softball fields are locked because they can not be certified as clean. In the past two years the district has built and rebuilt and elaborate 500 foot decorative wall at the high school that is so unsafe it requires signs posted through out the grounds warning that anyone sitting on the wall will be removed by directive of the board of education. Meanwhile people attending games sit back into the woods on bleachers borrowed from the local little league.
There is now an elaborate, unnecessary and dangerous playplaground at the high school involving rock climbing and high wire acts. Teacher training on the equipment is taking weeks, while uncertified substitutes fill-in in the classrooms.
Whatever these student issues are they should be the focus of the administration and staff, not the dirt brokering, property management and circus ringleading that have taken so much time and money away from the children.
With regard to the misbehavior in the Valhalla School District. There has been, a letter to parents describing criminal misbehavior in and out of school, 3 articles in the Journal News, a post Monday Night Football story on ABC, several news accounts on channel 12, a $10,000 “can’t we all get along?” specialist, seminars with students and parents holding hands singing “Kumbaya”, and we still don’t know what the hell happened!
Superintendent Tom Kelly has solidified his reputation as the king of spin with this most recent subterfuge. Tom Kelly is the only person I know who speaks English, but still needs an interpreter. For Tom (spin) Kelly there is never a simple answer or explanation for anything. He could give you a ten page procedure on how to boil water!
There seems to be a conduct/discipline problem at the Valhalla middle-high school, but nobody knows exactly what it is. Kelly and the Mount Pleasant PD won’t give details about specific incidents, their frequency, and whose children are involved. Yet he has brought a multitude of parents together at a special meeting to tell them that this clandestine problem is their fault.
In a recent interview with channel 12 news, Tom Kelly talks about misconduct interfering with the “good kid climate”. Well Tom, after we’ve spent enough of the parents free time, the students school time, and the taxpayers dollars to create the perfect social atmosphere in school, maybe then you can actually sit the kids down and teach them something that will help them get into a better college!
someones drinking tom, kumbaya
spend more money tom, kumbaya
no one's learning tom kumbaya
oh tom kumbaya
In a post-"Dr Feelgood" meeting students were told by the athletic director that he had no doubt that children of board members were given special privilege. After all he said why else would someone take a board position where for no pay. Pretty telling in Valhalla, since the coming of Tom Kelly.
May we link your activism blog to ours at molde.blogspot.com?
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