Monroe Schools

Mike,

Mr. Presta,

Mike_Presta wrote: Marcia Andrew wrote: ... can anyone remember the 3 different types of rock...? ... Punk rock, Acid rock, and Rock 'n' Roll???

Acclaro, I agree with you that one of the strategies that has been shown by experience to work is intense one on one mentoring of at-risk, low-performing students. Very hard to duplicate on a large scale without large numbers of adults, either paid school employees or community volunteers.  A teacher can make that difference in the life of a few students at a time. Very difficult to make that difference for all 28 students in the class.

Marcia Andrew wrote: ... can anyone remember the 3 different types of rock...? ...

Punk rock, Acid rock, and Rock 'n' Roll???    

The "alternative" program for mentoring, etc. has already been tried and failed. Garfield Alternative Education Center opened in the early 90's with a huge grant from the state. It was located down on Yankee because they didn't want the students who were expelled and suspended from the high school to be on the same campus. The school ended up housing drug dealers and criminals. The district decided it was too expensive to run so they closed it and bulldozed the building. This was a building that they sold and bought back.

The A+ program was in that building and moved to the Manchester Building. So the issue of having those expelled and suspended off campus must not be an issue at this time.

The school district decided that they needed an "alternative" program for the high school students to pass the OGT so now they opened the Success Academy in the Manchester Building. It has almost the exact same staff that were at Garfield.

It wasn't successful once but let's try it again with the same people......

Dealing with the kids notwithstanding, saying that there is no work to do in a library when kids aren't around is disingenuous. You are in charge of a room full of inventory, many thousands of unique items that are constantly being removed from their proper location and possibly taken off site. They have to be kept in a very specific order to ensure that they can be easily located for future use. Additionally you have new product arriving periodically that has to be categorized and put into the system, marked and filed away properly. And at any given time you need to know exactly what items that belong to the library are currently checked out, who has them and for how long. The logistics alone are a fair bit of work.

Can volunteers be trained to do this work? Sure. As well as the accredited librarians that were doing the job? Nope. The libraries will still operate but at a decreased level of efficiency and effectiveness.

My questions, that maybe Mrs. Andrew could respond to since she's been reading and posting in this thread:

• What is the plan to get the library volunteers trained to perform the job while minimizing as much as possible any losses in effectiveness of the library?
• What will be the vetting process for selecting the library volunteers? Will it be any random parent or person off the street who steps up? Will there be any kind of educational requirement (such as "has a high school diploma or equivalent")?
• What kind of background check will be performed to ensure we aren't letting a predator into our schools?
• What kind of youth protection training will be given to ensure that the volunteer understands proper practices and procedures in both protecting the kids from abuse (and themselves from false abuse claims) and also recognizing signs of and reporting suspected abuse?
• Will all of this be required to be completed prior to starting the volunteer position?
• What kind of funding has been allocated to do all of this? Was this cost factored into the overall savings plan generated by cutting the librarian positions?

I do not envy the school board, even something as small as replacing elementary school librarians with volunteers is not as easy a proposition as most people think it would be. And I only was looking at logistics and background checks...that doesn't even take into account programming such as featured books and/or subjects of the month, or related to current events, trends or fads, book clubs or other functions that are being done currently.

Marcia Andrew wrote: Vet, in my first post on this thread, I stated that 4 assistant principals were among those RIF'd. That leaves assistant principals only at the high school (1800 students) and Vail (800 students). There are no "assistants to the assistants"; I don't know what you are talking about. And no, the school district is not top-heavy with administrators. The school district is a large operation with approximately $90 million in revenue from many different funding sources coming in and being spent; approximately 750 employees (full and part-time). Can't run a business that size without some operational people handling purchasing, accounts payable and receivables, compliance with all the state and federal laws, etc., and management and leadership. See my response to Tony for part of the role of central office in aligning teaching methods and substance. You need an HR function. You need buildings & maintenance functions.  [/DIV Ms. Alberico's salary is more in the range of $65,000, not $98,000. And her job involved far more than giving quotes to the Journal (although she does respond to requests from the media almost every single day).  She also is the person who responds to public records requests, is the central point for all questions and complaints from students, parents, community, media, whomever, either finding an answer directly or directing the inquiry to the person with knowledge/responsibility.  Multiple requests every day. She writes newsletters and other communications to parents and taxpayers about what is going on with the public schools.  She keeps the website current. These are just some of her job responsibilities, there are others.  Similarly, someone has to be in charge of technology when you have hardware and software in 12 buildings, internal and external networks.  Both operational software and educational software.  Doesn't maintain itself.

Ms. Andrew, please see the post from jssmith2011 listed below. If the information he has provided is accurate, please explain as this information is in direct contrast to what you have stated about being top heavy, assistants to the assistants and being a multi-layer system, not to mention the exhorbantant salaries. Could you also address the discipline/behavioral issues mentioned by Bill and others. Perhaps you could tell us why the district didn't develop an alternative program (after being intimidated through the legal system by parents of the thugs and removing corporal punishment) to combat the behavior of the new type of "rogue" student the schools must try to educate nowadays.

Acclaro,

jsmith....as I suspected, Middletown really runs a lean and mean shop huh? I have generations in my family that teach/ taught, and have always been appalled by the supers who double dip, and the enormity of the overhead that has been created, and tenure, as if a school teacher was a doctorate whom wrote 30 books on relativity and was published in scientific magazines. I doubt if you could find a more bloated entity, including federal government, or waste, with the exception of federal contracting for Defense spending.

Middletown City Schools say they are trimming the budget, making cuts and are not top heavy when it comes to administration.....Look at the MCSD website. 20 years ago, when Middletown and Monroe were a combined district,  larger, there were 4 departments in the administration building. Today  I counted 8 departments.  I understand that a business needs someone to run it but this is ridiculous.

Amazing a group of three young black high school students from the inner cities, that had never ridden on a horse before, with just a little bit of nourishment and support, became the Nationa Polo Champions for 2011, earned a $40,000. scholarship to a top prep school, and then the Ivy leagues, when "handicapped" from socioeconomic disadvantage to national champions, through mentoring. Of course, in Middletown, the results are attributed to:

Mr. Barille, thank you for your post. I agree that significant continued effort is required. I did not mean to imply otherwise in my post.