Such is the strategy behind the elimination of “encore” teacher Arthur Bakopolus. After searching far and wide for a teacher capable of teaching a wide variety of instruments who was willing to work part time (read: without benefits) for the Haverhill Public Schools in order to cobble together the barest of feeder programs in the middle schools – the position doesn’t last past its pilot year.
I learned of this cut and others from this article in the Haverhill Gazette. I hope the School Committee and the administration and our citizens remember this cut when no new children are looking to join the Haverhill High School Marching Band. Of course, we haven’t had a band in years – so what’s one more year? Haverhill’s lack of a band is just one more mark against an already struggling system.
I hope the parents who purchased instruments for their children to take lessons with Mr Bakopulos saved their receipts or can find another place for their children to take lessons.
Other cuts and fee changes listed in the article were:
“eight special education aides and four high school teachers in the areas of art, science, foreign language and language arts.
An adjustment counselor’s position was left unfilled.
Another 109 teachers who received layoff notices in the spring have been called back to work this fall, said interim Superintendent James Scully.
At Haverhill High School, students are going to be asked to pay a fee to participate in school clubs, including yearbook, drama and band. The fees will cover the stipends for teachers to act as advisers to the programs. Stipends range from $1,500 to $4,000, said Kara Kosmes, assistant superintendent for finance and operations.”
I do fear that by the time my children reach Haverhill High School there will be nothing left.
Not with a bang but with a vote. A vote that ensures none of the students in the Haverhill Public Schools will get a quality education. A vote for a budget that on the surface looks to preserve the arts and the variety of classes currently at HHS but underneath has so decimated the programs that is really isn’t worth offering them at all.
We all have in our minds what a music class looks like. I remember my elementary school music classes very well. I remember singing endless songs based on the seasons. I remember tapping the triangle in time to the teacher’s baton, running scales on a xylophone, desperately trying to blow more than buzzing out of a recorder and finally mastering one small piece of Yankee Doodle on the piano. Did I become a world class musician? No. But I did learn a lot from my music classes. These classes also provided variety and relief in a very long day of sitting at a desk attempting to absorb and regurgitate all the lessons provided each day.
Again I think of my art classes and I remember the budget hitting art particularly hard when I was a child. Music was somewhat protected by the fact that I could bang a drum or play the piano or sing without consuming the instruments we used. Art cannot be created without consumption of paper, paint, crayons, markers, charcoals, pastels, pencils, cardboard, glue, feathers, buttons, cotton balls, and a million other things a child might imagine as medium for expression. I would never be exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art but I did make it into many art shows at the Westgate Mall and once I was fortunate enough to perform on stage at the Fuller Craft Museum. I also have a book as a permanent reminder of two wonderful weeks spent working with people from the Fuller Museum – a book where the poems and drawings of all of my classmates were published.
Now I want to look at the current offerings for Art and Music in Haverhill. As I said in public comment on May 20th:
As much as I favor the encore programs as important in providing real world application for the skills we require our students to master in math, science and language I have noticed that while technically we still have all of the offerings of gym, art and music at the elementary level the courses are cut so drastically that I don’t understand why we kept them at all.
For example if one looks on page two of the budget the fy11 request for art supplies and divide those dollar amounts by the total children in the enrollment projection this means we spend per child in elementary $4.10, in middle school $2.50 and at the high school $5.98 for an entire year of art supplies. What kind of art are they doing for under $6 a year?
I challenge everyone reading this to take a walk past the art supplies when next they are in Target or Staples or AC Moore or wherever you might shop. I challenge you to find $6.00 worth of supplies that will allow a child to create art for an entire school year. Using the 2010-2011 calendar and the five day schedule with art on a Wednesday for the purpose of my math, each student would have art 37 times over the year. This means that for an elementary school child every class the teacher has 11 cents to spend on that child. For a middle school child they have 6 and 1/2 cents. And for our high school students who could very well be working on a portfolio to show colleges there is a whopping 16 cents in supplies available each class.
Now one could argue that these are “just the encore programs” and surely the funding streams for the core subjects are more solid. One could not be more wrong.
Take page 12 – the Foreign Language section – and check the numbers. Since Foreign Language is only offered at Haverhill High School, and not all students will take 4 years of a Foreign Language; I am going to assume half of the students at HHS are currently looking to take these classes. The 900 students would then divide the supplies and textbooks totals to get $1.89 and $15 respectively. Adding to this the $1.13 in AV supplies per student and the total supply expense to teach students a second language at the high school level is $18.02 per child for the year.
Examining Math on page 21 we get the following: For Math at HHS (where all 1800 students take math for four years) we get these lackluster numbers. For supplies they’ve budgeted $10.04 per student and for textbooks $11.11 per student. I’m assuming the AP students purchase their own textbooks and from what I remember of buying my own AP Physics books and years of college texts – Math and Science books are the most expensive texts out there.
Lastly, I want to examine Science on page 29. We find the science supplies and the science textbooks budgeted at $15,171 and $5,500 respectively. From what I understand from the Massachusetts DOE materials, science is a core subject everyone needs to take 3 years of a lab based science. Assuming the 1800 kids at Haverhill High School are distributed evenly over the four grades this means we have about 450 students in each grade. So 1,350 students are taking a lab based science at any one time with $11.23 spent in materials per child for the full year. I’m not sure what lab based sciences are able to function on that kind of supply fee ( frogs go for about $4 each!) and there aren’t a lot of textbooks to be purchased for $4.07 per student.
Again I implore the members of the School Committee to harness the energy of parents who are willing to work to help our students. Give us direction and leadership. Send us to Beacon Hill. Present information clearly and honestly. Don’t give us any more pithy rhetoric about doing more with less in this economy. Stop being politicians and start being people, citizens, parents, leaders!
Just a couple of weeks ago, Dr O’Brien, our Superintendent of Curriculum announced he would be leaving his position in Haverhill.
This past week, Dr Buchanan, our Superintendent, announced he was a finalist for the position of Superintendent in Wenham. Many of the people I’ve spoken to are surprised and disappointed. I merely wonder why its taken him this long to ponder moving!
The School Committee is considering whether or not to offer him a contract extension to entice him to stay. Unfortunately I doubt they can write a contract giving Dr Buchanan the things that would truly make the difference.
Our public meetings are shameful – If this is how grownups act on camera then I cannot imagine the day to day interaction of these people with our Superintendent.
The budget is a mess. This isn’t any one person’s fault and is totally beyond the purview of anyone in the City of Haverhill but that doesn’t mean the stresses placed on the city and its people aren’t real. The state needs to change the way schools are funded – or the federal government needs to make sweeping education reform that is productive and helpful before this issue improves. That being said – I’ve sat through many budget meetings and I know we could handle things better!
Our MCAS results have essentially topped out. With the severity of the cuts we’re facing there’s no way we’re going to improve much beyond where we are now. The state has come in for their evaluation – since we’re a level 3 school in a sea of higher performing schools for our geographic area – and asked what, besides money, can the district benefit from. What else is there besides money? Sure we can use textbooks but that costs money! We’d love to give our teachers the professional development they deserve but that costs money. Many of the schools need repairs but there’s that money issue again. Class sizes are higher than we’d like but teachers cost money. It would be fantastic to expand the offerings at HHS, give foreign language classes at the middle schools and have a full marching band but these items cost money.
I have a list of 101 things that Dr Buchanan would provide for our schools if only he could. None of the items are particularly extravagant. None of the items are remotely in our grasp either. Sadly, until society places the value on education that we need to and stop treating the school day as glorified free babysitting we will never have the means to attain those 101 goals.
I went to the School Committee Meeting cautiously optimistic. The meeting started wonderfully; Tilton School Principal, Mary Beth Maranto, announced a grant from Cabot Corporation for $10,000 in science materials for the school. The Employees of Cabot also held a crayon drive and donated boxes of crayons, markers and pencils to the children. Thank you people of Cabot Corporation – I had to Google the company when I returned home as I always equate the brand name of Cabot with cheese!
The donation was met with applause and the usual pandering by the members of the committee to the organization. I realize everyone is appreciative of these gifts to our children but perhaps the School Committee President can speak on behalf of all of the members of the committee and say thank you instead of each individual member speaking for 5 minutes and making the meetings unnecessarily long.
Moving forward with the agenda, School Committee President Scott Wood stepped down as president and the committee elected Shaun Toohey to replace him. Mr. Toohey’s first act as president was to preside over the election of his Vice President, Joeseph Bevilacqua. I must admit to cringing every time Mr. Magliocchetti referred to Mr. Bevilacqua as “Joey.”
Right about here the meeting turned less into a School Committee Meeting and more into the Paul Magliocchetti Show. The paper has lauded him as an instrument of reason and change within the School Committee but I do not believe this to be true. Let us look at the six items he placed on the agenda for this meeting:
1) Budget Breakdown. Mr. Magliocchetti requested a “brief” breakdown of funding from the City, State, Federal and Private sources by percentage. Nothing about the funding of schools is brief which he could have learned at the Parent Academy Presentation: How Schools are Funded. He could also have met with Dr Buchanan and Kara Kosmes to receive an in depth education on this matter. Having it as an agenda item served only to make him look busier.
2) Improvement of District Student Achievement. Again this is not something that can be briefly summarized. Perhaps in his research he could have attended some of the meetings where this issue has been beaten to death? The Superintendant had a meeting with his Principals to discuss this issue at Mr. Magliocchetti’s request – perhaps he could have attended that meeting instead of asking all of the Principals to come out yet again to rehash the discussion.
3) Status Report on Athletic Program at HHS by Garin Veris. I could have given Ms Danehy’s report about the goals Mr. Veris has for our Athletics Department. Indeed I mentioned many of the items in my Meet the Administrator: Garin Veris post just days ago! Perhaps in his zeal to become as up to date as possible on issues facing the School Committee, Mr. Magliocchetti could have attended the sub committee meeting himself? These meetings are posted and open to the public!
4) Superintendant’s Plan for Coordination of District-wide Middle and High School Athletic Program. I don’t see why number 4 is separated out from number three. I have to assume that Dr Buchanan is working with Garin Veris on a regular basis to ensure that both men are on the same page going forward with the plan to involve the HHS athletes and coaches at our Middle Schools to spur interest in our many athletic offerings.
5) Superintendant’s Plan for Viable District Band Program. Yes, we need a marching band. Many people equate our lack of a marching band with a lack of a music program in general. We have a Jazz Band. Unfortunately the children in Haverhill don’t want to play the clarinet or the flute – they want to play the drums and the guitar. They also prefer Jazz over standard marching band fare. We need someone to get these kids excited and interested in playing for the marching band. I understand this is an important issue and an embarrassing one. I too want to see it rectified. Who will the charismatic leader who resurrects the band be?
6) Report from the Superintendant on District Class Sizes. Why again is this a separate line item? Could we not have batched this up with number 2 earlier than mid meeting? I know the class size data is readily available from the administration and has been provided at many prior meetings. For someone looking to “hit the ground running” maybe he should have run over to City Hall and picked up a copy. The class size debate held much of the 2009-2010 budgeting discussion as we listened to the impact of cuts on class sizes and many trade offs were made with programs on one side of the seesaw and class size on the other. I am concerned with some comments about if we did lower class size we would not have physical classroom space for the extra classes. Many of our schools are full!
Now that we have the tutorial portion of the meeting out of the way I would like to address a couple of other issues. The School Department is looking to have the SPED portion of the budget audited by an independent company. According to the company: If we do not save you money you do not have to pay! I look forward to the results of this but fear we won’t save as much as is expected due to the increasing number of unfunded mandates and decreasing reimbursement funding.
The Textbook Project is a wonderful resource for our students. I am thankful to the gentleman who donated $20,000 in memory of his late wife. I am thankful to everyone who donates even $1 to this worthy cause. I doubt any of them want their money to pay interest fees. Mr. Bevilacqua likes to expound about how his idea to bond textbooks was fiscally responsible for the taxpayers here in Haverhill. I need to question how incurring unnecessary finance charges is fiscally responsible for the taxpayers. I also need to question how for textbooks Mr. Bevilacqua feels bonds are appropriate and yet later in the budget portion of the meeting he demands stricter budgeting and “living within our means.” Can we please support Dr Buchanan’s plan to use this money for the $135k in math textbooks the department needs to purchase next year? Can we also appreciate that the donations recently received have placed the value of the Textbook Project account significantly higher than it usually is and that no one is hiding funding in the Textbook Project Account? May we also please note that $75,000 is approximately $10 per child currently in the HPS and that $10 will not buy a book for anyone? I was saddened to hear that the $20,000 donation would only purchase approximately 300 books!
The next item up for discussion is that items do get sent to Sub Committee to die. And the School Committee did indeed drop the ball on having sent the Janitorial issue to subcommittee and then having nothing happen. Considering one of the members of the sub committee never learned he was on the committee I am not surprised. Of course if the minutes of the meeting had been properly reviewed by the member in question perhaps he could have seen he was elected to a sub committee and followed up properly. Much like students missing a day of school have to make up missed work – members missing a meeting must also catch up! This resulted in a long talk about policy which I will not rehash here. You can thank me later.
Dr Buchanan announced Haverhill’s submission to be considered for the Race to the Top initiative and everyone thanked the Union for its support of this program. Apparently other cities are unable to participate because their Teacher’s Union would not sign the paperwork. This is an opportunity for a large influx of money and resources to come to our district for our students. We are currently a level 3 district and I am ashamed that Mr. Toohey needed to ask this question of Dr Buchanan at the meeting. I mentioned this lack in knowledge to Mr. Toohey as we were leaving and he cited a lack of communication. Communication is a two way street and I have a difficult time believing that as a parent I have greater access to information about our school district than a member of our School Committee.
In closing, I would like to thank Mayor Fiorentini for reminding us that while we do focus a lot on the cuts and on the programs we wish we could have – we need to spend more time on the great programs and achievements we do have. To that end I encourage everyone to attend the upcoming Parent Academy: Enrichment Activities for Students and see for yourselves some of the great programs available in our schools today.
Have a great weekend!
New Athletic Director, Garin Veris, has wasted no time tackling the tough issues facing the Athletics Department of Haverhill Public Schools. Veris met with the DPC at their January meeting as part of their monthly “Meet the Administrator” outreach program and outlined his plan for the various sports teams and the students who make up said teams.
What most impressed me about Garin Veris was his emphasis on the whole student. He is not looking just for the kids who are most athletically inclined. He is looking for kids who want to play sports – and working to make sure that as many of those kids as possible get to play sports. But he stresses that they will only be allowed to play sports if their academic careers don’t suffer in the process. He spoke about how much he appreciates now the work his parents did to ensure his studies always took precedence over his athletics. Garin Veris explained to us that he wants to foster not only participation in the Athletics Program but in the community as a whole while fostering leadership, respect and academic success.
Garin Veris also spoke at length about how vital Middle School involvement is to the success of our High School programs. He has extended the invitation to our Middle School teams to fill the half time gap left by the lack of a band. He hopes this will keep the Middle School students excited about playing and bring all of the students together and generate fun and interest in our sports events. Other half time plans include inviting the Haverhill High School Alumni band players to return and play during the games as well as having a dance group from Haverhill High School perform. We cannot sit on our haunches and expect the students to come to us – we need to go to them and show them all of the great things we offer at Haverhill High School.
One of the more controversial issues facing our Athletic Department is sports fees. Whether or not you agree with the fees – they are a roadblock for students and they are a roadblock for the accreditation of our High School. The last report cited at an earlier School Committee Meeting stressed that Haverhill High School needed to reduce fees and increase participation in our programs. The easiest way to reduce fees is to fund-raise the money instead. Garin Veris is hoping the First Annual Haverhill High School Athletics Golf Tournament will do just that. He has tasked the Booster Clubs with working together to maximize the success of the tournament. He hopes the funds raised here will be the beginning of many years of improvements in our Athletic Program. I hope he is right.
If you would also like to meet the administrator; Garin Veris will be outlining some of the Athletic Department offerings at the January Parent Academy: Enrichment Activities.
At the forum on September 30th one of the questions posed to the candidates was: Sports Fees have reached the level where they have become a barrier to some students participating. Would you vote to reduce them? Why or Why Not?
The question is silly to me, no one wants sport fees. No one on the current School Committee wants sports fees. No one in the Athletic Department wants sports fees. In a Utopian society there would be no sports fees. You can vote to reduce them but where does the money come from? Do we fire a teacher? Incur a lawsuit because a Sped mandate is ignored? A better question would have been: In light of the economy requiring the Athletic Department to charge sports fees how would you help students overcome this hurdle to expand their participation in sports. I found the candidate responses disheartening.
Mr Deroche doesn’t want sports fees because he didn’t have to pay any when he played sports in High School. There were a lot of things that were different when we were in High School. That’s not a basis for how things need to be done today, in today’s economy and reflecting today’s needs.
Mr Sierpina wishes there were a split between what the student pays and what the school pays. This split already exists. In sitting at the budget meetings I listened to former Athletic Director Peter Shanahan discuss how he needed to use the sports fees to close the gap in his budget between what it costs to run the athletics program and what he receives in dollars from the School Department.
Ms Hetel wants the fees to be affordable. She sited a young man who complained about paying $800 to play hockey. That $800 is misleading. Hockey is the most expensive sport to play that is available for our students but the maximum in sports fees he could pay for that sport is $525 – expensive but far less than the $800 stated. Individual sport fees for sports that require busing are $275 with an additional $250 possible for hockey because of the exorbitant cost of rink fees. The city charges the school department a reduced rate for ice time. I’m sure that young man mentioned above has had to purchase equipment for himself along the way but the equipment is then his to keep.
Sports fees are also reduced or eliminated for students who qualify. There is a form available on the HHS website and I am sure they have print forms as well. The various booster clubs host fundraisers already to reduce sports fees for the students. A concert over the summer at Haverhill Stadium is just one recent example of the community working for our students.
A comment was made about students who play multiple sports. There is a per child max sports fee for the year of $600 and a per family max of $800. This is explained on the parent permission form all students must have completed before they can play any sport.
We talk a lot about sports fees and how unfair they are but the reality is playing any sport is expensive. When you factor in maintenance of the playing area, equipment, uniforms, coaches and busing the price tag rises quickly. What I’ve often wondered is why it took so long to institute these fees in the first place! We forget that every extracurricular activity the students undertake costs money. Band kids have been paying fees for years. They own or rent their instruments at their own expense, band also requires uniforms and travel expenses. Being a member of the National Honor Society requires dues be paid. Theatre students scour yard sales and thrift shops to make their own costumes and props. Unfortunately these students are often overlooked because society considers sports a right of passage for young people but other extracurricular activities as a privilege. Sports fees are merely leveling the playing field of financial burden.
