My vacation week did not go at all as planned and so here I sit on the Sunday before we head back to school with a to-do list which will not be finished in a very timely fashion and a cup of coffee in an attempt to make next week more productive.

Speaking of next week – I thought I would start with some upcoming events which I feel are important.

On Tuesday the K-2 students at both Crowell Elementary and Golden Hill Elementary will see the Tanglewood Marionettes perform Arabian Nights.  Last year the students at Crowell saw the Tanglewood Marionettes perform The Dragon King.  The children were not the only people in the room mesmerized by their performance.  After the play there is a Q&A session and materials are provided to teachers should they wish to incorporate anything from the performance into their lessons.

Wednesday, April 28th 2010, is the final Parent Academy of the 2009-2010 school year.  Do you know what your children are doing this summer?  Come to this Parent Academy Presentation for some great information about summer programs and hear helpful hints for getting your children ready for the 2010-2011 school year.  As always the presentation is free and so is the childcare and pizza!

Thursday is Parent Teacher Conferences!

Thursday is a Family Fun Night Fundraiser at Uno Chicago Grill to benefit the Golden Hill Elementary School.  If you’re looking for a dinner out consider chatting up someone from Golden Hill for an official Uno’s paper so that a portion of your bill will be donated to the school.  Remember drinks aren’t included so don’t try and boost your bill with a bar tab!

Thursday is another meeting of the illustrious Haverhill School Committee.  The agenda won’t be available until midweek but I’m betting this one will be just as contentious as the last.  Don’t worry I will be writing about the last meeting but I have a lot to wade through as that meeting was quite long!

Just a small note about the following week.  May 3rd to May 7th is Teacher Appreciation Week.  Regardless of how you may feel about the education system in Haverhill these are the people who are with your child day after day working to educate them despite the horrid economy and equally horrid climate on the School Committee.  If you’re so inclined – this is a great week to say thanks to those who have made a positive impact on your children.

We attended the Parent Academy last Wednesday evening to learn a little more about how the Haverhill Public Schools keep our children safe during their days.  It was illuminating and I wish – as usual – that more parents cared enough to attend.  The seminar is free and babysitting as well as pizza for the kids is provided and parents get snacks and lots of information to take home.  Each presentation ends with drawings for YMCA youth and teen memberships.  There’s one Parent Academy left this school year about getting kids ready for summer and for next year.  Unless your child is a HHS Senior you really should attend April 28th at the Hunking School 5:45pm.

We learned about how bullying is handled within the system from Officer William Alvarado.  I’m not going to recreate the program but the three key statements I took away from his presentation were:

• Bullying isn’t something that only happens here in Haverhill.  I knew this but I hear a lot of people talk about the bullying issue as a reason they don’t want their kids in public school – bullies are everywhere.
• Parents need to follow through with prosecution when bullying gets out of control.  Too often all of the work done to build a case and get the bullying on record is wasted because parents won’t follow through.  The bullying then continues and this lack of follow through makes stopping it much harder the second time around.
• Children who bully often come from parents who bully.  I’ve said this before in another post on bullying but I want to reiterate it here.  We as a culture need to stand up to all bullies!

Donald Davoli spoke about our District Crisis Response Team and how they work with the individual school crisis response teams to plan for and manage crises.  While the team initially formed in response to the Columbine shooting – their definition of crisis handles any event which impacts the ability of the students to concentrate on learning.  Our crisis teams work on everything from the H1N1 problems of this school year to grief counseling, unauthorized people in the building, natural disaster and much more.  They also mentioned our District Crisis Team needs sponsors so if you or someone you know can initiate contact with a company in the crisis or medical field to sponsor some much needed supplies for the schools please let them know!

The rest of the presentation was broken down by grade level.  The Elementary, Middle and High School each had a presenter who spoke about how to be involved as a parent in your child’s school and in their life.  The main goals of this portion of the presentation seemed to be expressing what is appropriate and expected in each age range, how the schools handle problems at each age range, and how to stop problems at the root for each age range.

I thank the presenters for their hard work and I thank the DPC for continuing to sponsor these events despite the poor parent turnout.  I also thank the Haverhill YMCA for donating memberships to the DPC to provide door prizes for these events.

Cyber-Bullying seems to be the new hype item to scare parents.  Just this weekend the Eagle Tribune published this article about some new legislature to combat the ever-growing cyber bullying happening in school.  The Hunking School is hosting an information session on how parents can recognize and prevent cyber bullying on March 22nd with Katelyn LeClerc.  The Parent Academy at the end of the month will cover cyber bullying in its “Safety and Security” presentation and School Committee Memeber Joe Bevilacqua asked for an agenda item at a meeting in February to discuss this growing problem.  And googling cyber-bullying brings up an almost endless list of links to places dedicated to stopping the epidemic.

Certainly text messaging and facebook are being used by kids to bully each other.  The problem isn’t with the text messaging or the facebook posts but with the bullying and the kids.  Take away the medium and you won’t alter the message!  When I went through middle school and high school there were no cellphones or internet but there was plenty of bullying.  Kids wrote notes and stuffed them in lockers, they wrote on each other’s lockers with markers, yelled at each other across the hallways, whispered in their friend’s ears and giggled or snickered at their victims or prank called people’s houses.  There was violence and depression and detention and not a lot of actual education about why this was bad – certainly it was treated by many as a right of passage to be bullied in school.  Unfortunately not much has changed in many respects except that the kids have flashier toys to perpetuate the bullying.

From the Eagle Tribune article: “Parents will have to realize that they’re responsible for their children’s actions, and if they’re learning this at home and the children bring it to school, there will be repercussions for that,” Murray said. this is as close as they come to the root of the problem.  Unfortunately, the parents who are the worst offenders – the ones who are just adult bullies – won’t suddenly have an epiphany and become responsible parents because they got a note from the school.  These parents will see this as just more persecution and either blame their child for bringing home unwanted attention or blame the victim for coming forward with a complaint.

Sadly, bullying isn’t looked at as a serious problem by most people.  This is evident in our media bias.  Think of the sit-coms and cartoons popular on TV and how many of them have a bully/victim dynamic as one of their main comedic elements.  Here is an article on bullying regarding the Drew Carey Show and this Tvtropes wikki on sitcom archetypes cites many other good examples.  Because the shows always place some kind of redeeming moment for the bully we’ve been desensitized into thinking all bullies aren’t all bad.

Look also at the double standard society uses to judge success for our children.  We expect our children to do well in school and go to college so they can have a successful career but we still call the top performing academic achievers “geeks” or “nerds” who are often “bookworms” and “teacher’s pets.”  We need to stop stigmatizing our children’s successes!

Then there is this pervasiveness in society whereby we can’t be content with our own lives without somehow disparaging someone else.  This need society possesses to keep up with the neighbors and to have everything bigger, better, newer has plunged the country into the worst recession in decades.  We’ve tied so much of our self worth up in what we have or wear or drive and we’ve passed that down to our children.  If their little classmates don’t have the right toys or designer clothes then they are somehow not worth being friends with and subsequently end up teased by their peers.  Already the need for conformity has hit my home – my Kindergartner and third grader are always asking for things because “everyone else in my class has them.”  I struggle to find a line between teaching them the values important to me and making them complete social pariahs at school.

Do I have the answers to this problem?  Not with the current societal conditions.  But I believe that everyone needs to take more personal responsibility for their decisions and actions and realize how much their children are watching and learning from them.  We also need to intervene on the behalf of children and other adults who are being bullied.  We need to stop putting our heads in the sand and pretending no one else’s problems effect us.  One major factor that allows bullies to continue their reign of terror is that not enough of their peers stand up to them and say enough is enough.  Bullying will only be reduced at the peer level or with parental involvement.  Laws won’t make bullies stop.  Giving the victims the support they need to stand up for themselves by standing up with them is the best start we can give this issue.

Tonight (Wednesday February 24th) is another Parent Academy.

Please join us at the Consentino School for February’s discussion topic:  Safety and Security.

Registration begins at 5:45.  The presentation is from 6pm – 8pm.  Snacks are provided for the adults as well as a printed packet of information from the presentation.  There is a door prize raffle.  Children are welcome to0 – the District Parent Council provides pizza and activities for the children in the school’s gymnasium.

Tomorrow (Thursday February 25th) is a meeting of the School Committee.

The meeting begins at 7pm and if you can’t be there please watch the meeting on the local Education Channel – channel 9.

A pdf of the agenda for Thursday’s meeting can be found here.

I can only wonder, after the last meeting’s insanity, what further chaos the agenda item “Policy regarding School Transportation Policies” will bring.  Despite all of the urgency from two weeks ago I still have not received any notice of policy changes through the school or online or on the Education Channel and I do have a Kindergarten student so even if they were only sending this notice to parents of Kindergartners I should have gotten it.

This has been a very busy week – and it shows no sign of slowing.  Today I will be baking for Mrs. Chipman’s talent show at Golden Hill Elementary tomorrow evening.  Tickets and baked goods will be sold at the door to benefit her Maniac Mallets percussion group.

I will be setting the DVR for tonight’s School Committee Meeting and enjoying dinner at Kreuger’s with my family and many other Crowell families as tonight is our Family Fun Night for January.  From reading the article in the paper tonight will be another Paul Magliocchetti Dog and Pony Show on  subject matter he could have gotten from the School Department so that the meeting could be spent discussing his new ideas on how to deal with these issues instead of rehashing the worst of last year’s budget discussions.  Maybe he just doesn’t have any new ideas?  I especially love how he stresses the Attorney title on tonight’s agenda and on this little announcement of his office hours.  I don’t see Mayor Fiorentini asking people to address him as Attorney Mayor Fiorentini … and honestly you can have all the education in the world, Mr Magliocchetti, but I’m unimpressed until I see more than speeches and forcing the overworked people in the School Department to pander to your endless requests for presentations of information you can easily get in other ways.

After so many assertions at Monday night’s Possible Dreams event about the structural integrity of the Woolworth Building being intact – this morning’s article about metal falling from the building does not make me confident about the truth in those assertions!

I want to heartily thank the Parent Academy and the DPC for sponsoring the presentation last night at Bradford Elementary.  I was encouraged to see many new faces in the crowd!  We all learned much about the great things happening in our schools for enrichment.  As Mr Rossi told us, Enrichment Activities are a place for kids to explore their interests, learn new skills or new ways to develop existing skills, and to just have fun!  I think we forget how much pressures are heaped on kids today with all of the testing and rigorous curriculum requirements and day to day life stresses – kids need a social outlet where they can just have fun too!  If you missed the presentation but would like the take home packet of information from this – or any other parent academy – they are available at the central office in the bottom floor of City Hall.

In an economy where we are so focused on what we’re losing as funds disappear, tonight’s Parent Academy is a wonderful reminder of the many excellent opportunities we do have for our children here in Haverhill.

Please join us tonight at Bradford Elementary School.  There will be free babysitting and pizza for the children and a free presentation with snacks for the adults.  Check in starts at 5:45.

These sessions are always informative and very well presented.

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.

A new month brings a new Parent Academy.  The topic this time is Enrichment Activities for Children.  The flier can be found here.

Again I challenge the parents of Haverhill students to fill the room at this event!

On Wednesday, January 27th 2010, at Bradford Elementary School from 5:45-8:00 the DPC and the Haverhill Public Schools present this FREE information session.  They provide snacks for the adults during the presentation and if you bring your children they also provide the children with activities and pizza!  This is a great opportunity to get out and meet other parents as well as members of the School Department.

If all that weren’t enough the YMCA of Haverhill has donated Youth and Teen Memberships to be given as door prizes to all Parent Academy Presentations!

Just a few things happening around town this week:

TONIGHT! (Wednesday December 2) The Parent Academy presents “Homework Help” at Pentucket Lake Elementary School.  Registration begins at 5:45.  I’d love to see a full room.

Friday evening is the Christmas Stroll downtown from 5pm-8pm.  Santa will come help us light the large Christmas Tree.

Saturday starting at Noon the Nettle Middle School will be hosting crafters and other vendors to help you with your holiday shopping.  There will also be a bake sale table and a kids craft table with proceeds to benefit the students at Nettle Middle School.

Is there something happening at your school?  Or a local event you’d like me to mention?  Email me.