Building project vote scheduled for December 20

On December 20, the Watervliet City School District will present Phase IV of our building renovations initiative for a public vote. We envision this project as the capstone of renovations and improvements to our buildings and facilities.

The results of Phases I through III are evident as you approach our buildings. The most obvious improvements are the new, state-of-the-art classroom additions at Watervliet Elementary School and Watervliet Junior–Senior High School. Our new sports complex—designed to hold almost every indoor sports program in our district as well as a modern fitness center that is open to our community—is also a highly visible sign of our progress.


The combination of state building aid and Quality Construction Bonds would allow us to once again present a tax neutral project to the citizens of Watervliet that further improves and upgrades our facilities. (It is very important to note that we are only allowed to use this funding for capital improvements; it cannot be used for programs or personnel).


The scope of Phase IV can be found on our web site


While I am aware that all of you are very busy this time of year, I encourage you to take a few minutes to stop at your local polling place and vote on Tuesday, December 20. This final phase of our comprehensive building/facilities renovation will be a gift that our community will enjoy far into the future! Polling information

Taking advantage of every opportunity

We always urge our students to take advantage of the many opportunities we have to offer here in the Watervliet City School District both academic (AP courses, internships, college credit courses and honors classes) and extracurricular (athletics, Odyssey of the Mind, Masterminds, drama, band and our many clubs offerings).

It is important that we as a community and a school district listen to our own advice and take advantage of the opportunities that are presented to us.

In June of this year we applied for and were awarded an amazing opportunity that could benefit students and the community for years to come. The district was awarded five million dollars in Quality School Construction Bonds. Very few other districts in the state qualify or were selected as eligible for these bonds. In a nutshell, these bonds — when combined with our State Building Aid rate of 93 percent — will allow the district to perform just over $18 million worth of construction on our two buildings without increasing local taxes. (Many of you may remember three years ago we were awarded similar Quality Zone Academy Bonds that accomplished the same thing).

We should not let this opportunity pass us by.

This month, the BOE will consider putting forth to the voters a proposition that would capitalize on this opportunity and address some of the facilities issues that were not addressed in our last project and make many upgrades to our buildings, grounds and athletic fields. (BOE meeting on September 20 at 7 pm in the WJSHS auditorium).

Some of the initial items under consideration include:

• replacing roofs and windows, and renovating classrooms and corridors at Watervliet Elementary School;


• renovating classrooms and corridors, and upgrading the auditorium at Watervliet Junior Senior High School; and


• constructing an eight-lane running track and a low-maintenance, all-weather artificial turf playing field to accommodate a variety of athletic offerings.

Some may ask, why don’t we use this five million dollars in our regular operating budget to maintain and improve programs and add personnel? Simply put, we can’t. The Quality School Construction Bonds is funding that can strictly be used for improving school facilities. We are not allowed to use state building aid or QSCB for any other purpose.

In the next few weeks you will be hearing much more about this proposal and as with the previous two projects, we will form a facilities task force to ensure that all community members will have a part in the planning of this new opportunity.

New school year filled with optimism, and some new challenges

The days are getting a bit shorter, the nights a bit cooler, some trees are showing hints of orange and red, and the stores are decorated for Halloween—some have already begun gearing up for Christmas!

The summer has brought many changes to our schools and to education. Our comprehensive building renovations and additions are finally complete and we open our buildings without contractors, construction trucks and the noise and inconvenience that come with a project of this size (for the most part). After four long years, I am confident that the sacrifices we have made have been worth it. Both Watervliet Elementary and Watervliet Junior-Senior High School are now buildings that are more conducive learning environments for our students and facilities the entire school community can be proud of.

The changes in bricks and mortar in our buildings pale in comparison to the changes that are happening within public education.

We face many new challenges this year—from the new evaluation process for teachers and principals to the implementation of the common core learning standards and an ever-increasing level of accountability. New York has enacted a new property tax cap and we anticipate less financial support from the state. This means that we must use our resources wisely and do more with less.

None of these changes alter our mission: To inspire, educate and challenge every student, every day.

As I stated last year, we cannot let these hurdles slow us down or sidetrack our efforts to ensure that our students have everything they need from our school district. We must embrace these new challenges, as arbitrary as they may seem at times, and renew our commitment to students with an even greater sense of urgency than before.

We have overcome many challenges over the past five years; we will overcome these as well. Our students are counting on us!

Education has always been the best hope for a bright future for our children, our communities and our country, and it still is. Welcome back!

Congrats to the Class of 2011!

As another school year comes to a close, we say goodbye to our graduates and wish them the best as they pursue their future. The members of the Class of 2011 are a unique class in Watervliet’s long history, as they will be the last students to experience many things considered a rite of passage in recent years here in the Watervliet City School District.

Let me illustrate what I mean by talking to you about the future Class of 2017. The students entering 7^th grade this fall will be the first class to go through a completely renovated WJSHS building. And aside from the changes in our building, education itself is changing, and these students will have a very different overall educational experience than our graduating seniors.

The Class of 2017 will never play or watch a game in the old Harry Tucker Gymnasium. They will never eat lunch in the basement cafeteria or use the dusty basement weight room. They will never participate in the annual “march of the desks” or take final exams in the gymnasium. None of these students will ever take January Regents exams.

The class of 2017 will enter the Junior Senior High School prepared for the integration of technology into their classrooms. They will be well versed in the use of PC’s, Macs, Smartboards, Elmos and Senteos. They will have the opportunity to take advantage of the regions’ only middle school nanotechnology curriculum, hopefully gaining a substantive understanding of the future of this amazing new technology and the opportunities it brings.

Unfortunately, if things do not change, the Class of 2017 will also know the devastating effects of the loss of state aid to small city schools and the compounding effect of a tax cap that will strangle our ability to maintain the great programs we have built here in Watervliet.

But, back to this year’s graduating seniors. I wish all of the members of the Class of 2011 the best of luck in their future endeavors. As you head out into the world confident, ready and able to handle whatever comes next for you, I hope you feel that your experiences here at WCSD have prepared you well for the future.

Furthermore, I want to assure the students and parents who are still a part of the WCSD educational community that despite the changes and challenges facing Watervliet, and public education as a whole, we are committed to staying true to our mission of inspiring, educating and challenging every student, every day.

Thank you for your support

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of the voters who came out in support of the Watervliet City School District budget last night.

As many of you know, this was a particularly difficult budget year, not only for us here in Watervliet, but for all public schools across the State.

It is times like these where I find an even greater appreciation of the overwhelming support that this community has always shown toward our school district. Over the last six years, our community has supported every budget, building project and initiative that we have put in front of them. This is the true meaning of a community that values education, their children and their future.

Our school district’s ability to overcome this year’s devastating loss in state aid was made possible only through a collaborative “team effort." Every stakeholder associated with our school district had a hand in this success: from the cost saving ideas presented by our bus drivers and the concessions from our teachers; to the voluntary salary freeze of our administrators and the support of our voters. The whole district worked together to help balance this budget. As an educator, I am proud to be the leader of a learning community that is so ready and willing to pull together to do what is best for every student, every day.

Thank you!

WCSD's new gym and our current budget situation are not related!

I am very concerned that there is a misconception in the community that the construction project that has been underway at WJSHS since fall of 2009 (our new classrooms, cafeteria and gym) are the reason we’re facing a budget crisis right now. This is absolutely not the case, and I want to be sure our community understands that our current budget situation is caused by a deep cut to the operating aid we receive from the state, NOT our renovations.

The aid that WCSD receives to help pay for the building project comes from a completely different pot of money than the “state aid” we refer to when we talk about a revenue source for our budget. As such, NONE of the money used to support the building project has come from our general fund.

When the project was voted on in March of 2008, district administrators knew that the district would be able to take advantage of an all-time-high level of state building aid and a limited-time opportunity for EXCEL funding. These two funding sources combined to reduce the taxpayer impact to less than one percent, which equaled approximately $24 a year for the next 15 years adding up to a total of $360.

However, our district’s selection as one of six school districts in New York State to receive Qualified Zone Academy Bonds (QZAB) will save Watervliet taxpayers an estimated $3.7 million in interest payments, reducing the tax impact on homeowners to zero.

I have also heard that people in the community are saying that we have gone above the original cost of the project and that is why our budget is in its current condition. Let me stress that with any bond or annual budget that the voters approve, the Board of Education can only spend up to the specific amount approved in the vote. By law, the district can not and HAS NOT spent any more on this project than the $21.7 million approved by voters in March of 2008.

I just want to be sure that people understand that we lost almost 10% of the aid we rely on from the state. That is the reason we are facing cuts and lay-offs... NOT our new facilities.

FIRST IN INVESTING AND SECOND IN PERFORMANCE

Over the last few months there has been a great deal of mud slung at public education. I realize that an institution as large and long standing as public education is an easy target in many ways.

But there is one piece of information being stated by Governor Cuomo that bothers me more than any other. This is the claim that New York public Schools are "first in spending and thirty fourth in performance."

There is an old saying that states “if you say a lie often enough, it becomes the truth."

The Governor’s claim is based on faulty data and frankly, it’s untrue.

Below is an excerpt from a recent blog posting by Bob Lowry of the New York State Council of School Superintendents that quite convincingly contradicts Governor Cuomo’s claim.

“The claim that we are 34th in performance is based on a Census Bureau report finding that that in 2007, New York ranked 34th in the percentage of adults over age 25 with at least a high school diploma.

So the measure looks at the educational attainment of people who would have last been in school more than 10 years ago, in some cases decades before that, and in some cases people who attended school in other states or nations, or may not have attended school at all.

At best, the measure is like evaluating Governor Cuomo based on something that happened in George Pataki’s next to last term as Governor.

More generally, reality is more complicated than any one measure can convey.

New York is hugely diverse, in ways good and bad. One recent report concluded that we have the widest disparities in spending between high and low poverty districts.

New York is also home to some of the absolute best public schools in the nation. For example, nearly a third of the 300 national semi-finalists in the 2011 Intel Science Talent Search attend public high schools In New York State.

Education Week, the national newspaper of record in education, found New York to be a leader in several areas in its most recent annual “Quality Counts” report:

• Percentage of students passing Advanced Placement classes – 3rd
• Overall education policy and performance – 2nd
• Raising graduation rates – 4th
• Closing gap between low income and other students in 4th grade reading results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) – 1st
• Closing gap in 8th grade mathematics on the NAEP – 1st”

I applaud Mr. Lowry on his recent blog and in an attempt to flip this lie on its head, I assert that New York State’s public schools are not first in spending and thirty fourth in performance, but rather we are --- FIRST IN INVESTING AND SECOND IN PERFORMANCE.

The attack on public education makes me remember a somewhat similar situation that happened with the space race back in the 60’s. The USSR beat the US into space and it was a big disappointment for many Americans. However, President Kennedy (and the country) did not cut the NASA budget or demonize the organization. He inspired them with a new vision and the pledge of support from the highest office in the land. Governor Cuomo, I suggest you learn from our late President.

I’d like to call on our Governor to take pride in New York’s public schools and our students and commit to the pursuit of being FIRST in the nation in performance. This is a goal we can all stand behind and work toward.

We want to be part of the solution!

A wise person once said, “You are either part of the solution or you are part of problem." In the spirit of this quote, the 47 superintendents in the Capital Region BOCES and Questar III BOCES have developed a legislative position paper.

The paper outlines ideas and changes that our state leaders should consider in what I hope will become a joint effort between public schools and the state to implement meaningful, long term reform in public education. Educators and state leaders need to participate in a meaningful dialogue on the issues and challenges facing public eduction in New York State instead of being at odds and viewing each other as adversaries in a battle in which there won't necessarily be a clear winner. The only certainty in a fight like the one going on right now over school funding is that in the end, our students are the ones who will lose.

Please click here to view the paper, and feel free to comment if you have thoughts or ideas that add to this important dialogue.

We already have a tax cap!

It seems you can’t turn on the TV, open a newspaper or your favorite internet news site without hearing or reading about tax caps on public schools and local government budgets.

The proposals for these tax caps vary from 2 percent to 4 percent with a great deal of intricate, complicated and confusing legislative language that most of us cannot even come close to understanding.

In my albeit humble opinion, the tax cap talk (as it pertains to school districts) is political propaganda, preying on citizens who are being led to believe that they have no control over how much money their school district spends.

This is completely false.

School districts already have a tax cap; it is called a budget vote. The third Tuesday of every May, school districts in New York State place the decision on how much they will spend in the hands of the residents of that district. In fact, school district budgets are the most democratic of any government spending State, local or national.

Do you get to vote on the State budget?

Do you get to vote on your City or County budget?

No.

The only budgets that are placed in the hands of the voters are those of our schools. And every resident over the age of 18 has the right and the responsibility to vote on their school’s budget.

Last year 94 percent of school district budgets in New York State were approved by voters. This fact illustrates widespread voter approval of the way schools are spending money.

The key term in that sentence is “voter approval.” It is important to note that voter turnout for budget votes is very low. Some opponents of schools might say that this is because holding school budget votes in May is a trick and that the votes should be held in November. To that I say, “Fine!” If we do our job and put out a responsible budget that balances the needs of our students with our community’s values and ability to pay, it makes no difference to me when the budget is voted upon. In fact I wish more people would get involved.

While I have resigned myself to the fact that we will have some type of tax cap in the coming years, I think it is important for our citizens to realize that they already have a say in how much or how little schools spend.