Lincoln's Log

Two weeks ago some driver slammed into the rotary in front of Perrot Library in Old Greenwich and took down all the signs. Then earlier this week, another car came down Harding Road, crossed Laddin’s Rock, plowed through the hedges in front of the library and took out the metal rails on the front steps. The car traveled at least 25 feet past the stop sign on Harding Road.

And here is the photo from the accident two weeks ago:

The Westchester County airport waiting room was its claustrophobic self on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Virtually nowhere to sit, my colleague and I had to stand while waiting for our flight to Boston when his cell phone rang.
“A plane just hit the World Trade Center,” he said. The call came from Scott Meyer, general manager of NYTimes.com. I was COO of New York Times Digital at the time and had access to the latest news. At first, the reports were that a small plane had hit one of the towers. The news got worse very quickly after that. My colleague and I soon gave up on the idea we were flying anywhere that day, and both tried to get back to our office in Midtown. Since we had our cars at the airport, we took off – but in separate directions.
He went down the Hutchinson Parkway. I got as far as the Bronx on I-95 before hitting gridlock. It was a scene out of Blade Runner. EMTs and fire trucks were everywhere, blaring their sirens. Luckily, I was able to turn around and head back to Connecticut.
My first stop was Eastern Middle School in Riverside where I checked in on my sixth grader. I found him in the cafeteria and was relieved to see that the school was locked down and the students appeared safe.
Next, I drove to Greenwich Point.
There, on one of the clearest days of the year, I could see the two horizontal plumes of smoke extending from the burning towers to the end of Long Island – or as far as the eyes could see to the horizon. I was struck by how intact the plumes remained, instead of dispersing into the atmosphere as one might expect of smoke.
Finally, I went home to Riverside where I witnessed the day’s calamity on TV – the collapse of the towers, the attacks on the Pentagon and the plane which crashed in Pennsylvania.
I heard that President Bush was on a plane, and for the only time in my life, I feared for the safety of Dick Cheney.
The rest of the day was a blur. The extent of the attack was unclear. Fear of the unknown was the worst.
In the days following, I saw Rudy Giuliani at his best, the country rallying around the President and a national resolve to seek and hunt down the enemy.
That’s my story. Where were you on Sept. 11, 2001?

I have two recurring nightmares. The first is missing a final exam while still in college. The second is losing all my town privileges because I failed to prove my residency in Greenwich.

Is it my imagination, or are we compelled to prove our residency in more ways than required by any other municipality? It’s the virtual chastity belt around Greenwich that keeps the unwashed from Port Chester, Stamford and, God forbid, The Bronx from soiling our beaches, stealing from our schools and polluting our parks. When I applied to store my canoe at Greenwich Point, I had to prove my residency just to get on the waiting list. It didn’t seem to matter to the marine division that I already had a marine use permit, a mooring permit for my sailboat, and fees that I paid annually to store my boat, and to maintain a boat locker. So back to the house I went, in search of the CL&P bill from last month and various sundry other annoying evidence of an over-subscribed lifestyle, to sate the beast of Field Point Road.

The latest was the requirement that all incoming kindergarten and ninth graders schlepp down to the Havermeyer Building to prove they are residents before they can partake in Greenwich’s prized educational system which is struggling to best inner city schools in Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford for bragging rights as having better Connecticut Mastery Test scores.

Then there is the library card, the membership at the Griff, tennis card, and the granddady of them all: The Greenwich Beach Card – all requiring separate proofs of residency.

I have a simple suggestion: Can’t we do this just once a year? Compile the required documents once and submit them to a single authority once and have all the agencies in the town access that data base when they need POR. Think of all the time we would save each agency and department. Think of the reduction in the chances that we misplace our auto registration, our passports every time we have to cycle those documents through the cuisinart of the multiple POR requirements.

Of course, if it were up to me, I’d dispense with the nonsense totally. My bet is that there actually are very few non-residents dying to steal our services. And even if there are some, I’d welcome the diversity.

But I’d settle for streamlining the process for now …

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An excellent editorial in the Greenwich Time today has me thinking about schools at the dawn of the 2009-10 school year. Click here for article

Dunno about you, but I am embarrassed to be a resident of the wealthiest town in the state with a school district ranked No. 41 (out of 195) according to the latest statewide standardized tests. NUMBER 41!

While that’s an improvement over last year when we came in at 44, other Fairfield County towns are racking up much better performance. Westport is No. 1. Nearby Fairfield – with more students (9494) – is ranked 26.

Six out of the 11 elementary schools in Greenwich fell in a ranking of their peer group – Riverside (No. 19 down by 2), Dundee (44 down 14), Old Greenwich (59 down 43), North Street (101 down 39), Parkway (114 down 38), Julian Curtiss (138 down 89). The five showing improvement are: North Mianus (36 up 42), Cos Cob (41 up 19), Glenville (50 up 78), New Lebanon (332 – up 1) and Ham Ave (387 up 5).

Same story among the middle schools – nothing to brag about. Eastern held its No. 10 position. But there was a time in the first part of this decade when Eastern came in consistently the No. 1 middle school in the state year after year. Central is 54 – down 27, and Western is 94, up 20.

Neither the state nor the towns and cities provide information on the actual rankings. You either have to compile them yourself using the annual Connecticut Mastery Test scores for elementary and middle schools or the Connecticut Academic Performance Test for high schools. But there are aggregators who have performed this task through the magic of programming. Click here for one such aggregator

The school board and administrators – even though they won’t blare it out on a megaphone lest they appear ethnically insensitive – will whisper the oft repeated mantra (excuse) that the Greenwich district is much bigger (8960 students) and more diverse than most other monochromatic towns in the county. Granted there is the challenge of the number of non-native English-speaking students exploding in the western part of Greenwich, but how do the numbers square with the declining ranking of the two elementary schools in the part of town that is virtually 100 percent white and Asian (Old Greenwich and Riverside)?

Then there is my favorite topic, Greenwich High School, the misbegotten stepchild of the Greenwich political machine. GHS in my opinion is the single most visible and important public institution in Greenwich. It is either the beacon by which we measure our commitment to our children and community, or a blot symbolizing a wayward culture and broken system. Lately, it’s been the latter – especially under the current school board.

Wouldn’t it be nice for a change if we could brag about GHS’s accomplishments other than its football scores – like its academic standing for a change.

Last year, GHS ranked 26 in the state in its test scores. This was an improvement over 2007-08 when it was ranked 47. But the year before, its rank was 13.

The “realists” will point to the numbers. Yes, yes, 7.5 percent of the GHS students signed up for subsidized meals – a indicator of a diverse economic base (Riverside School, for instance, did not serve a single subsidized meal). Yes, yes, 12.7 percent of the GHS population is of hispanic origin and therefore greatly impacts the reading and writing of English in standardized testing.

I get that.

I would counter with the argument that we have more resources than other towns to deal with these challenges. But we’re parsimonious with those resources. The bottom line: we have a political system that prevents us from achieving ambitious education goals – or even striving for them. More on that later. First, two comparisons:

Farmington High School came in ranked No. 7. Farmington HS has a subsidized lunch ratio of 4.6 percent, 4.6 percent African Americans and 3.1 hispanics.

But the real kick in the teeth: Hall High School in West Hartford, with a 11.4 percent subsidized lunch population, 10.6 percent African American population (GHS has 3.2) and 11.2 percent hispanic, came in at No. 22, beating out GHS by four places. A school with equally daunting statistics, if not more daunting, has no business besting Greenwich.

The motto in Greenwich for its public schools? Good enough

Nearly 20 percent of the secondary students in Greenwich attend private schools, more than any other town in Connecticut. Considering the power base of that constituency, it’s not a surprise then that the “real” job expected of the school board here is to make sure the public schools are “good enough” without going crazy on costs. That is why virtually every school board candidate in Greenwich cites as his or her main attribute their financial acumen and ability to control costs. There are not a lot of big ideas for academic distinction coming out of this group. That’s because this is not their job. They were put into place by a very small group of people – the two local political parties consisting of fewer than 200 persons – and not the electorate. Together with another very small group – the Board of Estimate and Taxation – they form school policies by their control of the purse. The school board here is a fiscal watchdog committee. It is not – in any shape or definition – a group interested in advancing the education of our children in any ground-breaking manner.

All this was fine as long as the world stayed on an even keel. Two profound events occurred to shake the foundation of this long-held and cynical practice: A deep, deep economic recession forcing even the wealthiest of towns to make tough decisions about spending and the explosive influx of – how shall I put it? – “non-traditional” Greenwich residents into the western part of the town. Yet, as you can see from the numbers, other towns are saying we will not allow our children to pay a price, and that public education is core to our community and democracy. Instead, in Greenwich, we’re cutting back on school bus routes and making our kids cross dangerous intersections and taking other silly short cuts.

There is a silver lining: The miserable performance by the schools has exposed the school board in a public light like never before. In short Weissler et al, you’ve been busted. You’ve done your job on helping to keep our taxes extremely low in this recessionary environment. But you’ve done it on the backs of our children during the most formative years of their lives. In their lifetime, they will be asked to compete against China, Korea, Finland, India, and even Russia – all of which are preparing their children better than Greenwich, Connecticut.

And my message to the next school board: Don’t think you can hide. We got your number. And we’re not going away.

Here is a photo submitted by my friend Jan Linskey of Old Greenwich of a horse and buggy at Wachovia Bank in Old Greenwich. Can anyone think of an appropriate caption? Does anyone know the name of the gentleman?

Imagine my surprise when I drove by Binney Park in Old Greenwich last night and saw a giant video screen. The event was the Movie in the Park sponsored by Perrot Library. About 100 persons actually showed up. It was a rare night without rain so the event caught a break from the weatherman. The movie was the 1987 classic, “The Princess Bride.” The last time I saw a movie outdoors, I was sitting in my Rambler and drinking something called Near Beer.