Here is the predictable letter to the editor of the local paper from school supt Sid Freund who is trying to get off the hot seat for his off-the-cuff comment last Thursday night to the BET about Greenwich’ lack of support for its schools.
click here for letter
Notice that Freund did not challenge the accuracy of the reporting. Yet he characterized the article as “sensational.”
The situation with our schools has clearly reached the point that
even Freund felt the need to speak out publicly.This is a fact that needs to be broadcast often so that everyone is aware.
Freund needs to be a champion of our children’s future and protect them from the slash-and-cut mentality of the BET. The superintendent need not apologize for doing his job.
Seems to me that his clarification was an affirmation of what he’d said to the BET: that our town government had ignored the physical plant of our public schools, that they are in bad shape as a result, and far worse than the physical facilities that one can find in many other suburban school systems in our region. Seemed to stand up and reaffirm what he said.
Of course, what he said is certainly not news to anyone who followed the course of the Hamilton Avenue School disaster. First, in order to avoid borrowing and to keep tax rates at rock-bottom, our town failed to spend on upkeep of that school until it got so bad that the entire building had to be torn down, and completely rebuilt. And now Glenville School, which went years with miserable and deteriorating facilities and lack of repair, is being largely rebuilt as well- and probably at far higher expense than it would have taken had we been spending on needed repairs each year.
What is more amazing, however, is the total silence from the both the Board of Education and the superintendent regarding the dozens of Greenwich High School students who have been arrested in just one and a half school years. At least 62 students have been arrested by town police since the beginning of September 2008, and given the way the police department is dribbling out the data, it is likely that as many as 100 or perhaps many more, have actually been arrested over that period of time, most for drug-related felony offenses. Yet there has not been a single announcement from the Board of Education, or any questioning of the police actions by the superintendent.
What is even more shocking is GHS Headmaster Winters’ suggestion that “I don’t think the numbers mean too much.” So 39 students have just been arrested from his school over the first five months of the school year on felony drug charges, 1.4% of the entire student body, but Headmaster Winters feels that that doesn’t “mean too much”. Frankly, I cannot imagine such a heartless, callous comment coming out of any principal or headmaster anywhere else in America after dozens of his students are arrested for any reason.
The callous response and the deafening silence from the BOE and the superintendent suggest a level of detachment from the youth of this town and a lack of caring that is difficult to fathom.
Comment by Sean — February 15th, 2010 @ 4:58 pm