Lincoln's Log

It’s a stunning lineup. Every school board chair since 1997 has joined forces to oust the evil queen, Marianna Ponns Cohen. And none has been as vocal as Sandy Waters, who avers that the ability for a board to get along is more important than the results.

This, my friends, is what the election on Tuesday is all about.

This is same cadre of BOE chairs who have cycled through six superintendents in 10 years. Sandy Waters supported a part-time superintendent who commuted from New Jersey and whose tenure predictably vaporized after three years. Nancy Weissler hired Betty Sternberg, who was arguably the worst superintendent in Greenwich history.

And our current BOE chair Steve Anderson was so happy that he got a retired superintendent, Sid Freund, on the cheap because he was already collecting a pension …

Long before Marianne Ponns Cohen began questioning the actions of an opportunistic Sid Freund, who saw his $234,000 Greenwich salary as an unexpected windfall to supplement his already rich New York state pension, we had Sternberg, Leverett and a host of other failed school superintendents.

The decline of Greenwich schools had its seeds in the very BOE chairs who are now trying to silence the only hope we have for not repeating the mistakes of the last decade – Anna Povinelli and Marianna Ponns Cohen.

Choose wisely.

Question: What confidence level do you have that the high school auditorium project will come in under or on budget?

Sorry for the trick question, because the remediation of toxic soil at the site ensures that the project will exceed the $34 million or so earmarked for the construction in my opinion.

As far as I am concerned, the remediation is a perfect excuse to pull the plug on the whole thing. Not that I needed an excuse, but no elected official in Greenwich seems to have the guts to actually come out and say that.

Even during flush times, a state-of-the-art performance center at the high school would have been a “nice to have” at best. After all, we’re talking about band and chorus, folks, not chemistry labs, or computers, or math or English text books. Entire generations of kids and their parents survived the concerts in the current auditorium with no permanent damage to their self-esteem. Was it crowded? Yes. But why did the music directors have to schedule three-hour recitals with all the groups at one seating? Were they trying to impress upon the parents that we need a new space? I never understood why I had to sit through four choir groups – chorus, Madrigals, Witchmen and Chambers when I only wanted to hear my kid perform.

(And no new state-of-the-art acoustics will fix the off-pitch tenor whose voice always seemed to be directed at my seat.)

I think we’re talking about the possibility of a $40 million project – perhaps even $50 million – when we are finally done. So, before we get to the point of no return, let’s stop and take a breath, and re-evaluate.

One of the reasons the Greenwich school system is on the decline is because special interest groups have seized control. It’s management by the groups that scream the loudest. The vocal parents group behind the Music project (why is it called MISA?) started screaming almost 10 years ago. Just as Glenville got its school renovation, the MISA parents were organized, smart and relentless.

But leadership means not being managed by your constituents.

So while everyone in town seems to be heaping praise on Peter Tesei for his management of our fiscal future, remember he was the one who came forth with the support of MISA that put it over the top, even though he tried to disguise it by spreading the spend over two parts. Meanwhile, the Democratic challenger “what’s his name” is also trying take credit for supporting the MISA project … so we have no alternative but Peter Tesei for another two years.

Greenwich, you want to spend forty million dollars?

How about establishing a pre-school program at Julian Curtiss, New Lebanon and Ham Ave to get our worst performing students on the statewide exams to begin reading, writing and arithmaticking before they even enter kindergarten? How about engaging their parents to appreciate the value of education and the importance of mastering English and other important skills so their kids will have a better future than they did?

Result: Greenwich finally starts to turn around its test scores, bolstered by the improvement at the bottom. We are once again among the Top 10 districts in Connecticut.

And I’ll bet it won’t cost $40 million.

As I write this, some residents in Glenville are using the PTA’s parent email list to call attention to the battle four years ago when Marianna Ponns Cohen and Anna Povinelli were Parkway parents fighting to keep their school open.

It was serious enough to prompt this email from the principal of Glenville School:

Dear Glenville Parents:
You may have received an email regarding the upcoming Board of Education election from the address “glenvilleschool@gmail.com”. Please note that this email did NOT come from Glenville School or Glenville School PTA and there is no official endorsement of the content of that email.
Yours for better education,
Marc J. D’Amico
Principal
MJD

Someone needs to explain then how it was possible that someone managed to get ahold of an email list that was so complete with the parents directory.

Meanwhile, someone else sent me a Greenwich Time ad that ran in February 2007, outlining the position of the Parkway parents.

ConcernedCitizensAd[1]

I had forgotten how nasty of a fight it was. It really had nothing to do with education and everything to do with local control, with a dose of ethnic tension thrown in for good measure. More than one Glenville mom played the role of the modern day Louise Day Hicks.

Shocking that the PTA would be party to such ugliness. And there is a question whether the town is involved because of how interlocked the PTA is to the schools (for instance, the PTA has its own page on the town web site).

One way for Glenville parents to repudiate this ugliness is at the polls Tuesday …

Vote your conscience. Do not support the narrow views of a minority of residents who would take Greenwich back several centuries.

My apologies to Leslie Tarkington for my error in the above video tape when I said there was only one woman on the ticket for the BET.

I did not vote for either first selectman candidates. Blankley is a total non starter. He seems to be making up his campaign platform on the fly. His knee-jerk reaction to Sid Freund’s reaction was amateurish. And his claim that he was responsible for MISA is laughable.

On the other hand, Peter Tesei has been managing town affairs by reaction for four years. He is petulant, small-minded and always seems to take the low road – i.e his removal of Frank Farricker from Planning and Zoning and now his ardent campaign against Marianna Ponns Cohen. Meanwhile, Greenwich gets hit with one storm after another, and we seem to be living in the dark – wet and dark while Tesei settles grudges around town. The RTC has a weak leader in Jim Campbell. How else do you explain Peter Tesei as first selectman and Steve Anderson as BOE chair? All we need to complete the Triple Threat is an ineffectual BET chair – and the jury is still out on that. The RTC, as the dominant party in Greenwich, has a responsibility to correct all this after the elections. Make this Tesei’s last term. Get us a new BOE chair. Whatever it takes. Greenwich cannot withstand more of this drive to the bottom. (I voted for David Theis because I think he may be the only adult in the room).

****

I also did not cast my vote for either Democratic candidate for the BOE. Just when you thought the Dems have hit bottom, they surprise you with more. They are the party in town that just just keeps giving when it comes to ineptitude. I thought by getting rid of the two clownish BOE members, they were going to give us a real choice. Instead we now have the loopy Jennifer Dayton who ends up endorsing two Republicans. I don’t know as much about Adriana Ospina but I am not hopeful. Her long time involvement with the PTA is not a plus. The Greenwich PTA is a booster club and a social hub. It has aided and abetted the decline in schools by not questioning anything the superintendents have done. I do not know of one policy decision made by the administration that was questioned publicly by the PTA.

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Someone sent me an email being circulated by former BOE chair Sandy Waters seeking volunteers to carry signs Nov. 8 on behalf of the two BOE candidates endorsed by the machine in Greenwich. That says it all. It is the most cynical message about municipal elections. Unfortunately, it works. In 2009, only 38 percent of the registered voters even bothered to show up in Greenwich. Many of them, like me, were familiar with only one or two of the races. Many of them, I am certain, voted for people they saw on signs carried by friends at the polls or from seeing a name on a sticker. I asked several friends whether they knew for whom they were voting in the BOE race and most had no idea who was even running.

The problem with a democracy is that you can’t always control who will run (or who will not). And you can’t account for the ignorance of the electorate.

BTW, Sandy Waters is the same BOE chair who also had a superintendent whom the town could not keep. I have heard many reasons for why Larry Leverett did not renew his contract. One day, we will get the full story – maybe even written by this blogger.

The village of Glenville has had an extraordinary influence over Greenwich, its finances and ultimately its schools, including a full-nelson grip on the current agenda to place two key Republicans on the Board of Education … (more on that later.)

As Tip O’Neill quipped, “all politics is local.” In Greenwich, all politics are hyperlocal.

Glenville is a lovely hamlet in the extreme western part of town. It is surrounded by Port Chester to the west and Byram to the south, separated only by the Post Road. Maybe it’s that proximity to the lower-income population in Byram and Port Chester, or maybe it’s just the reflex of an isolated community (I served a 17-year sentence in Boston and am familiar with the tribal tendencies of separate ethnicities vying for resources in a small space – Southie, Dorchester, Roxbury) – but more than any other Greenwich community, Glenville bristles at not getting its fair share. Over the years it got plenty of backing and managed to get the town to spend an inordinate amount of our tax dollars on itself while saying no to others needing help.

When Hamilton Avenue School  started construction and needed to place its students in modular classrooms, Glenville said no to a proposal to place the modulars at its elementary school even though it made sense because both were elementary schools. Instead, the town moved the modulars to Western Middle School. Who were the operatives behind the scene? Sue Rogers and Peter Tesei – longtime friends who grew up in Glenville.

That the town spent millions to renovate Ham Ave was seen as totally unacceptable to Glenville – Chickahominy getting something Glenville didn’t. Before a blink of an eye, the BET was chalking up $23 million to renovate Glenville School as well, even though Glenville School was among the newest of our elementary schools. The proposal sparked a lively debate on just how many schools we needed in the western part of town. Parents from nearby Parkway School showed its own militant mojo and fought to slow down the Glenville approval. Guess who were two of the Parkway parents? Anna Povinelli and Marianna Ponns Cohen.

Now you know the rest of the story. Sue Rogers goes to become president of the PTA, champions Sid Freund, gets him a meaningless award from the statewide PTA group. Tesei helps to ram through the Glenville expenditure as the then BET chair despite warnings from First Selectman Jim Lash. Ponns Cohen is elected to the BOE in 2007.

Fast forward to 2010 and all hell breaks loose. Ponns Cohen is openly defiant of the long-held BOE protocol to just keep your mouth shut while the chair presides. A long list of previous BOE chairs, Lile Gibbons, Sandy Waters, Nancy Weissler – they all had their day as the unquestioned matriarchs of our schools, while hiring one ineffective superintendent after another. No one dared to question the chair.

After Freund resigned abruptly, Tesei went to work to help manage the fallout and support his old friends Rogers and BOE member Mike Bodson. It was an unusually aggressive intervention into BOE matters by the first selectman. He then tried to get the RTC to nominate crony Lisa Harkness for the BOE to which the RTC rebukes him in an open slap against the first selectman.

Fast forward again to current events: Rogers is helping to get Tesei re-elected (she and Harkness sponsor a Tesei fundraiser that ensnares interim superintendent Roger Lulow into a compromised situation), Mike Bodson and Sandy Waters have formed a PAC to drive out Ponns Cohen and to prevent Povinelli from gaining a seat. Grudges are held hard and long in Glenville. Vengeance often takes time.

They are joined by the erstwhile BOE chairs who see the opportunity to revise their own sullied reputations, and even one Democrat candidate, Jennifer Dayton, whose bizarre behavior recently has everyone shaking their heads at this Mid-autumn’s Nightmare where every loyalty is a mirage and one needs a scorecard to keep up with the internecine bloodshed.

Around 2008, I began to take note of this train wreck. I also began to take note of the declining test scores in Greenwich compared to other districts. The key words here are “compared to other districts,” because all districts have had to face significant budget constraints. But Greenwich is failing at a faster rate and its ranking is falling off a cliff.

Lash was the last chief executive in Greenwich who actually tried to get the town to spend its money in a rationale manner. But after four years, he had enough. The Glenville factor was too much.

On Nov. 8, the soul and essence of Greenwich will be tested. Will it allow a very small group of residents with their townie sensibilities and backward views of entitlement continue to terrorize those of us striving for change and for a better Greenwich? Will we allow their machine to dictate our future?

On Nov. 8, I will be voting for Marianna Ponns Cohen and Anna Povinelli. And I urge you to do the same. They stood up against the Glenville Factor as Parkway parents, and I trust they will stand up for all of us against the tyranny of a congenial but incompetent school board.

Arch Street

Perrot Library roundabout

Porricelli parking lot

Arch Street RR underpass

Softball field

OG gas station at Arcadia and Park

No wonder Sid Freund wants to move the goal posts. I would too. After two years of his tenure as superintendent, Greenwich went from being the 41st ranked district in the state to No. 48. I wrote previously that it was unfair to judge his performance after only one year. But after two years, Greenwich is clearly moving in the wrong direction, and the decline is accelerating.

Take the case of Dundee School, the poster child of Freund’s campaign to move Greenwich to an International Baccalaureate curriculum favored by many parents.

Let’s go to the scoreboard:

- Dundee has been dropping like a rock for five years since it was ranked the fifth best elementary school in Connecticut according to a compilation of the math and reading scores of third and fourth graders. In 2006-07, Dundee was by far the highest ranking Greenwich school at any level. Eastern was the No. 10 middle school in the state and Riverside was ranked 19.

Today, Dundee is ranked 80, having dropped 34 places in one year! In 2007-08, it went from No. 5 to No. 30. In 2008-09, it went from No. 30 to No. 44. In 2009-10, it went to No. 46. And now it has tumbled to No. 80.

The thing about scores is that they don’t lie. About half of the 11 Greenwich elementary schools did better or worse in a ranking of their March 2011 CMT test scores for reading and math. Ham Ave was up 36 positions to 257, New Leb up 82 spots to 264, Parkway dropped 40 to 159, North Street up 28 to 103, Glenville down 78 to 198, North Mianus down 48 to 67, Riverside up 17 to No. 9, Old Greenwich up 17 to 46, Dundee down 34 to No. 80, Julian Curtiss down 29 to 184 and Co Cob up 25 to 150. Click here for all the scores

Of all the schools, only Dundee has had a consistent year-over-year drop for five years.

I know we will not get an honest analysis from this lame-duck administration. But after Freund leaves, the question remains whether the BOE, which has been hypnotized by Freund’s prestidigitation, will still try and push IB onto unwitting Greenwich taxpayers at a cost of millions to change curriculum and retrain teachers. The IB curriculum is education eye candy, with a powerful allure. It comes with buzzy words like “critical thinking” and “social-emotional learning.” It lets us all off the hook. Instead of teachers being held to performance standards and instead of parents told to read books to their children, it’s okay to let our kids sit in front of the tube and veg out. Vegging out is good. Self direction is good. Homework is bad. (Is it any wonder that Greenwich teachers are among Freund’s biggest defenders?)

As a consequence, the Dundee results speak for themselves.

Johnny and Muffy can come home and report what fun they had in school because they got to “self discover” and talk about how volcanoes were formed.
But Johnny can’t recite his ABCs and Muffy hasn’t moved beyond 3s in her multiplication table. And neither can write a lick.

Is this what we want? Luckily the RTC has given us choices this fall. We can actually make a difference and vote in enough informed board members who will help put an end to this insanity.

It will still be an uphill fight, especially with current BOE chair so intransigent and so revisionistic with his manipulation of facts and history. In his Sunday letter to the editor, he admonished GT columnist Bob Horton who had asked for his resignation. The BOE chair cited a town attorney opinion Feb. 3 saying that he did not legally bind the town when he wrote a letter to the IB organization committing the town to IB implementation. What he conveniently left out was that the same town attorney, upon reflection, came back to the school board on Feb. 24 to advise the BOE to retroactively “ratify” support for the BOE chairman’s actions. Clearly, the town attorney, who is obssessed with the culpability of the town in lawsuits, saw enough of a red flag to advise the board to prophylactically go back and protect themselves with a retroactive vote. You may see the entire board meeting on video by clicking here

That was the lightning rod that thundered BOE member Marianna Ponns Cohen into her watchdog role. The BOE chair and Freund were fast moving toward implementation of IB – not only in the middle schools – but in the high school as well. There was no serious discussion or analysis. IB is a proven resource drain and would dilute the town’s Advanced Placement programs. None of this was ever vetted among parents and taxpayers.

And when Freund resigned in a huff, the BOE chair went into serious spin mode. He charged Ponns Cohen with badgering Freund with as many as 4,000 emails. The truth – after a GT investigation – was under 300 emails directly to Freund.

He staged a pro-Freund rally and elicited the support of the considerable PR machine of the PTAC/teachers’ union.

But weeks later, as more damning information about the Freund administration emerged, Ponns Cohen began to take on a new, burnished image as the only honest broker on the board (along with Peter Scherr).

The culmination of this turnaround was last Wednesday night when the RTC – in a stunning rebuke to the rogue efforts of Peter Tesei and Jim Campbell – voted overwhelmingly to endorse Ponns Cohen. Several prominent Republicans actually took to the mike to publicly hail her work. It was the first time I read any public quote of support for Ponns Cohen. The tide is clearly turning as more and more residents understand the issues and develop an awareness that will be tested in November.

Meanwhile, Tesei continued to get bad advice from people like PTA president Sue Rogers and BOE member Michael Bodson. It puzzled me why Tesei, who has a serious lock for re-election, would get involved. Maybe he’s bored. But my advice to him is that the next time he chooses to challenge the Republican leadership by nominating a rogue candidate: make sure your candidate (Lisa Harkness) shows up. Not only was she not in the same zip code. She wasn’t even in the same country. Sources said she was in Europe. Maybe she was researching IB curricula.

After 10 years of IB at Dundee, no one should be surprised that reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic as a core curriculum has taken a back seat to some existential, amorphous social alchemy that is difficult to manage and impossible to measure. I am happy for Dundee parents who are pleased with their educational product, but let’s cut, cap and balance that decline in core academics before it infects the rest of the system.