Nothing in a year has changed for the better

I found this article written a year ago by Sue O’Reilly-McRae. She tells it like it is for many of PVRS parents ,students and teachers.. Here we are a year later and still no answers and PVRS  has only gotten worst. A school committee which is suppose to be the support line for all, is a support line to nothing. I too, wish Pat Shearer would show us the law in which it states :

At the June meeting, the School Committee chair and other members referenced Massachusetts general law as the reason why they would not/could not respond to our concerns. I would love for the School Committee to cite exactly where in Massachusetts general law it says that a school committee may not respond to parent, staff, and community concerns.


I have so far been unable to find this law. So now were calling you out Pat Shearer show us the law if we don't hear from you will we assume your lying like you all have been since you lied about Dayle Dorion and pushed her out of our school.People want answers and so far you have shown lack of support towards us and our school and its members.

 What we do know is Miller made life and a job for Wehrli  impossible with threats and demands because she did not know how to execute her job and about the Superintendents award which was the final straw. for him. For Mike it was his integrity and asking he did things against them and for Cathy HH , it seems Bacon and the VP believed they could do her job and she wasn't needed. Lets also not forget that Miller had the phones bugged ( which is why I past tech left for better pastures he refused to do it) and their emails.

As each brick fell our school committee sat by and watched it fall and did nothing to stop it. Now they have a budget outta control and money being spent on Miller and her office personals that on the charts is off the charts for a rural school.An extravagant amount  of money has gone back and forth moving her when it could of been spent wisely fixing up the old Superintendents offices which was clearly told to this committee could be done for half the expense.

Lets keep going. Parents and teachers alike were against the resource officer and here we are with an added expense and now they want to cut him from the budget , this was discussed at the last meeting "they decided not to fund the school resource officer for next year. And two is they won't pay Pam $14,000 for document digitization. But, because there were only 8 committee members present to vote and those topics weren't even on the agenda, Miller is planning to have a re-vote next month, so it's unclear if either decision will hold." This is what Miller does and she will do it till she gets the answer she wants and she did this also in Templeton and they ended up with no emergency personnel in order to fund her budget she went Nuclear and was voted down twice and third time won, but mind you in a very deceiving way .(For the story its recorded in the first few months of the blogs beginning)

A retraction will soon hit the newspaper concerning Millers so called STORAGE space which in fact was Cathy HH space for many years! This womans conceit, lies and lack of morals continues to amaze me.

So parents, teachers and taxpayers alike keep writing the dept of ED and don't bother wasting time with the school committee they have shown to be nonsupporting  and caring of our school they are suppose to protect.

 As for you Pat Shearer we are waiting for the answer to the question . WHERE IN MASS GENERAL LAW DOES IT STATE YOU CANNOT RESPOND TO OUR CONCERNS . THE CLOCK IS TICKING AND IN THE MEANTIME I PLAN ON MAKING CALLS TO FIND OUT AND I PROMISE YOU IF I FIND OUT THIS IS NOT TRUE IT WILL BE REPORTED. OUR TAXES FUND YOU AND IN CASE YOU FORGOT YOU WORK FOR US

by Sue O’Reilly-McRae.

Since just before the December holiday break, I have been a heartbroken Pioneer Valley Regional School parent.
As a 30-year educator, mother of two successful PVRS students, and an advocate for public education, I was stunned and deeply saddened to learn of the unexpected resignation of our long-time principal, Bill Wehrli.
Bill had been the principal of PVRS since my oldest son, now a sophomore in college, began attending as a seventh-grader. Over the eight years that I have observed and interacted with PVRS as a parent and fellow educator, I’ve watched our school grow and evolve, hire new and dynamic staff, and sustain its commitment to the arts and athletics. I observed and experienced an unmistakable investment and pride in the administrative team that supported PVRS: Bill Wehrli as principal, Mike Duprey as assistant principal, and Cathy Hawkins-Harrison as dean of students.
When I learned of Wehrli’s resignation, I was grief-stricken. Not just for the loss of this one administrator from our school, but for what this type of resignation signaled about what was suddenly happening at a school I care deeply about. I knew how dedicated to our school community Bill Wehrli was, and I believe that he would have never left midyear without speaking with students unless something professionally intolerable was happening to him.

Now several other key administrators have felt the need to leave our district. Mike Duprey has resigned from PVRS. I am confident that like Wehrli, he would not step away from the school he is devoted to unless his professional experience there had likewise become intolerable.
I believe that what we had in the leadership team at PVRS was a model of sustainable leadership. Andy Hargreaves and Dean Fink in their 2006 scholarly article — based on 15 years of work investigating school change — suggest that, “sustainable leadership respects and builds on the past in its quest to create a better future ... it doesn’t treat people’s knowledge, experience, and careers as disposable waste but as valuable, renewable, and recombinable resources.”
I believe that every devoted educator takes their work personally. We pour our creative energy into our relationships, the curriculum experiences we devise, and the academic support systems we create. Teaching and supervising teachers is very personal work; the best educators put their hearts, their whole person on the line in an effort to reach every student, every staff member, and to support growth, development and learning for all.
Throughout this stressful year, the teachers at PVRS have continued to love, care for, and teach our children. Thank you. In spite of the ongoing administrative turmoil you have sustained, you focus on and are committed to our children. I am so grateful for each one of you.
Hargreaves and Fink suggest that “the greatest source of trust in an organization … is communication trust, meaning that there is clear, frequent, open, high-level and reciprocal communication. Without communication, trust ... feelings and attributions of suspicion and betrayal infect an organization like a plague.” Since Wehrli’s resignation in December, parents, teachers, students, and community members have been asking for communication that would somehow restore the trust we had in our former superintendents — trust that has been further broken by the subsequent resignations of additional valued administrators.
I and others across the four towns in our district have contacted our School Committee members requesting information that might help us make sense of what is happening. Not only has this information not been forthcoming but at the May committee meeting citizen concerns like those I’ve stated here were eloquently and passionately voiced by former administrators, parents, students and teachers. These concerns were not addressed by the committee and were later discussed, after most of the concerned community members had left.
At the May and June PVRS School Committee meetings, former Pioneer district administrator Scott Lyman and other concerned parents and community members requested that the committee refuse to accept any additional administrator resignations until exit interviews were conducted by the School Committee to determine why we are suddenly losing so many valued administrators. Did you refuse to accept Mr. Duprey’s resignation, as Lyman and many others requested and, signaled by enthusiastic applause from around the room, the larger community seconded? Have you conducted exit interviews with other administrators?
At the May meeting we were listened to and not responded to. At the June meeting, the School Committee chair and other members referenced Massachusetts general law as the reason why they would not/could not respond to our concerns. I would love for the School Committee to cite exactly where in Massachusetts general law it says that a school committee may not respond to parent, staff, and community concerns.
District residents: please make every effort to call and/or write to your School Committee members if you share my concerns. The current PVRS website can be accessed at www.pvrsdk12.org/ and contact information for each School Committee member is listed under the School Committee tab at the top of the web page. Please attend the upcoming school committee meeting at PVRS .. The PVRS community has been seeking understanding for too long.