This blog was created to address concerns of the PVRS teachers, parents and children.
Share with others to get the word out to all taxpayers in Northfield, Warwick, Bernardston, Leyden and School Choice Vernon. We also dedicate this page to Mike Duprey, you will always be PVRS to us and in our hearts .
Something clearly does not add up here when a school system of this size is in this kind of trouble. So maybe the auditors need to do some extra digging or Healy is very bad with numbers.
NORTHFIELD — After their first reconfiguration of the food service
system was met with criticism from residents, Pioneer Valley Regional
School District administrators have settled on a new model that’s
expected to save the district $46,248 in its first year.
According
to Assistant Superintendent Gail Healy, who is also the district’s food
service director, the savings comes primarily from staff reductions.
Bernardston Elementary School’s cafeteria manager was laid off, and
Northfield Elementary School’s assistant cafeteria manager retired.
By
not refilling the two positions and shifting roles of those who remain,
Healy said the new plan will actually save the district more money than
the original plan proposed in April.
The main goal is to reduce
the school lunch fund deficit, which topped $201,000 last year and
startled the auditors, Melanson Heath, who said such a deficit for a
district the size of Pioneer is enormous. Since then, the figure has
continued to grow to about $220,000, Healy said Wednesday.
Originally,
Healy and Cafeteria Manager at Northfield Elementary School Holly
Manson proposed cooking all meals at Pioneer Valley Regional School, and
transporting them to district’s four elementary schools.
However, some residents expressed concern over how transporting
the food might affect food safety, and Healy and Manson went back to
the drawing board, reaching out to other districts to see how their food
service systems compare.
The new plan is expected to save $46,248
in the first year. By additional consolidation before the 2018-2019
school year, Healy expects to save an additional $30,829 in the second
year.
With Pioneer Cafeteria Manager Sue Wood planning to retire
after next school year, her position will not be replaced, Healy said.
Instead, the district will seek a districtwide cafeteria manager who
will be responsible for tasks like food bidding, Department of
Elementary and Secondary Education reporting, and food ordering through
the Department of Defense’s Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, to name a
few.
“We’re trying to save money by cutting down who does all
these things,” Healy said. “Preparing food is only a piece of what a
cafeteria manager or an assistant manager does.”
In the original
plan involving preparing all food at Pioneer, Healy said the district
would have saved $27,380 in the first year and $58,209 in two years. By
comparison, the new plan will save $77,076 in two years.
Next
school year, one Pioneer helper, who assists with food preparation,
serving and clean-up, will instead split her time between Northfield
Elementary School and Bernardston Elementary School, working the same
number of hours, Healy said. The helper, she said, already practiced the
rotation before the school year ended.
Additionally, Pioneer’s
two cashiers will each work two hours per day instead of three. With the
helper working at the elementary school, Pioneer will have five food
service staff instead of six.
Healy said between managers and helpers, staff will always have assistance.
WESTMINSTER
Following the mystery of his sudden departure from his former position
as principal of Baldwinville Elementary School this past January, John
Graziano came forward this week to talk about his concept for a brand
new K-8 school that he has been privately working on for the past
several months. Saturday, June 24, 2017
Well. I won't say were surprised about this "no confidence" report . However it should of stated "NOT PIONEER MATERIAL" . Bacon nor Perry had the least bit idea of this school and refused to hear anything brought forward on how to fit in.
Lets see, maybe we would believe the report if it wasn't for the fact that neither Perry nor Bacon thought for themselves, this has Millers hand-prints ALL over it and neither took the time to learn about PVRS or its students.
Kids prior to this starting in Jr High knew what was expected of them and they knew they had to earn it . From day one they were taught, RESPECT, SELF DETERMINATION, INTEGRITY, KINDNESS, AND THE ABILITY TO ACHIEVE AND BELIEVE IN THEMSELVES!They also had a VP/Principal/and Dean of Students, who knew each and every one of their names by the end of the school year. These two come in and suddenly the 10th, 11th,and 12th/ grades were thrown back to middle school!
Hall Passes, lack of respect, being treated like criminals,being walked to a bathroom and watched ! Not to mention parents pulling their kids from the school and one being a racial incident!Also, lets not forget the privacy issues of searching cars... and The Prom!!!! This years Prom has to go down in the records as the biggest disaster in history! The excuse for this,we didn't search early enough and so the kids ended up in BRATTLEBORO and in a small area where they hold the strolling of the heifers sweating like pigs in a blanket and the food and entertainment was just horrible! It was a disgrace to our school and to the kids whose families sunk alot of money into it.The Prom comes every year at the same time, how can you not plan this? Disgrace and Perry was part of it.No excuse!
We remember a time walking into that school as parents and the VP/Principal knew us or introduced themselves, the halls were alive with singing and laughter, the teachers always had a smile on their faces and the receptionists in the main office would be happy and chat and smile.. YOU SEE NONE OF THIS NOW!. You, see people going thru the motions and you can cut the tension in these halls with a knife, no longer do you see the smiles and feel the spirit or do they talk like they use to, all you see is fear, sadness, and just going thru the motions .
As for Perry and Bacon being able to do Cathy HH job, Impossible! How can these two do a job when they can't even do their own? Not to mention these kids have NO respect for them, and they respected Cathy HH which is why she did such a great job with them. She was far from easy on them she was actually hard on them but when she spoke they listened and respected her and they knew what was expected of them.
Listen its no secret that we do not respect Bacon nor Perry and we all know why they were hired , Especially Perry. So lets make this real clear, we gave you a chance and you blew it within a month! You are not nor will you ever be PVRS material and NOTHING is gonna change that .You will always be outsiders. You would not be losing so many kids if you were PVRS material. . PVRS has been the school of choice for many for YEARS including school choice. Since Miller came here no parent wants to willingly send their children to this school and school choice has basically turned its back on PVRS and many are now as we speak looking elsewhere to send their children and have written letters of complaints to the Dept Of ED. This is not just your fault, the School Committee has alot to do with it as well and it started when they pushed Dayle Dorion out! Its been downhill since! Their lack of support for students and teachers is appalling.
Our suggestion to PVRS is remove Miller, Bacon, and Perry and get in faculty that is worthy of our school . I would suggest contacting Duprey but he was so sadden by what he saw here chances are he would not come back and that hurts many deeply. I would also suggest keeping the teachers and Cathy HH to help run the school because if they don't stay and you don't do something NOW, come fall you won't have students enough to attend school.
We have warned you since last year to stop the downward spiral you were on. You took a high spirited school with a happy environment and turned it into a damn prison camp. Now its up to you to fix it while you still can.
Trust us we are not going away and will report on everything till you make this right again.
WE ARE PIONEER PANTHERS AND WE DO NOT BACK DOWN!
NORTHFIELD — Pioneer Valley Regional School’s faculty and support
staff overwhelmingly voted “no confidence” in Principal Jean Bacon and
Assistant Principal Jennifer Albert Perry following their first year at
Pioneer.
“By advisement from our regional (Massachusetts Teachers
Association) representative (Brad Brousseau), given the climate and
record of leadership this year at PVRS, PVREA held an anonymous paper
ballot vote to gather data from the faculty and support staff regarding
their confidence in the current administration,” Ariel LaReau,
president-elect of the Pioneer Valley Regional Education Association
(PVREA), said in a statement to the School Committee at its most recent
meeting. That statement from the union outlined the “no confidence” vote
in the two administrators taken June 15.
According to LaReau, the
MTA requires 80 percent of the entire faculty to vote negative before a
general “no confidence” vote can be determined. In reference to Bacon,
95.5 percent of faculty voted “no confidence” along with 95.83 percent
of support staff. In reference to Albert Perry, 84.4 percent voted “no
confidence” along with 87.5 percent of support staff.
LaReau said four faculty members didn’t vote, and those votes were counted as votes of confidence.
LaReau
said Brousseau suggested taking vote due to several complaints. These
included “general mismanagement and lack of communication this year,”
layoffs that are said to have affected some veteran teachers and “a lack
of real response and authentic action taken” after the faculty
presented a survey outlining concerns about the school atmosphere. Also,
LaReau, said, most educator evaluations conducted by Bacon and Albert
Perry came back “extremely negative and resulting in a rating for many
teachers as ‘Needs Improvement.’” Some such teachers, she explained,
have been teaching anywhere from five to 20 years without receiving bad
evaluations.
“Though we may be required to work under changed conditions, we
cannot currently express our confidence that the best interest of
students or the integrity of our school is being served,” LaReau said
during the meeting.
According to Superintendent Ruth Miller and
Recorder archives, a search committee composed of teachers, School
Committee members, students, community members and Assistant
Superintendent Gail Healy reviewed 19 applications for principal and
narrowed the pool down to three, including Bacon. Taking the committee’s
recommendation of Bacon into account, Miller selected her. Bacon in
turn had the final say in selecting Albert Perry.
Similar concerns
were expressed to the School Committee, with Karen O’Neil, a retired
Pioneer science teacher and Leyden resident, saying actions taken by
administrators “have lacked protocol, transparency and inclusion of
professional partners.”
Support for administration Pioneer parents Deborah Potee and Ruth Potee spoke in support of Bacon.
“I
understand change is hard,” Deborah Potee said in reference to the
layoffs. “But I feel very committed to the students. I feel very
strongly the principal wants what’s best for Pioneer.”
In her
conversations with Bacon, Deborah Potee said she found her to be open,
authentic and upfront about the budget’s limitations, while supportive
of moving Pioneer forward academically. She asked that community members
focus on moving the school forward.
“It’s not going to be helpful to hang someone out to dry,” she said.
Ruth Potee said she was “both stunned and devastated by the 90 percent vote of ‘no confidence’ in the administration.”
“That feels awful,” she said .
She
agreed Bacon is committed to expanding the curriculum and improving
student education, and noted how Pioneer hasn’t had gradual layoffs as
enrollment has declined like the elementary schools, making this year’s
layoffs more severe.
Hearing from both sides, the School Committee did not take any action or indicate what future steps it might take.
In response to the “no confidence” vote, Bacon was understanding of faculty’s frustrations.
“I
feel that it represents a divide at the moment between most faculty and
the administration,” she said. “I think it’s coming from the difficult
year we’ve had, the fact that we’ve been facing these difficult layoffs
and I can totally empathize with faculty feeling frustrated.”
Hoping
to move forward, Bacon said she reached out to next year’s faculty to
put together what she calls a Transition Team to figure out what faculty
need to feel more supported by administrators. Ten faculty members have
joined the team, she said.
One focus, Bacon said, will be revising the faculty guidebook. She said the guidebook was last written in 2004.
“I’m really very hopeful that we can put this difficult year behind us and move forward in a positive direction,” she said.
JUST A FRIENDLY REMINDER OF WHAT YOU'VE DONE SCHOOL COMMITTEE
