Come enjoy an outside concert

This looks like a night of fun . Come enjoy and help support a worthy cause and hear some great music .

TURNERS FALLS — With a goal of raising money for the American Civil Liberties Union, Pioneer Valley Regional School fine arts instructor Mandy Oliver is directing a chorus concert Saturday.
The concert will be held at 7 p.m. at the bandshell in Peskeomskut Park, located off Avenue A, between 6th and 7th streets. The suggested donation is $5, with all proceeds benefiting the ACLU, according to a concert flier.
The culmination of 10 rehearsals, the concert will include music with themes of solidarity and empowerment, with songs by Sia, The Beatles, Ingrid Michaelson, John Legend and the Broadway musical “Dear Evan Hansen.”

You have got to be kidding me

OK, lets be real here. No faculty or staff member wants to talk one on one with Miller. She can't be trusted for one and the majority of the ones laid off spoke out against her to begin with.

Miller said she doesn’t believe it’s appropriate to use them right away with this year’s large number of laid off or resigning faculty and staff.“Given our current situation, I think it’s better for some of the tensions to reduce before we ask them for feedback,” she said.

Now why is that? I think its very important we start using them now and copies be made by those who do use them and kept to further ensure they stay accurate. I also think that these interviews need to be done by the school committee and need to be made public as well. To much under handedness has gone on in this school since Miller has arrived and it needs to end and this SC needs to ensure more openness with the taxpayer and parents. As it stands our school has basically been black balled due to her under handedness and  it needs to end here and now. I am sure that these teachers have alot to say and I also think we should have Dupreys , Jones and Wehrli as well. Its time the truth comes out and these past administrators and teachers and other staff know they have the full support of the people and parents. Maybe a member of the dept of ed should also be in these interviews to enure that things are handled properly, its bluntly visible to us all that  unless you read it here we have been kept in the dark.

Its clear to everyone Miller is not a good addition to Pioneer nor is Bacon or Perry. People who have spoken out against them are now unemployed  and will fear retaliation if they speak out. For the sake of our school and those who remain , the Dept Of ED needs to be involved. This abuse of power also needs to end and they all need to be removed from the Education system for the sake of other schools down the road. It ends here.

Speak out and speak up. You chose this profession to educate kids and protect them. Your words now matter more than ever.

NORTHFIELD — The Pioneer Valley Regional School District curriculum and personnel subcommittee approved exit interview forms, answering requests community members voiced repeatedly last year.
Subcommittee members agreed that given a large number of layoffs this year, it was particularly important to have an exit interview procedure established to conduct with all faculty and staff who retire, resign or are laid off.
The curriculum and personnel subcommittee released a copy of the exit interview form, which includes nine questions such as, “Do you feel you were given adequate support to do your job well?” “Did you feel that you were provided good opportunities for professional growth?” and “Were you satisfied with the working environment?”

Pioneer Exit Interview by Joshua Solomon on Scribd

Faculty and staff will also be asked if they have suggestions for changes to the work environment, or if they have concerns.
Once forms are done, faculty and staff will contact their respective principal to arrange an appointment to go over the completed forms. Interviewees are also invited to call, email or make an appointment with Pioneer Superintendent Ruth Miller to share concerns or comments regarding working in the district.

Form vs. conversationsHowever, according to Miller, the practice of conducting exit interviews isn’t new, but the use of these forms is new. Miller said she routinely conducts interviews with some, but not all departing faculty and staff, preferring face-to-face conversations.
“Typically, if someone has left or is going to leave, they come in and meet with me at some point,” she said. “If you can catch them and have a conversation and take notes about what they said, I find that more purposeful.”
Miller said she believes faculty and staff might not be interested in filling out forms.
“I find that people, in all my years, 99 percent of the time they’re not filling it out,” she said. “But if you ask them for a conversation, they’re willing to have a conversation that doesn’t require them to write and analyze. And you get what they want to talk about, rather than on a piece of paper.”
Miller said she plans to meet with the five district principals to discuss how the form will be used. However, she said she doesn’t believe it’s appropriate to use them right away with this year’s large number of laid off or resigning faculty and staff.
“Given our current situation, I think it’s better for some of the tensions to reduce before we ask them for feedback,” she said.
Miller said she will likely start using the forms and conducting interviews “closer to September.”

Update from newspaper

As you can clearly  see Millers so called CLOSET space was really Cathy Hawkins- Harrison. Does this woman EVER tell the truth? She knew this was Cathy's.

hmm really!!

 Hmmm....... I remember this being different last year concerning the school resource officer. Parents did not want this and felt it made the kids uncomfortable and them as well and we were turning our school more into a prison than a school. This idea was pushed onto parents and the towns by the Police Chief and Miller , the majority did not like the idea one bit nor did school choice who chose this school because it wasn't like BUHS.Now School choice has about disappeared from PVRS in the last two years and parents since Miller has come have pulled them from the school. Now local parents are finding other choices for their children's education.This did not help PVRS anymore than Miller, Bacon  or Perry did and losing so many teachers these kids did depend on and trust, this is the final straw.

 May 2, 2016
Some residents questioned whether a school resource officer was necessary in a small, rural school like Pioneer and asked why Northfield — one of four member towns of the district who would benefit from the officer — must front the cost for it.
 Ruth Miller, the Pioneer superintendent, detailed the various roles the resource officer would serve, which include acting as a confidant to the students.
Read here
Resource Officer
Thursday, May 26, 2016
 “A school that has a police officer on duty is a huge negative in my mind, and I’m against that unless there is a need for it,” he said. “I don’t see any reason. I can’t see how our school or the reputation of our school is helped by having an armed officer for my kid to see every morning when he walks in.”
 Read it here
http://www.recorder.com/Sparks-fly-at-PVRSD-Committee-Meeting-Thursday-2425180

Confidant to the students? I can name a number of teachers these kids felt were safety to them and trustworthy to talk to , but whoops thats right Miller fired all of them! I never heard the kids state it was Igor. They liked him but they did not trust him. As for safety and drugs and weapons, well ask the parents of the kids Bacon humiliated and went thru parking lot cars with, Igor was NOT present . Oh and a couple of them kids were removed from the school due to this abuse by the parents. ( Another bad idea by the administration)

Igor is a great guy  but he is not needed at PVRS and this is Millers idea and along with the rest of her ideas it proved to be a poor choice and hurt PVRS as far as students are concerned and parents who felt the need to by pass this choice as a school and others looking elsewhere.

FYI -- Kids did not feel more secure seeing an armed officer in the school or the boys being supervised  when going into the bathrooms. Not to mention certain children due to race and color were targeted. (Nothing stereotype here going on.) Bacon & Perry did this as well with the females .I was told by many students they no longer felt safe at PVRS and they didn't like going to school anymore. I asked these same students at the end of the year  how they felt , a few said I am glad to be graduating or would not come back and others said they wanted to go to another school.

When will this SC realize the destruction this  and losing so many over two years has caused?

NORTHFIELD — Based on a Thursday vote of the Pioneer Valley Regional School District School Committee, the district may be without a school resource officer next year.
While looking at items to cut to meet the $14.2 million spending plan approved for next school year, eight members of the committee voted five-to-three not to fund Igor Komerzan’s position. Cutting it would save the district about $28,000.
However, it’s possible the decision might not hold, according to Superintendent Ruth Miller.
“There are people in the community that are very unhappy that this discussion occurred,” she said, noting discussion of the school resource officer’s position was not on the agenda. “I think they were feeling a little bit blindsided ... From what I’m hearing, people are going to demand that they vote with all the School Committee members present.”
School Committee members Robin L’Etoile and Jeanne Milton weren’t present, and Debra Gilbert left midway through the meeting before the vote, though the committee was able to reach a quorum.

Since Komerzan was hired as the school resource officer last summer, Northfield has paid for about $40,000 of his income, not including health insurance and a retirement plan, according to Northfield Police Chief Robert Leighton. The school district pays the remainder, with Komerzan resolving bullying issues, getting involved in teaching classes, and dealing with crime from weapons possession to drug dealing.
Leighton said he hasn’t officially been notified that the position has been dissolved, and won’t change anything until then. He said he hopes the decision will be reversed, noting that Komerzan was in fact able to save the district money.
“At one point, a lot of the certifications the teachers had for CPR expired,” he said. Ordinarily, the district would supply training, Leighton said, but Komerzan is a certified instructor.
“He was able to certify all those teachers and do it on the premises, with very little disruption to their schedules,” Leighton said. “And it didn’t cost the school a dime.”
For members of the School Committee who voted in favor of not funding the position, a tight budget was at the forefront of their decision.
However, the position was also approved by voters at last year’s annual town meeting.
“This is what parents and taxpayers want,” Leighton said.
Under Massachusetts General Law Chapter 71, Section 37P, it is a requirement for a chief of police to assign, in this case, a regional school district, with at least one school resource officer. However, upon written application, a school district can seek to have the state commissioner of elementary and secondary education waive the requirement if the commissioner agrees a school resource officer wouldn’t help the district in ensuring school safety. Or, if the chief of police in consultation with the superintendent determines there aren’t sufficient resources to assign a school resource officer, the chief will in turn consult with state police to ensure one is assigned.

https://malegislature.gov/Laws/GeneralLaws/PartI/TitleXII/Chapter71/Section37P

If you think you can pull that one think again, that law was basically made for city and inner city schools not rural. Stop Lying! 

Yep we have something to say

Not only is it BS that Pioneer has contended with morale and staffing this year but the previous  year as well.It seems that since Miller has come here we continue to lose employees and herself and others in her office get raises. Why is that? Also, why is it that this program owes so much money and why is it we have not heard the answers to that ? How can a program that you have to pay for to eat or is subsidized by the state for free lunches be this deep in debt? Again people lost their jobs to fix a problem that should of never gotten this far outta control.

Example.
Miller- Her income went up -639.00
Plus expenses -total 5000.00
Asst Superintendent-Healy went up -11,150.00 WHAT THE HELL IS THAT
ADMIN Asst to Superintendent- went up 4,210.00
Oh theirs more but lets move on
Bacon salary went up 3.070.00
VP salary  went up -54,946.00 WHAT!
oh and more
653,457.00 WAS SAVED BY REMOVING TEACHERS! Seriously! You give yourselves and admin raises and trash the teachers!
Read yourselves here, flipping unbelievable.. look at what went up and what went down. .
FY18 Budget
Miller I have to hand it to you , your history doesn't change.

Now how about you and Healy tell us how this school lunch program got so bad ? This you can't blame on Dayle Dorion. So who are these two jackasses  gonna throw under the bus now?

 Sadly more people are without an income and will struggle while our administration gets raises and acts like nothing happen. I'm sorry but Gail Healy deserves no respect or recognition when it comes off the backs of those who need jobs. PERIOD. 

 Also what was not mentioned was lunch was going up .10 cents.

Pioneer Valley Regional School, which has had to contend with some fiscal, morale and staffing difficulties this past year, seems to have ended the year with some success.
Changes in staffing in the food service operation will start cutting into its $220,000 deficit, discovered unexpectedly this year. The changes are expected to save the district $46,248 in its first year and $77,076 in the second 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. We are sure it was a difficult move for Healy to make, but it’s her job to make her program live within its means.
This plan came after parents and others objected to an earlier plan to consolidate food preparation at Pioneer Valley Regional School. By not filling the two positions and shifting roles of those who remain, Healy said the new plan will actually save the district more money than an earlier one proposed in April.
The main goal is to reduce the school lunch fund deficit, which topped $201,000 last year and startled the auditors, 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.

By additional consolidation before the 2018-2019 school year, Healy expects to save an additional $30,829 the second year.
When Pioneer Cafeteria Manager Sue Wood retires after next school year, her position will be eliminated. Instead, the district will seek a district-wide cafeteria manager who will be responsible for tasks like food bidding, filing state reports and ordering food through the Department of Defense’s Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program.
“We’re trying to save money by cutting down who does all these things,” Healy said.
Next school year, one Pioneer cafeteria helper, who assists with food preparation, serving and cleanup, 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.
While some of the changes won’t be welcome by everyone — especially those directly affected — they were tough but necessary changes to start the process of returning the food service to fiscal health at a cost taxpayer’s can afford. Healy and her team should be commended for their effort

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.

Time to connect the dots

Yes, lets us think outside the box and connect the dots. stay on your toes people cause your about to be scammed.
As we ALL know Young is worthless and is a HUGE supporter of Miller, and because of this she will grab a hold of him like a leech to push for her boyfriend the charter school he wants to create.Remember this name John Graziano.
Reminder:
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. Hmmmmm coincidence??? Doubtful.  
Also according to Templeton he is not a good Principal and does not play well .. hmm remind you of anyone ? A snake and a viper. His sudden departure was leave or be fired and the public knows deal. 
Nothing good can come out of this for Warwick and its people. Its already clear she cannot control a budget and Templeton is still crawling out from the rubble that we will crawl from if she is not removed. Miller has alienated teachers, and parents to the point they quit or refuse to send their children to PVRS , not to mention she is a known liar and has proven this over and over with newspaper ads alone. As for Young , I would not trust him to thread a needle. 
Be alert and be wise Warwick and the rest of the School committee, You have chosen many wrong paths in these last two years , this will be a fatal flaw you will not recover from and please do your homework this time so we do not have to do it for you . 

As public school enrollments shrink in Franklin County, some education leaders are thinking outside the box for alternatives to closing schools to balance the financial books.
A recent example has emerged in Warwick, where the 18-year-old Warwick Community School, built to house about 150 pupils, was down to an enrollment of 57 this past year.
This summer, David Young, a member of the Pioneer Valley Regional School Committee from Warwick, has suggested exploring conversion of the public elementary school into a semi-autonomous Horace Mann Charter School.
The chief advantage, beyond the freedom to innovate more: students from outside the district might bring $10,000 or more in tuition payments from their sending districts, about twice the amount a traditional public school receives through the Choice program.
The state created the Horace Mann charter schools in 1997 as a cross between a standard district school and a more typical “commonwealth charter school” like the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School in Hampshire County or the Four Rivers Charter Public School in Greenfield, which have no affiliation with the local public school systems.

A Horace Mann school must be approved by the local school committee and teachers union and get its money funneled through the local school committee, but is governed by an independent board of trustees with more freedom to innovate in its programs and more flexible staffing rules.
Young said his “motivation is the revenue side of the equation,” believing the switch could put Warwick Community School on a more financially sustainable path.
At the start of the 2016-2017 school year, Warwick Community School had 57 students, of whom 23 came into the district through Choice. Whereas the district receives about $5,000 per Choice student, he explained, it could get perhaps double or more under Horace Mann.
For example, according to data updated in May by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Athol-Royalston Regional School District pays $11,169 per charter school student, and the Ralph C. Mahar Regional School District pays $13,798.
Young said he thinks Warwick Community School would have a good chance of winning state education department approval because it’s a Level I MCAS school and has a “handsome campus” and “great staff.”
There is often money available to support planning and the first two years of operation at a Horace Mann charter, as well.
Local funding would continue to come through the school district, in accordance with an agreement the district would reach with the Horace Mann school, which Young said would include providing lunch from Pioneer Regional School, as is done currently, and providing transportation. The school could also apply for private grants and receive individual contributions independent of state and local funding.
Of course, the potential financial success of the Warwick school and academic success of the students it would attract from outside the district would come at a price — to sending districts — which has always clouded the feelings about charter schools locally.
This may not be the solution, ultimately, but as Pioneer Superintendent Ruth Miller has said, “we have to start thinking about doing things differently.” She is right.
For now there’s lots to research and consider, but the prospect sounds exciting, especially if the change creates the opportunity for making the already attractive school more successful — academically and financially.