School Meeting - June 8th

Last night I attended the meeting at Town Hall regarding the AREA agreement.


Miscellaneous information and my thoughts from the meeting......

SAU members told Jim three times that it was his job to tell the people of Croydon what they want and what is best for them. Jim responded that we are representatives, not kings. Our job is to do what the people want, not to tell them what they want. The board members either did not understand what Jim was saying or they didn't care. This incident brings to mind a quote:

"The people do not know what they want; they do not know what is the best for them." - Benito Mussolini

I must remind my readers of the Delphi Technique. Delphi is a technique used by educrats to lead the audience into what the educrats want and away from what you want.

Last year a survey of the people of Croydon told the school board by a margin of over two to one that they want choice. Last night's meeting orchestrated by the SAU and not the Croydon School Board seemed intent on informing Croydon that freedom from the Newport monopoly agreement will be nearly impossible and they will do everything in their power to ensure that school choice will never become an option.

The first step is to establish a group to investigate the feasibility of leaving the AREA agreement with Newport. Thanks to the ethically questionable acts of the legislators and educrats the laws are such that you can't just leave the agreement once the contract expires. If the committee recommends leaving the AREA agreement, the town will get to vote on whether to leave the AREA agreement. Once this vote passes, the state must approve the dissolution of the agreement.

This is the twisted world of public education. In a sane world the town would vote at the end of a contract and abide by that vote. The decision would not rest in the hands of some committee or the department of education. Blatant obstructionism at its finest.

When the department of ed representative mentioned the "Best interest of the child" and "Manifest educational hardship", a Newport board member had the gall to suggest that Croydon should remain bound to pay the tuition of any students removed from Newport through these perfectly legal processes. The Croydon crowd groaned and even those who oppose choice were not happy with that comment. I hope my readers can see the greed inherent in such a statement; they simply want our money and don't care about the parents or the taxpayers.

At the meeting Jim Vezina said Croydon was getting a deal on Newport tuition because it is based on the prior years' budget. He also said our tuition is going up a year later because of the raises given at Newport schools. The tax warrant in Newport was not supposed to impact the taxpayers and therefore should not impact Croydon tuition. He stated that the budget is going up 600,000 because of the wage increases but 10 teachers were to be cut to offset those wage increases. So Newport is not going to feel the impact of the wage increases but Croydon is? Either someone is mistaken or Croydon is getting screwed.

Cathy
Spelling and grammar errors as well as typos are left as an exercise for my readers.