Hopefully along the breakout group 'Drugs in Westford' was some conversation on the supression of information from the community. I think its sad that the 'Principal Antonelli and his 'sweep it under the rug broom' jokes' are the talk of bar room water cooler conversations around town...and information not even being shared with the Chair of the School Committee who needs to do further reseach and then isnt told the truth!
Andrew, If I can give you proof that more than one student was found with drugs at the WA Dog raid would you be willing to follow this as a story, to me it seems a story but at the same time I wonder why there isnt MORE outcry instead of jokes about how information is so hard to come by on the scope of this issue in our schools. If the principal can berate an older resident at School Council for merely asking for further information it makes me wonder about other issues and keeping us informed as well

Tony, if you can give proof that is on the record that I can verify and can be obtained in an ethical and legal fashion, then absolutely.

Tony, also, just to reiterate the story and build on your first sentence, the entire retreat was open to the public. I floated around, so I didn't hear it all, but many parts of it I heard sounded similar to the presentation at Nab Lake CC.

I wrote the article mentioned & this peice partly proves my point.

The initial shortfall was 3.14 million. But Jodi Ross (who, save the recent step issue does a good job) has the habit of underestimating. Estimating is extremely difficult, there are just many things you can't predict. It is better to underestimate revenues than overestimate so she errs on the side of caution. The fact that she is consistently under or over in the right places is another testimony to how good she is at her job.

That said, the 3.14 Million shortfall, I went through every document, every budget detail, every message w/out skipping a line. While I admit she is far more skilled with budgets than I am I did not see the 3.14 million shortfall. Now apparently it has dropped to 2.4 million. It dropped almost a million dollars in a matter of weeks. Her projections are two years in advance, given her habit of estimating revenues under rather than over & her accuracy in two years we probably would not be short at all. That is not a jab at Jodi, two years is not easy to estimate.

I have looked all over for these sped mandates, I cannot find them. I've emailed Mr. Olsen about them and got no response. I made a spreadsheet of comparable schools sped population. The only criteria was +/- 30 teachers Although I through the bottom two in just for giggles.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/87006953/Comparable%20Westford%20Sped%20Final.xlsx

According to this link sped kids cost 2x more to teach than non sped

http://westford.patch.com/articles/school-committee-discusses-needs-with-principals

So there is another area we should be saving substantial amounts of money. Look at our sped population vs. other towns. Where is all that money? There can’t be that many kids costing $200k. The couple columns on the excel sheet you may not understand is mode teacher age (which age bracket of teachers has the most) If it was within 1 teacher I included the other bracket as well. The last column is enrollment for next year, whether it is up or down. -5 means next years enrollment is 5 less kids. When you look at the data, Westford shouldn’t be short money, & we should be saving quite a bit on sped. I included Westford each year from 2008 and you can see that they were losing sped teachers & replacing them with regular ones. As you look you will see that Westford isn’t running silly child/teacher ratios, our sped population is substantially lower than comparable towns. Where is the money?

So, why was the sped ratio allowed to drop that low, and is that the reason we need to hire sped teachers now?

When we had the stimulus money, why were sped teachers not hired?

Where are the sped mandates?

Steps were budgeted for this year and supposedly put in in escrow, what is happening to that now?

Looking at these similarly staffed and paid towns (many of them better) I still fail to see the problem.

Enough with 20 year comparisons. 20 years ago matters little. I contend that Westford’s financial situation was made to look as bleak as possible in order to get the unions to agree to what the town wanted. They have been using less & less free cash to balance the budget
Look at all the graphs posted in this document.

http://westfordma.gov/pages/government/towndepartments/westfordma_townmanager/documents/budgets/fy13/StateofTown_ATM3-24-12.pdf

Excise tax is up, less free cash is needed to balance the budget. That free cash should just be given to town employees expecting that income. They just don’t want to do it. Teachers steps aren’t even incluced.

I would also like to know how much steps would have cost each of the town unions that agreed to the 0% cola and no steps?

There steps are given over a much shorter period of time, so I’d bet that many of them are already at or very close to top pay. But the town does not want to give that information out, people need to be asking why. They don’t want to use free cash to balance the budget as it will lower their credit rating, perhaps for the $35million in new spending the capital committee has lined up. No unnecessary spending should be spent except towards the debt. And for god’s sake get the elevator or some other solution in the Abot school it’s going on 23 years now.

Why are we borrowing money? Why are we hiring teachers when we can’t pay the current ones? The town has been looking at this as a dollars and cents issue, when its much larger and complex than that. The damage you’ve caused with teacher morale teacher appreciation and the fact that Super Olsen is now in the position of trying to lead a group of people who don’t respect him, don’t feel appreciated by him or the town is going to last a lot longer than the 2014 apocalyptic debt that is vanishing before our very eyes. You want to save money and start to repair your relationship with your teachers, Olsen is very highly paid with standard but unnecessary perks. The teachers couldn’t get their standard steps, how can the town afford to pay an SI who has lost all the respect of those he is supposed to lead. He didn’t stand up for teachers, he fought tooth and nail against them

So the SI is simply supposed to bow to the union? Is that his job?

He is certainly supposed to abide by the stipulations teachers contract

His job is to play mediator between s.c and the schools, and overall run the schools which apparently the s.c. thinks he is doings brilliantly, yet he has lost all his teachers respect. He went along with a direct breach of contract with the s.c. Because "we are broke" yet he is offered his bonuses. Why is he offered his Bonus, shouldn't he just be told we dont have the money, sorry. Or how about we aren't paying for your gas anymore. The sc wouldn't breach his contract on a dare, but with teachers it was a no brainier,

And now we have WA Principal who reads lines of the teacher contract out of context, writes up his loyal teachers burning bridges of goodwill and violating again the contract in regard to personal day requirements. Does he understand his staff is losing support for him as well. Seems the sweep it under the rug broom will get put in the closet for the write up staff members pen!
Watch out this guy is acting like a real broken arrow

Article X's 'all staff must attend professional development days' and then writing up those who needed to take a PERSONAL DAY on Tue June 19th. Need to attend does NOT mean cant take a personal day or sick day, it means cant be doing something else on this work day! Duh!!
Half dozen -dozen WA teachers supposedly written up with formal letters placed in their files from JA because he doesnt understand himself the contract he is obligated to follow for his teachers. It might have only been 12 WA teachers out of 150 written up but many/most/all are talking about this and not in a way that is sympathetic with the Principal after all that has transpired this year. Well when the 'only do what I am required to do; mentality is so present at WA next year he cant feel like he did everything possible to mend fences and wounds.
Andrew, why dont you contact him and see what he has to say on this? Does take the focus off of drugs in school for a bit though

Principal Antonelli should read article VII again:

http://westfordk12.us/pages/hrm/contract.pdf

The language above only stipulates personal dsys need approval WHEN they extend a
Vacation or holiday otherwise no language on requirement of approval on all other days' so you are telling me if someone is I'll they can't take a sick day because the PD is mandatory ? Come on now..

Andrew. I was wondering if any of tony's statements had been followed through on? Specifically, in response to the personal day issues. Have you contacted any admin to discuss it with them?

Andrew,
From what I have heard 'though the grapevine' letters were placed in teachers mailboxes at the end of the day Wed (the last day of the year) as staff checked their box one last time for the summer, talk about a way to thank many staff members for making it through a tough year with all the contract matters by writing them up and not have the decency to let people know of what would happen before hand OR speaking with them personally Wed. A cold letter in the box at the end of the last day of the year (and this isnt just a few teachers mind you).
He (JA) has now set himself up for a rough start to next year as word of this traveled fast teacher to teacher at WA, Before this the building principal manages to 'stay out' of the nastyness this year but really stuck his foot in it at the last possible moment. Andrew, you should see how many other WPS principals treated the issue of teacher personal days in Tue with formal letters in their files as well, as I have not heard of any myself...

I heard Antonelli was the only one writing up staff members on the last day of the year for needing to take an entitled personal day the last week of the year, what goes around comes around

The contract language allows for it, end of story. Any such action as mentioned by the SC would result in Unfair Labor Practice charges being filed against the town

I've been informed of a user impersonating another person here on this thread, and upon further investigation, I have suspended that user account.

User accounts created solely to impersonate other individuals related to a current topic is strictly prohibited on Patch. If you see any instances of this, please let me know.

On that, all comments here must now be approved, if I see any further TOS violations, I will close comments to this article.

When will this ranting ever end? When will it ever end?

When the SC plays hard ball and terminates with prejudice those individuals that try to game the system. If a student tried the same logic to support transgression of the rules in the student handbook, the teachers would demand swift and severe punishment. What is good for the student needing discipline is also good for the immature and irresponsible teachers and other employees of the WPS.

Except that contract law doesn't support the analogy

Work for the town or work for a union, what about working for the pupils? Just observing.

How is it extending your vacation if you have another professional development day the following day? The last day of school for kids is not the last day of school for teachers. There is a reason Olsen threatened to deny anyone requesting that day off backed off. He probably consulted an attorney and realized there was nothing he could do.
The following is conjecture, but there is actually a document (the contract) that gets circulated and signed by the staff. All this voting and ratification is just part of the process. Until they have signed that document which may or may not have happened yet by that point ( I really don't know) but until that happens, nothing is really official.

It's kind of a stupid and small point to be concerned with IMO. The SC played dirty with not paying the obligated steps the first couple days of the year, IMO because then they couldn't go back on them. A couple teachers skipped a useless professional development day (I'm familiar enough with them to make that call) Karma. I'm pretty sure they didn't violate anything. But if you know how stupid and useless Westford's PD days were you probably wouldn't care anyway.

To the above, if you only knew how much the teachers do for the kids. You seem like a reasonable person, look into it with an open mind and I think you'll start to see why this whole situation has left teachers feeling very demoralized.

"I suggest that various posters that associate Free Cash" visit the Dept. Of Local Services and read--The Free Cash available to Westford for FY13 allocation will not be certified by DLS until late August or early September."

I know exactly how it works.

The FY 2013 Budget was $98,689,073 of which $94,516,030 was for the operating budget. The school budget was allocated at $48,235,939 which includes $624,656 for Nashoba Tech. Free Cash to be applied at the Fall STM was estimated at $2,795,731."

07-09 was over 3 million, why was a it ok then?

"Cash Reserves will be underfunded by ($3,397,288) which would require ~6% increase in real estate taxes via a Prop 2 1/2 override. There are capital request of about $10 million which would require based on a 10 year bond issue ~2.5% debt exclusion. The average Westford taxpayer would be faced with an increase of ~8.5% or about $600/year."

Highly doubt it. Look at her past history of estimating two years in advance.

"The above numbers do not take into account Full Day Kindergarten which I have heard is estimated to cost around $800,000 for FY14 or an additional 1.2% for a total of $660/year without pay raises."

Yep, but saves the parents daycare money. But we have no money, how can we be introducing more services.

"BTW Have you heard of the economic problems facing Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and France?"

What of it. Have you see all the other surrounding towns in the same financial situation but manage to pay there teachers competitively? Did you look at the excel sheet I posted? Where is all that sped savings going? Where is all your Westford $ going?

"Do you understand credit rating and it's costs?
I am sure that a whole bunch of voters would opt to give free cash not to the employees, but back to it's original owners, the taxpayers, if it did not hurt the credit rating and raise costs again. There would be something truly remarkable and a true accomplishment if taxes were actually lowered for once."

It would go back to the people w/out kids. The people not using the facilities that take up half the budget. Complaints about your taxes are getting old. Plenty of people are getting screwed. Teachers are on that list now too but they will continue to be treated like the live in a bubble. It would probably be mind-blowing when some of that money went back to teachers, who are tax payers and living in the same world you are. THey get fired, they get laid off they average $66K a year, half the median income of Westford and average higher health insurance and retirement contributions.

http://www.massbudget.org/report_window.php?loc=Compensation_3_11.html

"*Where are the sped mandates?*
Fairly certain you can find these under federal and state law; however, since an IEP is an individualized plan, certain students may require more intensive or expensive interventions than others. Any outplaced students come out of our budget but wouldn't impact our staff-student ratios because they are off-campus. At $100k per year, those outplacements could disproportionately skew the "average" while not impacting the in-district ratios.

Please find them for me? I'm being sincere not sarcastic, sometimes it's hard to read the tone of a persons comments. I've looked everywhere I can think of, I've emailed Bill Olsen about it and gotten no response. I just want to see and read them. If you can find them, Brava to you and please send them my way.

Also, you might be interested in the excel sheet I posted. Towns with similar teacher and enrollment counts have 2 and 3 times as many sped students as we do. It's in the first couple comments under the main article. How can we have so many fewer SPED kids yet they are the burden we can't handle.

Alex,

I read the spreadsheet but you're using cost averages and numbers. SPED isn't about averages. A district may have 100 kids with severe anxiety and ADHD who need minor accommodations while another has 10 kids who are profoundly deaf, blind, or severely autistic. The 10 kids are exponentially more expensive to educate than the 100. The pubic schools have an obligation under IDEA to provide a free and appropriate public education to all students via an IEP or 504 plan.

If, through their own ineptitude or the nature/severity of a child's disability the home district is unable to provide said education, the district must pay to send said child to an out-of-district placement which can. That includes transportation and in some cases, in-home educational support services. Not all students require the same level of services to get them to the level mandated in IDEA. Some may require accomodations for preferential seating, modified homework, and test-taking support (reasonably inexpensive) while others require a special school and daily transportation to Boston or Southborough. That's why they call it an IEP - it's individualized to the needs of the child, and no two are exactly the same.

If there are some other mandates to which you are referring, I'm not sure either of us understand the question. ;)

By the by, I don't think of them as the "burden we can't handle". My son is autistic and on an IEP and I'd probably knock someone's tooth down their throat if they suggested he was less worthy of an education or a burden on me or anyone else.

Just to clarify. :)

It's the default fallback at budget time for Olsen to blame SPED. Ironically, he has an autistic grandson so one would think he'd be more sensitive when choosing his words, but old habits can be hard to break I guess.

We have a zillion and one overpaid un-mandated curriculum coordinators who effectively seem to serve to exist only to tie teacher's backs when it comes to pedagogy. Can't we get rid of a few of them instead?

Psst: http://idea.ed.gov/

"Alex,
I read the spreadsheet but you're using cost averages and numbers. SPED isn't about averages. A district may have 100 kids with severe anxiety and ADHD who need minor accommodations while another has 10 kids who are profoundly deaf, blind, or severely autistic. The 10 kids are exponentially more expensive to educate than the 100. The pubic schools have an obligation under IDEA to provide a free and appropriate public education to all students via an IEP or 504 plan."

What are you talking about?

I posted actual sped enrollment of schools, & actual # of sped teachers. It doesn't get any more concrete than that. W has way less sped kids, it's not even close.

Your 10 cost 100 theory is true but demonstrably not the case in W. The law of averages is called a law for a reason. You can know how much attention & $ the level of sped requires by correlating sped enrollment & sped teachers. The more sped kids & the more sped teachers per child, the more difficult and expensive to educate. W is way light on both counts.

There is no way around it W saves a TON of $ on Sped, both in # enrolled & level of sped required. Where is it?

I won't go deep into the "burden" comment. If you read through my posts you'll see I am pro sped. I have friends & family, close ones, who are Autistic & would do some teeth removal as well were people to slight them. I was referring to Olsen's blaming sped for budget problems. My spread sheet shows that what he is saying is untrue.

"We have a zillion and one overpaid un-mandated curriculum coordinators /// Can't we get rid of a few of them instead?"

I agree 100% Constantly buying new curriculum is a waste too. On many occasionsI've seen the W teachers doing that job anyway. Many other schools save huge money by paying teachers a stipend to do it. You're not paying the full time salary of another employee, the payroll taxes, or any of the benefits both retirement & insurance. This is an instance where the teachers, the ones actually teaching the curriculum, seeing the response, experiencing it all first hand…they should be the ones in charge of it. Nobody tells a mechanic what tools he can use b/c that would be stupid. He knows best, leave it to him.

I posted a while back @ helping my cousin correct homework & many of the answers on the test (grade 2) I would have gotten wrong, b/c they were worded so strangely. I sited specific examples in the post, search if you want to see it, I can't recall them at the moment. She often omits lessons b/c they are confusing or marks answers correct that technically aren't b/c she understands how the kid came up with that number & their thought process was right. I can't speak for all of W, but I've seen examples that are no different.

If you want to know why W has them it's b/c it's a status symbol, just like the # of Prof Devel. days. It's to maintain that elite image. If you are serious @ saving money status symbols have to go, they are costing you big.