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Perry's Sneak
Attack and Ormsby's Response
Response by Dr. Chuck Ormsby, North
Andover School Committee
08/10/06
 PREFACE:
The following speech, attacking North Andover School
Committee Member Charles Ormsby, was delivered at the
August 8th meeting of the North
Andover School Committee by its Chairman Al Perry. It was
delivered without the courtesy of any warning as to Mr.
Perry’s criticisms or accusations (a tactic he has
used previously). It was preceded by a comment by member
Barbara Whidden that Ormsby had falsely indicated to
parents and community members that resources were
available to save teaching positions. The speech was
followed by several members of the audience making
similar complaints – including one that noted that
Ormsby was a founding member of the North Andover
Taxpayers Association (which opposed the recent attempt
to impose trash fees) and that, therefore, it was
inappropriate for him to be a member of the School
Committee and called on him to resign. For a brief
moment, it must have seemed like a good idea.
The transcript was taken directly from Mr. Perry’s
handwritten notes, which he did deviate from slightly
while delivering the speech. In standard text below, is a
verbatim copy of Mr. Perry’s written speech, which,
under the freedom of information act is considered public
record.
Inserted
comments [In bold text] are
Dr. Ormsby’s response. In recent days Mr. Perry, so
embarassed by the disclosure of his hand written notes
attacking Ormsby has demanded that www.valleypatriot.com remove this page from our
website. Apparently Mr. Perry only feels comefortable
making personal attacks against Dr. Ormsby when he is in
front of a rabid crowd of teacher layoff-supporters but
not so comefortable when the public at large reads his
own words when the hype dies down. (Tom
Duggan, Editor, The Valey Patriot)
Mr. Perry: I want to get a
few things off my chest. There are major misconceptions
that have cast dark shadows on how this school committee
does business. As a school committee person, our job is
to advocate for the schools, and our children.
[I disagree. We are elected by the voters of North
Andover to oversee the operation of the public schools.
This means that we are responsible for ensuring that we
maximize the educational opportunities we provide our
students given the resources
provided by the taxpayers. In the process, we owe the
taxpayers and voters an honest
assessment of the impact of funding levels on the
opportunities we are able to provide.] That is what
our committee tried to do when we supported a “level
services budget.”
I need to review some of the recent events that have
taken place along the way to our 2.75 million dollar
cuts. This committee met 2 times a week for months
leading up to this meeting. This committee opened the
budget process to be as transparent, and direct about
what was being spent how when, and where the cuts were
recommended line-by-line from all five members, and voted
on individually. People who say they couldn’t
understand our budget, or needs simply were not
paying attention. [It is generally conceded by those
of all political stripes that understanding our school
budget is very difficult and that difficulty is
exacerbated by both the budget’s complex structure
and the often nonsensical – and sometimes illegal
– assignment of expenses across budget line items.
The problem is so bad we have hired an accounting firm to
try to straighten things out. You can pay a lot of
attention and still be very confused.] The impact of
each cut was openly discussed, and reviewed by our
administration.
[Mr. Perry dodges the real issue: the projected
impacts are exaggerated precisely because it is in the
interest of any organization, when it is in a budget
battle, to overstate the pain and suffering which will
occur if more money is not forthcoming. My sin was in
trying to avoid this tendency and give the voters of
North Andover an honest assessment of the best we can do
given any particular funding level.]
The town meeting on July 10th closed the doors
on what the schools could receive. The people of North
Andover were left with the impression there was another
plan to save teachers [True.] and our schools
would be fine. [This was not my position. In fact, I
have published articles indicating that our schools are
in a budget crisis – E.g., “The Four Horsemen
of the Apocalypse”, February 2006 issue on-line at valleypatriot.com. My plan to save classroom
teachers required other cuts that are painful. The key is
that my suggested cuts are less painful than the teacher
cuts advertised by the administration and other members
of the school committee. My suggested cuts don’t
raise class sizes, don’t cut course options,
don’t eliminate music or the arts, etc. In short,
they aren’t nearly as scary and therefore are less
suitable to waging a budget battle. I guess that is where
I missed the “advocacy” bandwagon.]
This was inaccurate and disingenuous at best. Tom
Duggan asked Chuck Ormsby if he had a plan that would
save all of the teachers planned cuts, and Chuck
responded, “Yes, I do.” [I did. Nothing
disingenuous here.] Everyone at that meeting believed
there was no need to vote for Chuck’s Amendment,
because the monies were already in place. [Mr. Perry
is intent on twisting the facts. For the most part, it
wasn’t “monies in place” it was
“alternative cuts” that were in place. Any
misunderstanding by the public was caused by the fact
that all the energies of the school committee, the
FINCOM, and TUFF were devoted to making the case for
trash fees by sticking to the story that 28 teachers
would be cut if the trash fees didn’t pass.] Wrong!
Unfair! Inaccurate! And insincere. [We’ll let the
reader make his or her own judgments about who these
epithets describe.]
Let’s look at Chuck’s cut list.
Chuck forgot to inform the town meeting we needed to pass
his amendment to add $380K to our side of the budget. [The
issue was sharing the additional cuts in equal proportion
with the municipal side, and that is the case I made as
forcefully as I knew how. It should be noted that no
other member of the school committee bothered to speak in
favor of the amendment. Why not?] It failed and
result 0 teachers were saved.
Additional Chapter 70 funding was already counted except
for $130,000 plus that town meeting approved. 0 teachers
saved. [So you are saying that I was correct about the
$130K in extra Chapter 70 funding? By the way, the Cherry
Sheet showing that we would receive this extra funding
was issued on June 30th …
10 days BEFORE the Special Town Meeting. So Al, did you
reduce the cuts that were presented to Town Meeting based
on this extra funding OR did you just continue to
proclaim the cuts as if this extra funding wasn’t
coming? In any case, teachers saved: 3.]
Grants – (It is) illegal to use grant money to
save teachers – 0 teachers saved. [Only
approximately $75K of my original proposal depended on
grant payments. When it was pointed out that this
spending could not displace costs that would free up
budget resources for teaching positions, it was
immediately withdrawn from the plan. I intend on being
perfect in my next life.]
Health costs – we needed this to be part of his
amendment. The town meeting could have voted this as part
of his proposal. Now the Selectmen and FINCOM must
recommend this at a special town meeting and that does
not look likely. 0 teachers saved.
[This could not have been included in the amendment
because the first year benefit savings from eliminated
positions was not known. Amazingly, Mr. Perry is so
interested in realizing whatever savings might exist that
he and the Administration took an entire month
after the Special Town meeting to provide the town a list
of retirements, resignations, and position cuts
sufficient to determine what benefit savings could be
expected. In fact it was only sent after I made numerous
requests. If this had been done promptly, a
non-controversial town meeting could be called and funds
transferred from the employee benefits account to both
the school and municipal budgets in time for avoiding
additional teacher cuts. Since the magnitude of savings
is bound to be an issue, let me address it now. Overall,
we have eliminated nearly 40 positions. Probably 30 or so
took health insurance. At a cost of roughly $10,000 each,
this could have been worth up to $300K. Unfortunately, it
will not amount to nearly that if it amounts to anything
at all. Why? Because, when we have resignations or we cut
positions effective June 30th, most of the affected
employees were given health insurance benefits through
September 30th! … three
months after they were no longer employed even though
they were ineligible for benefits! I
have advocated correcting this to save the associated
revenue, but Mr. Perry and the administration continue to
let the benefits be dispensed. The other factor reducing
savings is our liability for paying unemployment
benefits. Since we only laid off 8 or so employees ---
possibly fewer, now that we have restored some teaching
positions – I expected that very few employees would
qualify for unemployment benefits. While the jury is
still out on this, there is some possibility that even
employees who voluntarily resigned
their positions will be able to collect unemployment.
Does this make sense to anyone? Despite this insanity, I
still hold out hope that some benefit savings will
materialize, despite our incredible generosity. If they
do, they will appear too late to save teachers for
September … thanks to the lack of vigorous pursuit.]
(Eliminate the) Assistant Principal at NAMS –
4-1 defeat by SC – Administrators call this a major
safety issue – 0 teachers saved. [If they
don’t support my plan, it won’t save teachers.
Their lack of support cost our students 2 teachers. Note
regarding safety: our Middle School is not an inner city
school and it is located within ¼ mile of our police
station. Enough said.]
(Eliminate the) Assistant Superintendent – who
will do the work for 31 million dollar company? 4-1 vote
against -- 0 teachers saved. [If they don’t
support my plan, it won’t save teachers. Their lack
of support cost our students 3 teachers.]
(Eliminate the) Secretary at central office,
paraprofessionals, NAMS adjustment counselor, music
teacher – all done in round 2 of cuts. [Yup, and
these saved over 3 teacher positions.]
(Health care savings for) Lunch attendants – 19
of 20 are already part time – savings 0 [Yes they
are, but healthcare savings elsewhere in the lunch
program have in fact been realized based on information
provided at the meeting. The committee refused to
translate these to teaching positions by refusing to
discuss or vote on my motion to restore between $500K and
$600K for teacher salaries. Up to $100K of this –
over 2 teachers – would potentially come from lunch
program health savings offset by charging for utilities.
If you don’t want to use these funds to restore
teachers, don’t, but don’t fault me.]
(Eliminate the) Hill Literacy (Initiative) –
Chuck voted against this cut. Others vote 4-1 [Wrong
again. I was the first to question the value of the
Hanson Hill Literacy program because it was budgeted at
$157K but never presented or
justified to the Committee. My complaint led to a
presentation of the program that, in fact, I thought was
very positive. In the end, with the failure of the trash
fee initiative, I supported eliminating the Hill program
in favor of retaining almost 4 teachers. Teachers saved:
4.]
Chuck saved no teachers [Only if you ignore all of the
facts. So far, I count 16 or 17 that were either saved or
available to be saved if the
Committee had voted to do so … and that is not
counting healthcare savings that might materialize later.
But, we’re not done yet! An additional $336K in
salary differential emerged based on the magnitude of the
salaries of retiring and resigning employees. This
translated to a saving of 9 additional positions. Add
these 9 to the 16 or 17 previously listed` and you get 25
- 26 of the 28 cuts threatened at Town Meeting. Sounds
like a no-trash-fee teacher restoration plan to me! Now,
here is a question for Al: Do you think the voters at the
Special Town Meeting should have been made aware of ALL
of these potential restorations? Or do you think it
enhanced our credibility to just detail the 28 teacher
cuts that we advertised and declare we had no chance of
avoiding them? I suspect your real wish is that 1700 of
those that showed up had just stayed home and read about
the trash fee the next morning.] but still his
followers are crying for us to reconcile, and fix these
teacher layoffs. [That’s right. Why don’t
you do it?]
Tonight Dr. O’Connor and the Administration have
told us what the schools will look like in 2006-7. The
cuts did effect (sic) all students, but I guess I was
vindictive in my telling everyone what was going to
happen if the trash fee did not pass.
[No, you were vindictive in turning a blind eye to
potential mechanisms for saving teaching positions so you
could claim that your projected cuts were required.]
My scare tactics as some accuse me of using are
nothing more than the truth, which is something the other
side should start telling. [We’ve been trying to
correct the record as fast as you try to distort it.]
The North Andover Teacher Assissins (sic) [I think
he means the Taxpayers Association] should start
worrying about the quality of our schools [Do you mean
educational opportunities?], and start thinking
outside the box for ways to advocate for our schools
[Do you mean educational opportunities?], not to
destroy them. [The main destroyers of our
student’s educational opportunities are, in order of
importance: The public school monopoly that ensures that
our children will not benefit from good old American
competition, The teachers union monopoly on labor that
ensures that our children will not benefit from employees
competing to provide them services, and the Special
Education lobby that relegates 88% of our students to the
back of the bus. If Al Perry thinks that Chuck Ormsby,
Ted Tripp, or NATA are the cause of our educational woes
… he must be drinking the Kool-Aid again.]
Tom Duggan is the president of Valley
Patriot, Inc., is a former member of the Lawrence School
Committee, and hosts the Paying Attention! Radio Program
on WCAP, 980AM, every Saturday afternoon from noon-2pm.
You can email your comments to Tdugjr@aol.com
*Send your questions comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com
The August, 2006 Edition
of the Valley Patriot
The Valley Patriot is a Monthly
Publication.
All Contents (C) 2006, Valley Patriot, Inc.
We publish 9,000 newspapers and distribute in Andover,
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Valley Patriot Archive
Prior columns by TomDuggan
Prior Columns by Dr. Chuck
Prior Lead Stories
Councilor Opposes HOme
for Disabled Child
North
Andover School Committee
Insists on Laying off Teachers
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