>>Valley Patriot>>
|
Al
Perry Attacks Dr. Ormsby and Slurs The North Andover
Taxpayers Association (The Unexpurgated Version)
and Ormsby’s Response
PREFACE: The
following speech, attacking School Committee Member
Charles Ormsby and slurring the North Andover Taxpayers
Association, was presented 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. It was preceded by an extended commentary 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.
Mr. Perry’s attack, in standard font below, was
transcribed directly from a videotape of the meeting. Inserted
comments [In square brackets and in red font] are Dr.
Ormsby’s response.
Mr. Perry: … I want to get a few things off my chest
too. There have been some major misconceptions that have
cast some really dark shadows over how this School
Committee does its business. According to our handbook, a
School Committee person … our job is to advocate for
the schools and to advocate for our children. [This is
false. Policy 6103: LEGAL STATUS reads, “The School
Committee of North Andover is responsible to the people
of the Town of North Andover and to the State Board of
Education for the conduct of the school system.” We
are elected by the voters of North Andover to oversee the
operation of the public schools. This means that we are
responsible to them -- and especially the children -- for
ensuring that we maximize the educational opportunities
we provide, 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. We
are not charged with being advocates for one part of the
community at the expense of other members of the
community. It is just this “we versus them”
attitude that has divided North Andover and which Mr.
Perry epitomizes.] This is what our School Committee
tried to do when we tried to put out that
“level services budget.”
I need to review some of the recent events that have
taken place along the way to this $2.75 million in budget
cuts. This committee worked very, very hard and they
worked two times a week for months trying to go over what
the budget was going to be before the town meeting. This
committee opened up the budget. We went line-by-line. We
had direct conversations with our administrators. Each
one of the committee members had a chance to make
suggestions. And we voted on those suggestions and the
cuts that we eventually made, one-by-one, with everybody
having a chance to vote on however they felt that cut
needed to be. Anybody who says that we didn’t have a
clear budget, or a budget that they could understand, was
not paying attention to the process. [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 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 one of
these cuts was openly discussed, and reviewed by our
administrators several times. [Mr. Perry
dodges the real issue: the projected impacts are
exaggerated precisely because it is in the interest of
the school department, 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 gonna (sic) receive
for monies. The people in North Andover were left with
the impression that night that there was going to be
additional monies to save some teachers [He should
have said “monies or alternative cuts”] and that the schools
would be fine. [I never said we’d 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 of The Valley
Patriot on-line at www.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.]
They did vote down the TBB budget as there was an
impression left that the School Committee could go back
to work and we could still save plenty of teachers. Well,
this information was inaccurate and it was disingenuous
at best.
Tommy Duggan asked Chuck Ormsby that night – he got
up there and asked if Chuck’s plan about saving
teachers – the no teacher cut list that Chuck put
out – could be implemented and save teachers. And
Chuck, Chuck responded to Tommy, “Yes, that plan can
work.” [With some minor
exceptions, it could have.]
Well, everyone at that meeting believed that we, as a
committee, after this vote was all over, could come back,
we could implement Chuck’s plan, and that we would
be all right. [There you go again! You
know I never said that.]
Well, we aren’t all right. The reason that we are
not all right is because this plan that was left out
there with the impression, and I’ve got a lot of
e-mails saying we need to get back to having a School
Committee meeting and please let’s talk about
Chuck’s plan so we can implement these changes that
were discussed at the Town Meeting. Well, these monies
were already in place? No, they are not available. [Al seems
to be confused. My plan was to save classroom teachers
based on some extra revenues/savings and alternative
cuts. These alternative cuts are painful, but they are
less painful than cutting classroom teachers. Why does
Mr. Perry have such difficulty with this concept? Mr.
Perry is intent on twisting the facts. For the most part,
it wasn’t “monies in place,” it was
“alternative cuts” that were available to us.
Any misunderstanding by the public was caused by the fact
that all the energies of the School Committee and TUFF
were devoted to making the case for trash fees by
sticking to the story that, if the trash fees didn’t
pass, 28 teachers would be cut.]
I just want to go down through some of the list here
(Chuck’s revenue/savings and alternative cut list)
and, you know, review some of the things because
they’re just not stuff that we can bring back.
There was $380 thousand dollars (to be shifted from the
municipal budget to the school department), and Chuck
made a proposal in front of the Town Meeting – and I
appreciate the fact that he did – the only problem
was he needed to tell everybody at town meeting that this
thing had a past. Otherwise the presentation that he made
to get these teachers back in place was not going to
work. He needed to go to some of his friends and say,
“Hey, this is something we need your support on. We
need to be able to split some of the pain with the town
side.” Well, the $380,000 did not come. Its
not coming and therefore we saved no teachers on that
amount. [The issue was sharing the needed
budget 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 this amendment.
Why not? Even Boy Scouts know you need a Plan B!]
The next amount on the thing was the additional Chapter
70 funding. We did get $130,000 of that extra money, but
that was money that had been processed and talked about
and we had counted on having that in, and it did save
some teachers there. That $130,000 was a blessing.
[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, 3 teachers were saved.]
We talked about grants and Chuck wanted to take
$70,000-plus of grant money. Well, we can’t do that.
It is illegal to move the grant money so there was no
money saved on that one. [When it
was pointed out that this spending could not be used to
save teaching positions, it was immediately withdrawn
from the plan. I intend on being perfect in my next
life.]
The health costs – Barbara just talked about it, but
I need to talk about it to. The only way that health
costs can work – and I don’t know, and Chuck
doesn’t know, and no-one on this committee knows
because we haven’t been told concretely if there are
savings. We’ve lost over 40 positions in the two
rounds of cuts that we have had. It makes sense that
there are going to be health cost savings somewhere, but
the only way those savings can ever be implemented is for
town meeting to be arranged by our selectmen and our
Finance Committee. Those things have to be done. We just
can’t go out and say, “Please, can we have our
health savings.” It doesn’t work that way. And
the way it is, we’re going to get no savings on that
this year unless there is a Special Town Meeting. And
that is the only way that can work.
[Amazingly, Mr. Perry was so
uninterested in realizing whatever health insurance
savings might exist, that he and the administration took
over a 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, this information was
only sent after I made repeated 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 benefits 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, we awarded most of the affected
employees health insurance benefits through September 30th!
… three months after they are no longer employed
even though employment is required for eligibility! I
have advocated correcting this to save the associated
costs, but Mr. Perry and the administration have shown
little interest. The other factor reducing savings is our
liability for paying unemployment benefits. Since we laid
off only 8 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.]
What about the assistant principal at the North Andover
Middle School? Chuck has advocated several times to cut
that. Well, we voted 4 to 1 to keep it. We’ve heard
all the stories why. All I need to hear is,
“It’s a safety issue.” I heard all the
other issues out there, but I’ve got 1200 –
1300 kids going to the middle school and if they tell me,
as an administrator, that it’s a huge safety issue,
I don’t think I need to go too much further than
that, because safety is very, very important to all of
our kids with have a chance (sic) to go to school. [If they
don’t support my plan for alternative cuts, the plan
can’t save teachers. Their lack of support for this
cut cost our students two 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.]
I’ve heard about the Assistant Superintendent. We
got a $31 million budget, and I just can’t imagine
running this school system without an Assistant
Superintendent. I know we needed one darn well this year
when we lost our regular Superintendent and I don’t
know where we would be without him. [If they
don’t support my plan, it can’t save teachers.
Their lack of support for this cut cost our students 3
more teachers.]
We did go through the list of cuts, and in our second
round of cuts we took a secretary at central office, we
did do the paraprofessionals, we did do an additional
counselor, we did do some music teachers. We did some of
those cuts and they’ve already been worked on. Those
things were already done. [Yes, and
I only counted, correctly, the additional secretarial cut
that I suggested in the central office.]
The lunch attendants. I was going to talk about the 19 of
the 20 (being) part time and we don’t get any
savings, but Barbara already beat me to the punch. [Yes, the
lunch attendants are largely part time, 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 approximately $500,000 for teacher salaries. Up
to $100K of this – approximately 2.5 teachers –
would potentially come from these lunch program health
savings. Al, if you don’t want to use these funds to
restore teachers, don’t, but don’t fault me.]
The Hill Literacy thing. We voted not to fund this. Its
the very first cut we made in the second round of cuts.
And, there was only one guy that didn’t vote for
that cut, and that was Chuck. [Wrong
again. I was the only member of the committee to question
the value of the Hanson Hill Literacy program because it
was budgeted at $157K but had not previously been
presented nor justified to the Committee. In fact, it was
my complaint that led to a formal presentation of the
program. In the end, with the failure of the trash tax, I
supported eliminating the Hill program in favor of
retaining almost four teachers.]
Chuck, you saved no teacher positions over here but you
left the impression at town meeting that if we voted for
your position here, that we would save jobs.
[No teachers saved? So far, I count
11 or 12 teachers that were either saved or available to
be saved if the Committee had voted to do so. But Mr.
Perry did not list all the cuts I suggested.
He failed to mention elimination of the personnel
director, reductions in the athletic department, and
elimination of $55,000 in costs for our science pilot
program. Together these amount to 3 or 4 teaching
positions He failed to mentionnnnn. Had Town Meeting
voted for my plan to shift $380,000 of the deficit to the
municipal side, another 9 teaching positions would have
been preserved for a grand total of approximately 24
positions restored … not counting any health benefit
savings that might have been realized if they had been
vigorously pursued. Sounds like a no-trash-tax, teacher
restoration plan to me! Finally, an additional $336K in
salary differential was “discovered” after the
Special Town Meeting, based on the magnitude of the
salaries of retiring and resigning employees. This
translated to a saving of 9 additional positions. If even
half of these savings were predicted prior to the Special
Town Meeting, we could have eliminated the threat of 28
teacher cuts entirely!
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
alternatives to avoid them? I suspect your real wish is
that 1700 of those that showed up at the meeting had just
stayed home and read about the trash tax the next
morning.]
Tonight, Dr. O’Connor and the administrators told us
what the schools are going to look like this coming year.
The cuts did affect all students just as I said, but I
guess I was being vindictive in my telling everyone what
the truth was going to be. [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 unavoidable. By the
way, did you notice Mr. Perry’s use of the awkward
expression “what the truth was going to be”
instead of the more natural “what the` facts
are”? Maybe that is because Mr. Perry planned to
make sure “what the truth was going to be”!]
Some people accuse me of using scare tactics by telling,
again, what the truth is going to be in the schools,
which is sometimes what “the other side should be
telling.” [We’ve been trying to
tell the people the facts as fast as you try to distort
them.]
The North Andover Teacher Assassins should start worrying
about the quality of education in our, schools and start
thinking outside the box for ways to advocate for our
kids and not destroy our schools. [This is
an intentional slur by Mr. Perry against the North
Andover Taxpayers Association. An alert observer might
note that I am the taxpayer association member that is
tirelessly trying to save classroom teachers – some
assassin! 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 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 the
North Andover Taxpayers Association is the cause of our
educational woes … he must be drinking the Kool-Aid
again.]
After my name it says, Al Perry, School Committee person.
It doesn’t say any special interests groups.
It’s for the kids. And that’s what I’m
about. [I guess Mr. Perry is complaining
about my involvement in the taxpayers association. The
“taxpayers” of North Andover are not a special
interest. They encompass nearly all of the town’s
residents. They are a generous lot whose generosity has
been disparaged. They are fair-minded folks who now
distrust anything they hear from the School Committee. We
will need their trust next year, but we won’t have
it. This is the legacy of annual scare tactics.]
*Send your questions comments to ValleyPatriot@aol.com
The September, 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,
North Andover,
Methuen, Haverhill, Chelmsford, Georgetown, Groveland,
Boxford,
Lawrence, Dracut, Tewksbury, Hampton & Salisbury
Beach, and Lowell.
|
Valley Patriot Archive
Prior columns by TomDuggan
Prior Lead Stories
Prior Editorials
So Many Questions!
Prior Columns by Hanna
|
