THE WORLD READS WHITE PLAINS CITIZENETREPORTER — 8,324,077 VISITS IN ONE YEAR

WPCNR SCHOOL DAYS. News and Comment by John F. Bailey. May 19, 2015 UPDATED MAY 20, 2015:

There are 53 school districts in Westchester, Rockland and Putnam and every district except one opens polls early in the morning for people to vote before work.

Do you know the one who doesn’t?

White Plains NY USA—the excuse is it costs too much money to keep the polls open from 7 to 9 PM. This with a school budget of $205.8 Million up for approval today. I think the shortened hours is to hold down voter turnout. 

Well the strategy worked Tuesday again, if it is indeed a strategy.

The Tuesday vote totaled less than last year’s 1,100 votes, with 989 voting out of 31,000 registered voters. That is approximately 3% of eligible voters bothering to vote on the school budget.

I also learned last week that the $205.8 Million budget up includes a 2% raise across the board for 30 administrators…plus the district is hiring new teachers.  Again the budget has not been cut. It has been rolled over, and apparently Mr. and Mrs. and Ms. White Plains believe this is the way it should be, at least 4 out of 5 voters did yesterday.

The 2% raises for administrators  is a $4-3 Million payroll of administrators alone with an average salary of administrators being $145,000.

The district asked voters to approve their budget as they do every year because they said the budget is thoughtfully managed and makes the hard choices while retaining arts and music classes and sports programs and gives children a top education and the assessment scores that say it does not, are flawed. So they say.

One of those hard choices they made was to hire new teachers with the $2-1/2 million in new state aid money from Governor Cuomo and the legislature…money that may not be there next year and would require a 5% property tax increase to cover. But the voters felt this was O.K.

They reelected two incumbents, Rose Lovitch and Jim Hricay to the school board today, and a third newcomer,  Cayne Letizia a teacher in Valhalla. The other candidate for the   Michael Bellantoni a businessman with 614 votes finished behind Lovitch with 697 votes; Hricay with 677, and Letizia with 673.

The teacher, Cayne Letizia says he will look at the budget from a teacher’s point of view of what is necessary to do  to improve learning. The businessman, Michael Bellantoni says he thinks White Plains is a great school district and is not happy with the amount of testing done either, and promised to bring business practices to the district.

The two incumbents James Hricay and Rose Lovitch approved submitting this new budget.

But no matter that the budget is going up, as it does every year, the Board has to start asking the hard questions.

The five year plan drawn up by the district Financial Committee has the school budget hitting $231 Million by 2019-20 in 4 years if the current rate of spending is intact. This is the exact figure predicted by WPCNR projections about a month ago. The district is projecting deficits the next three years.

Fred Seiler, Assistant Superintendent for Business told this reporter he expects that will not be hit…but instead will only reach $223 Million by 2019-20, instead due to savings on wages and health insurance. We shall see.

But there appears to be no will to cut by this new Board of Education.The tax payers are doomed to pay any miscalculation in this  5 year outlook outlook.

But the real issue is how good is the education, not how much money is needed to keep this district going at its same size and meeting all its priorities.

 

You might consider the district attitude toward its test results on the Common Core Assessments. You might consider the assessment tests too long and inappropriate for grade level, which may be true or not.

But last week’s U.S. News Index of 100 Greatest High Schools gives every school district in the county that consider themselves “great school districts of excellence,”  including White Plains a difficult puzzle to explain.

In looking at the U.S. News index of great high schools released last week which  lists great high schools as schools with a huge preponderance of  white students, and pre-selected student bodies.

The only Westchester Schools that made the top 100 list were Blind Brook  # 73 and Rye at # 81—with the next closest being Yonkers Middle High School at  # 121.

Significantly this was based on Advanced Placement Test College Readiness Exams results.

How did White Plains High School Do?

White Plains placed # 1,280 in the national rankings, and # 134th in New York State. Rye for example finished 11th in New York State.

It is worth repeating: White Plains placed 1,280 in the national best high school rankings and 134th in New York State.

Significantly though, of  41% of White Plains high school students taking the Advanced Placement College Readiness Tests, only 32% passed, this is very poor compared to other districts where the average is well over 90% of those taking advanced placement readiness exams passed. 

How do White Plains educators explain this  abberation? This should be one of the Board of Education’s first questions when they take up matters with our latest new Free Agent Superintendent of Schools.

In math proficiency testing  White Plains students, only 76% passed as proficient and 24% not proficient, while in English Proficiency it was 90% passing with 10% not proficient.

I do not know as a parent how to interpret this. I think parents who have students in the White Plains system have to start believing what results say and asking for educators to explain a results like this. The Board of Education should.

But what do they say?

How can educators say that on advanced placements given to the best and the brightest students in the high school only 32% pass college readiness exams?

 

 

WPCNR MILESTONES. A Personal Remembrance By Geoffrey Thompson. May 17, 2015:

In the passing of Al DelBello, Westchester lost a true statesman and native son.

The loss of an individual of his stature is particularly difficult to accept because for so long he has been an omnipresent figure in the county.

While many people knew Al in his later years for his sage advice and encyclopedic knowledge of all things Westchester, he first came into the public eye as a young man some 50 years ago when he began his lengthy career in government and politics.  Al was something of a boy wonder when he burst upon the scene in his hometown of Yonkers.  He became the city’s youngest mayor and brought a youthful spirit and wisdom beyond his years.

But it was when he was elected County Executive in the 1970s that he hit his stride, the first Democrat to be elected to the post. It was often observed at the time that Al and his attractive wife, Dee, were Westchester’s Jack and Jackie. It was not an inaccurate characterization. As a young reporter working at the Westchester Rockland Newspapers (predecessor to today’s Journal News/lohud) I along with the entire newsroom quickly realized that the stodgy County Office Building in White Plains had taken on a feeling of Camelot as the dynamic duo put a focus on the arts, the parks and so much more. Their presence was felt in social as well as political and business circles. With the DelBellos there was a palpable feeling of liveliness and fun that was new to the county. We hadn’t had a “first couple” before.

Al, however, was no empty suit. He thought big and he thought creatively. Two prime examples of this were the creation of a unified bus service in the county, today’s Bee-line System, and construction of the garbage-to-energy facility at Peekskill, which some 40 years later remains a state-of-the-art solution to a vexing problem.  And not to be forgotten is that the opening of that plant enabled the closing of the Croton Point landfill which was threatening to become Westchester’s Matterhorn. Al had the vision and the can-do attitude that took these projects from ideas to reality and today we all continue to reap the benefits.

I first met Al at the dedication of Muscoot Park on Route 100 in Somers. He was sitting at a picnic bench, wearing a pair of aviator sun glasses and chatting amiably with a group of reporters who pretty much followed everything he did. I was immediately struck by how at ease he was and how easily he mixed with everyone, young and old, wealthy and not so. He talked proudly about his ideas for the future of the beautiful Victorian era dairy farm with its extensive barn complex that today is one of the gems of the county’s expansive park system.  At a Friends of Westchester County Parks event about a year ago, Al and I were chatting and I mentioned that long ago first meeting with him at Muscoot.  As was often the case with Al, my remark prompted a question: “Do you know why we have Muscoot Farm today?”

I guessed that it had been bequeathed by the owner’s family but would have been too easy an answer. Al explained that the county had acquired the property and that the Parks Department had put forth a plan to create an ice skating center there, a Playland Ice Casino for the northern part of Westchester, as he put it.  Obviously that never came to be and Al explained why.

“One afternoon I decided to drive up and look at the property myself and Dee was with me.  When we got there she took one look and said:  ‘This needs to remain a farm.’  She fell in love with the beauty and felt it should become an interpretive farm where children and people of all ages can learn not only about Westchester’s agricultural past but how our food is grown and raised. Dee gets the credit for saving Muscoot Farm and it all began with that one chance visit.”

Dee was ahead of her time in thinking about food sources and healthy eating, but then that was the kind of thing that typified Al and his first lady in those days. The county government that few people ever gave a thought to, suddenly become an epicenter of creative thinking and new ideas. It was indeed a spirited and heady time.

As the years went by, Al moved on to be elected lieutenant governor and subsequently to the private sector eventually joining with Al Donnellan and Mark Weingarten in forming the prestigious and influential law firm that carries his name. I left the newspaper to form Thompson & Bender at about the same time and it was then that I  become friends with Al and Dee. And, of course, Dee and Al went on to buy the Westchester/Fairfield Business Journals and Westfair Inc. which Dee so ably oversees.

While I have enjoyed numerous business relationships with Al over the past 30 years, it was, however, another aspect of his life that I came to greatly admire in addition to his business and political acumen. Al not only liked visiting a farm like Muscoot, he created his own. Working in tandem with Dee, they took a wooded patch of ledge rock in a corner of northeast Westchester and created a remarkably tasteful and magnificent home and working farm. The first time I saw it, I was awestruck by the sheer beauty, style, décor and ambiance of their home. But that was only a precursor. What totally floored me was Al’s direct involvement in every aspect of the farm operation.

Turns out he loved operating a backhoe. He personally built the henhouse. He worked with the alpacas. And Al being Al, he understood their behavior. At the farm he was, quite simply, totally hands on. He was also handy and had the cleanest, best organized, most complete workshop I have ever set eyes on. That made me envious!  Now I knew why Al would be the first to show up at evening events, and about the first to leave. He had farm chores to attend to.

So Al was a genuine renaissance man. But beyond that he was a good soul. My fondest memory of him was when my wife, Liz, and I had the pleasure of being invited to a dinner at the DelBellos’ home several years ago. As to be expected, this was a lovely affair with an intelligent and diverse group of guests. And, again nothing unusual, there was an added attraction. They had invited a husband and wife, she an opera singer and he her accompanist on an accordion, no less.

After dinner, we all settled into comfortable chairs in the large living room to listen to a performance. Four or five dogs of varying breeds and sizes were also a part of the evening, free to wander among the guests or lie in the middle of the floor as they wished.  You see the DelBellos not only love dogs but they have rescued many from a wide range of often highly unpleasant and deeply sad situations. And they are full-fledged members of the household.

With the performance underway, I glanced around the room. And there was Al sitting at one end of a couch. One dog lay at his feet, one lay on the sofa next to him and the smallest was sitting on his lap – licking his Al’s cheek. Al was smiling. He was surrounded by friends.

In losing Al DelBello, all of Westchester has lost a friend.