Leahy Institute

Tag: grafton ny

  • Support the Town of Grafton’s Youth Program Summer Camp

    Support the Town Youth Program’s Summer Camp – An Open Letter to the Town Board of Grafton and all the Neighboring Town Boards

     July 30, 2012

    Summertime and the living is easy… unless you are a parent and now have to find day care options for your children. I peruse my choices. I could just not show up at work until September and do lots of groovy things and really bond with my kids. Sounds like fun, but… I may not be welcome back at that stinky old job in September. Summer camps – lots and lots of summer camps around, but most of them cost $300 per week! Did I mention that I am not independently wealthy? YMCA overnight camp…. Sounds really fantastic. Wish I could spend all day canoeing around Lake George. $1000 for one week?! See above – not independently wealthy, etc. Let’s see… no relatives nearby to palm the kids off on. I suppose I could drop them off on a Troy street corner and let them hang out with the crack dealers during the day. An attractive low cost child care alternative and what’s more, they would learn a trade, but, darn it all, there seems to be something objectionable about this plan. Wait a minute…you mean to tell me Grafton has a free summer youth camp!?!? Wow! Problem solved! Praise and applause for the Town of Grafton for such visionary community planning to have a youth program summer camp in place!

    I have a child currently in the Grafton summer camp and I will have another one starting next summer. My daughter enjoys the summer camp and it is a life saver for us parents. I hope it will be possible for my grandchildren to go to summer camp in Grafton some day. As a town and a community it is great to know we have this resource for our children where they can be safe and secure and learning and playing happily together. We as Town tax payers and community members should make sure that this program and programs like it continue to offer these benefits in the years to come.

    Will we always have a summer youth camp in Grafton? Will the summer camp maintain the level of resources available to provide a quality day care summer alternative for our children? These are questions that get determined during the Town budget making process every year. We all know that everything costs money and nobody has enough money any more and nobody wants to pay more taxes. That results in a yearly budgetary power struggle over which programs get how big a slice of the pie. We are lucky to have a summer program. The summer program could be even better with increased funding, or it could lose some of its already scarce operating funds, or it could even be cut from the Town budget entirely.

    So this is a plea to the Town of Grafton – please, please, please, for the sake of our Town children (and also their parents), keep the summer camp program funded and, if it is in any way possible, expand the service to cover longer hours and more weeks.

    Thanks from at least one grateful Grafton parent.

    John Leahy

  • Stanley Cup Riots In Grafton

    Stanley Cup Riots In Grafton

    May, 2012

    by John Leahy

    I watched the final Stanley Cup game for the New York Rangers at my home in the small woodsy town of Grafton, New York, in the Taconic Hills near the Massachusetts and Vermont border. The Rangers lost and were knocked out of the Cup and I began looking around at my options for post Stanley Cup loss rioting.

    Decisively, I got into my old Chevy pickup truck and gunned it down my dirt road. A squirrel scurried out of my way. Two minutes later I arrived at my neighbor’s house. The lights were out. I threw a beer can out the window onto their lawn. I revved my engine and took off.

    In the center of town I pulled up at the stop sign. One of my kid’s crayons was on the front seat and I grabbed it and quickly scrawled “Potvin Sucks!” on the stop sign. I sped off looking for other symbols of governmental authority and oppression to direct my rage at. Outside the post office I spied the mail box. I got out and heaved a heavy rock at it. The rock bounced with a booming gong and left a barely perceptible dent in the front of the mail box. A dog jumped up on a porch across the square and stared out at the public disturbance and then laid down again and went back to sleep.

    I looked around for signs of the police to do battle. “Where are the damn pigs?” I muttered. I noticed the van for the Senior Citizens Center and realized I had found my target. I gathered some grimy old newspaper from the floor of my truck and piled them under the van. I took the ancient book of matches from my glove box and struck the first match. The match tip crumbled. I tried all 7 of the remaining matches with the same result. I threw the empty match book at the van’s windshield. The glass did not break. I drove over to the Country Store to get more matches, but it was closed. I saw a dried out pine cone on the ground and I slung it at the store’s window. The dried out pine cone curved to the left and bounced lightly off the wall.

    I got back in my truck and took off. A car came towards me and I flashed my high beams at it. The car honked angrily as it passed. My pulse raced. Now I am truly in the rioter zone. I passed a house with a tricycle on the lawn. I screeched to a halt and jumped out and grabbed the tricycle and threw it into a decorative shrubbery. Two houses down I stopped by a neat stack of firewood and began slinging pieces of firewood from the top of the wall into the vegetable garden. I slung at least four pieces of wood before leaping back into my truck to continue my rampage.

    The low fuel warning light came on the dashboard panel. I thought of going back to the Country Store for gas, but then remembered that it was after 7 PM and the store was closed. I had enough gas to get this guzzler back home and to a gas station tomorrow. I parked in my driveway. I saw some BBQ fuel and matches in the garage. I looked at my house…………………………..

  • A Small School Closes

    A Small School Closes

    – John Leahy

    A small school in a small town will close its doors permanently this summer due to budget cuts and the children of the town will be bussed over ten miles to a neighboring town. Gone, the cozy, familiar, small-scale setting for the communities youngest members. Gone, the local venue for community extra-curricular social activities such as the girl scouts. Gone, one of the amenities that made this small town an attractive place to call home. The negative impacts of this decision go rippling through various layers of the local quality of life, many of whom are not at all related directly to education.

    New York State Education Department (NYSED) has aggressively pushed a policy of consolidation under the theory that fewer and larger centralized units are more economically efficient than more numerous and smaller widely disbursed ones. The budget planning looks at elimination of duplication of services as its bottom line and does not factor in many intangibles in its unimaginative perspective. The School Board of this particular district vigorously pursued its chosen intention and pushed for five years towards its goal. Rather than using data to determine a preferred policy course, this school board made its policy decision first and then looked for data to be presented as support for its determination. Debate was quashed or avoided. Alternatives were discounted or ignored. Good old boy networking tactics were employed to keep the entrenched board members in power. NYSED supported the local board in an official hands-off (especially if we’re winning) policy.

    With a policy highly dependent upon demographic projections, consolidation proponents appear to ignore the implications to a local economy of removing local amenities. Young families like to set up homes in areas near preferable school options and removing the local school will curtail some desirability to move to and settle in the town. Other families with school aged children might move to another school district altogether where the educational opportunities are superior. This will have a negative effect on property values and this effect could be significant.

    So beginning next fall, 5 through 8 year olds of this small town will now stoically go off every day on an hour long school bus ride in place of the current 5 or 10 minute ride to school. They will be placed in inferior accommodations while their previous cozy home stands in good condition. Nostalgic students will be able to wave good bye to their old school as they ride past at the beginning of their journeys to the neighboring town.

    Will life go on in this small town? Will the students be better off than their peers in poor and possibly war-ravaged villages in the eastern Congo or Afghanistan or even parts of Brooklyn? Yes without a doubt. But more to the point, did life get better or worse in the small town and was the right decision made on how to address the budget problems challenging the school district? Without a doubt, life got at least a little bit worse and the question remains, was it necessary?

  • Text Books in Trailers

    – John Leahy

    Background Introduction:

    New York State, like many states, is going along with the current trend in education policy to close outlying rural schools in a centralization initiative. The idea is to be fiscally more efficient by providing services for all at fewer locations. Children are brought by bus on longer commutes to one central location in the school district, rather than maintaining satellite local schools in their own communities where the commuting time for the children is shorter as they attend school in the town or village where they live. The policy, particularly in the economic climate of year 2010, has caused a lot of debate and controversy as government bodies struggle to achieve more with smaller resources and local populations struggle to protect the quality of life in their communities. Often, local school boards in New York State are attempting to follow the State Commissioner’s directive irregardless of negative impacts on other aspects of community life or economics. This is the background framework for this recent letter to the editors at the Eastwick Press in Eastern Rensselaer County.

    Congratulations to Charlotte Gregory and the BC School Board!
     
    It was with great joy that I read the letter from Charlotte Gregory today announcing the closure of the Grafton Elementary School. The Board had a meeting last night, or should I say a “workshop”? Ha! That Board is so clever! If it is only a workshop and not a meeting, they aren’t obliged to follow the laws pertaining to meetings, like making public announcements to be open to the public. Or are they? Good question. I sure hope legalities were not twisted out of recognition. Was the Eastwick Press ever informed about the “workshop”?
     
    In any case, back to celebration! Finally we can take those students out of a building in Grafton and put them into trailers in Berlin where they belong. The overwhelming common sense of this initiative can not be denied. Why on earth would any parent want their child educated in a building when we can have nice new “modular units” instead. The Berlin Central School District is savvy and knows how much we love our trailers up here in Grafton. The faster we get our kids out of that nasty building and into a modular unit, the better! What better way to illustrate the future to our children than getting them accustomed to life in a trailer right from the get go. I applaud the Board and Ms. Charlotte Gregory and I am sure this decision to improve the educational facilities for our children will not be forgotten in Grafton. Hail to the Chief and her merry band! We Grafton residents look forward to and embrace the future of our children finally having the rare opportunity to be educated in a trailer.
     

  • Local Schools

    By John Leahy

    Background Introduction:

    New York State, like many states, is going along with the current trend in education policy to close outlying rural schools in a centralization initiative. The idea is to be fiscally more efficient by providing services for all at fewer locations. Children are brought by bus on longer commutes to one central location in the school district, rather than maintaining satellite local schools in their own communities where the commuting time for the children is shorter as they attend school in the town or village where they live. The policy, particularly in the economic climate of year 2010, has caused a lot of debate and controversy as government bodies struggle to achieve more with smaller resources and local populations struggle to protect the quality of life in their communities. Often, local school boards in New York State are attempting to follow the State Commissioner’s directive irregardless of negative impacts on other aspects of community life or economics. This is the background framework for this recent letter to the editors at the Eastwick Press in Eastern Rensselaer County.

    New Demographic Policy Guidance for Grafton School District

    The Berlin Central School District wants to close the Grafton school and bus the Grafton kids down to the crumbling Berlin school building to save money for the district tax payers. Saving money will be important, especially as the loss of a local school will probably have a strong negative effect on Town of Grafton’s economy as desirability to locate in Grafton plummets, property values decline and tax revenues drop. Grafton residents, known for their enthusiasm for the rugged outdoors lifestyle, at least can take pleasure in knowing that their children will be brought up right as they will be exposed to plenty of fresh air as the windows of the Berlin school building are frequently kept wide open in winter to counterbalance the blasting heat that can’t be turned off in this antiquated building with its obsolete maintenance system. But no worries, mate! We will spend $15 or $20 or maybe $25 million dollars to renovate the myriad of problems in this building and that will save a lot of money and local tax payers will be very happy.

    One major factor that was cited as a reason for closing the Grafton school was demographics. According to a tremendously in-depth consultant survey that must have taken at least a minimum of ten minutes to produce, the school age population of Grafton is shrinking. The consultant, using a scientifically rock solid methodology of basing projections for long term population trends on a mere 5 years of data, showed that Grafton school age population had dropped over a 5 year period (actually they mixed up Grafton and Stephentown data but no matter) and deduced with fool proof logic that this trend would continue indefinitely until someday down the road the empty halls of the Grafton school would only echo the foot steps of mice as the last remaining school age Grafton child walked out the door and took the rights of passage on the bus to 4th grade in Berlin. Naturally, the Berlin Central School District was wise enough to see the merit of this reasoning and has stoutly relied upon this splendid gem of a study as they repeated their mantra that centralization is always best, regardless of course of the costs to community quality of life.

    In stating that Grafton adults are not producing enough children to bother educating them in their own town, one wonders what the consultant and the School District are really saying about the adults of Grafton. Could they be snidely implying that Grafton taxpayers are not pulling their weight and doing their fair share in reproductive activity? Should Grafton adult residents be engaging in more productive pastimes, rather than sinking into lethargy about local demographics as another evening spent with American Idol goes by? What would the Berlin Central School District say if Grafton residents went on a bacchanalian tear and drove the school age population up 20% with a Mardi Gras festive spirit? While Grafton stolidly reproduced, the Board would sure have egg on its face. This could be a new policy direction for Grafton taxpayers.

    I mean, if you’re going to get a screwing anyway……