Sunday, June 28, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Regionalization Materials File Drawer
K-6 Regionalization Study Committee
Saturday, March 7, 2009
9:30-11:30 a.m.
Professional Development Center
Amherst Regional Middle School
AGENDA
1.Charge to the Committee
2.Welcome and Introduction
Maria Geryk, Interim Superintendent
Rob Detweiler, Director of Finance and Operations/Meeting Facilitator
3.Historical Perspective on Regionalization
4.Framing the Current Issue
5.Select K-6 Regionalization Study Committee Chair
6.Identify Factors to Consider
7.Perspectives from Each Town
8.Discuss the Process for Investigating the Factors to Consider
9.Committee Planning—Set Future Meeting Dates
possible next steps
1.Invite Christine Lynch from DESE to meet w/the committee
a.Suggestions for other communities to visit
2.Identify data needed to complete research/investigation
a.Share data from each town
b.Organize the factors for consideration
3.Identify resources needed to complete research/investigation
a.Facilities
b.Staff support
c.Budget
Leverett Elementary School Google Group related to Franklin County Public Education Study Committee
Together we won't
The governor plans to improve education by merging school districts. But other states have tried it - and it doesn't work.
By Elaine McArdle | March 8, 2009 Boston Globe
IN THE ONGOING effort to fix America's ailing schools, one of the most popular ideas is to shrink the number of school districts.
The country once had more than 130,000 independent districts managed by local communities. Merging them into larger units, advocates said, would lead to a more efficient system, reducing costs while offering students more opportunities and producing better academic results. This approach, part of a larger movement to standardize schools, reduced the number of districts by 90 percent between 1930 and 1970.
With budgets under fire, consolidation is again gaining traction as a way to save money. Today, more than a dozen states - including Maine and Vermont - have seriously considered or already implemented plans for fewer, larger districts. And last June, when Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts announced his comprehensive education reform agenda, he made consolidation a top priority. Reducing the number of districts will improve the quality of education, he has said. Virtually every district in the state is a candidate for consolidation if it's determined that merging with another district would benefit its academic performance, according to J.D. LaRock, chief policy adviser for the state education office.
But a wave of research from around the country shows that consolidation does not improve schools or lead to better academic results. Spending on education does not go down; indeed, budgets often balloon with increased transportation costs and more administrators to run enlarged districts. Consolidation leads to schools closing and to bigger schools, with less parental involvement and community participation. And, in many parts of the United States, it has led to children on unconscionable bus rides lasting several hours a day.
"There is either no advantage or actually a disadvantage to making these enormous uber-districts," says Andrew J. Coulson, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., who has conducted two major studies on consolidation. "They just don't help kids."
As a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University several years ago, Christopher R. Berry became intrigued with the idea that district consolidation was, in his words, "arguably the most profound reform movement in 20th-century education." Yet almost no one had studied its effects on students.
Now an assistant professor at the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago, Berry set out to fill that vacuum. Focusing on 1930 to 1970, the most intense period of consolidation in the United States, he found that consolidation of districts inevitably resulted in the consolidation of schools - closing schools and moving to bigger schools. With regard to student achievement, consolidation was "generally negative," he says, because dropout rates and wages earned by graduates got worse following mergers. (There was no standardized testing of student performance at the time.) His study, "Growing Pains: The School Consolidation Movement and Student Outcomes," co-authored with Martin R. West and published in 2008 in the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, also concluded that spending on education did not decrease following consolidation.
These findings challenged the entire consolidation movement, which was spearheaded with almost no critical inquiry by state officials and educational administrators, says Berry. "They seem to be convinced, almost as a matter of professional ideology, that bigger must be better," he says.
Several years ago, when Michigan began promoting consolidation, the Cato Institute's Coulson undertook a study there and in three other states and reached the same conclusion as Berry. If the goal is to improve academics, there is "no advantage whatsoever to either breaking up districts or consolidating districts," says Coulson. A 2007 study by Indiana University researchers found student achievement is not improved by consolidation; a 2008 study in Iowa found dropout rates did not decline after district mergers.
Proponents insist that larger districts are cheaper. In theory, big districts can achieve efficiencies of scale with lower per-pupil costs because fixed expenses are spread among a larger student body, and bigger districts have the power to negotiate better prices for supplies and utilities. But studies show the anticipated savings usually don't materialize. Like Berry's research, the Iowa study, by Brian Knight at Brown University and Nora Gordon at the University of California, San Diego, found per-pupil spending did not decrease after consolidation. It is true that very small districts - with fewer than 500 students, say - are the most expensive on a per-pupil basis, and merging them has the potential to significantly reduce per-pupil costs. But these districts represent a tiny fraction of any state's educational budget, so combining them has minimal effect on total costs, says John Yinger of Syracuse University, who in 2001 published with William Duncombe a study of district consolidation in New York State.
Moreover, there's no guarantee that consolidating even tiny districts will save money, Yinger emphasizes: The very process of consolidation is expensive, including new buildings and the often-substantial financial incentives states give to local communities to encourage mergers. Transportation costs can skyrocket with hauling kids to schools farther away. If there are cost savings, they often don't show up for a decade or more, according to Yinger, whose study was published as a working paper for the Center for Policy Research at Syracuse. Moreover, there was no indication that any money saved was funneled back into schools to improve academics, he says.
Meanwhile, Coulson has data that should give consolidation proponents real pause. If states are truly serious about cost savings, they should be focusing on breaking up big districts rather than combining smaller ones, he says. In Michigan, breaking up districts larger than 3,000 students would save the state 12 times as much as merging small ones: $363 million a year versus $31 million a year, he found. Yet there's rarely any discussion of this option, in Massachusetts or elsewhere.
Governor Patrick is on an ambitious schedule. He wants a substantial reduction in the Commonwealth's 329 districts, although he hasn't settled on the ideal number and district size, and legislation to that end will be introduced in the next year to 18 months, according to Secretary of Education Paul Reville. The governor and his administration are convinced that fewer districts will translate into better academics: each district will be larger, and larger districts perform better, they say.
In December, the governor's office released a study that found that larger districts in Massachusetts were academically outpacing smaller ones. Specifically, it found that on a continuum, districts closer to 5,000 pupils were more likely to have eighth-graders who perform better on the MCAS than smaller districts, as well as lower rates of student absenteeism.
"It's not all on one side, but there are some key indicators on which it does appear large districts have an advantage," says LaRock, primary author of the report. (The national studies on consolidation and research from other states are not particularly relevant, he argues, saying each state has a different educational structure.)
But a competing report in Massachusetts has found that small districts achieve better academic results. Last September, the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents' Small and Rural School District Task Force completed a yearlong study that examined student performance in the Commonwealth. It found that the graduation rates in small districts were 6.5 percent higher than the state average, and small districts had a lower dropout rate and better attendance rates. Only 6 percent of small districts were considered "underperforming," compared with 20 percent statewide, according to standards set by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
The 10th-grade MCAS is a more important indicator than the eighth-grade scores, the task force believes, and here smaller districts have an advantage. "On the 10th-grade MCAS, the small districts outperformed the midsized and large," says Nicholas Young, superintendent in Hadley and a vocal opponent of forced consolidation. "Some of the highest-performing districts are at or under 1,000 students."
If saving money is the goal, says Young, there are many studies that support effective but less-drastic approaches that keep schools in local hands, such as purchasing collaboratives, in which independent districts join together to buy supplies or utilities, or share certain teachers or administrators. In Maine, consolidation opponents are pushing this option. Reville says he is open to this approach but says it doesn't substitute for consolidation because fewer districts will lead to better schools through streamlined administration and centralized control over education.
"When we talk about thinking and acting like a school system instead of system of schools, I think of places like Maryland, where [the state superintendent of schools] can get 24 superintendents around a table a couple of times a month if she needs to talk about educational policy . . . to get everyone on the same page, to connect it with a system of higher education," Reville says. "There are operational advantages."
For more than 80 years, well-intentioned people have been trying to make schools better this way. And it seems logical.
It just doesn't work.
Elaine McArdle is a writer in Cambridge.
© Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
local news updates
updated
Friday, 1:34 PM
From the Metro staff at The Boston Globe
School districts to study regionalization
February 27, 2009 11:00 AM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +
By James Vaznis, Globe Staff
Financially strapped communities from Cape Cod to the Berkshires will receive state grants to study the possibility of regionalizing their school districts, which state education leaders say could lead to greater cost efficiencies.
At a press conference this morning at the public high school in Greenfield, state Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Mitchell Chester announced that Greenfield's schools, along with other districts across the state, would receive the first batch of grants from a new state program that is urging regionalization. Each grant ranges between $15,000 and $25,000.
"This funding is meant to jumpstart a movement across the state to find ways for our smaller communities to work together, learn from one another and share expenses in a manner that makes sense fiscally and educationally," Chester said in a statement. "I am pleased that in a year when money is so tight we have [been] able to maintain this effort as a priority."
Greenfield, located in the western part of the state, is looking to merge its 1,500 students and eight schools with the neighboring Gill-Montague Regional School District, which has 1,000 students and five schools. Both districts have fallen upon tough financial times.
Merging the state's smallest school districts into larger entities is one of the many initiatives Governor Deval Patrick laid out in his sweeping state education overhaul effort known as the Readiness Project. The proposal calls for "dramatically reducing the number of school districts in the state" so less money is spent on administrative services and more can be spent in classrooms. All but 41 of the state's nearly 400 school districts serve fewer than 5,000 students.
Districts do not need to fully consolidate with a neighbor to yield savings. Districts could maintain independence while forming partnerships to run school buses, lunch programs, or special education services. The districts could even share superintendents and other central administrators, while keeping their districts as separate entities.
"In light of the current fiscal climate, this type of a collaborative effort is a key step towards finding a more manageable way of funding our public education system, and achieving the goal of providing all students quality education in the classroom," said state Senator Benjamin Downing.
In addition to Greenfield, districts receiving grants include: Ayer, Berkshire Hills Regional, Frontier Regional, Hadley, Harwich, Holland, Mahar Regional, Mohawk Regional, Nauset Regional, Westfield, and Boxford.
The Commonwealth Review podcast: Bob Pura talks School Regionalization
Saturday, March 7, 2009
9:30-11:30 a.m.
Professional Development Center
Amherst Regional Middle School
AGENDA
1.Charge to the Committee
2.Welcome and Introduction
Maria Geryk, Interim Superintendent
Rob Detweiler, Director of Finance and Operations/Meeting Facilitator
3.Historical Perspective on Regionalization
4.Framing the Current Issue
5.Select K-6 Regionalization Study Committee Chair
6.Identify Factors to Consider
7.Perspectives from Each Town
8.Discuss the Process for Investigating the Factors to Consider
9.Committee Planning—Set Future Meeting Dates
possible next steps
1.Invite Christine Lynch from DESE to meet w/the committee
a.Suggestions for other communities to visit
2.Identify data needed to complete research/investigation
a.Share data from each town
b.Organize the factors for consideration
3.Identify resources needed to complete research/investigation
a.Facilities
b.Staff support
c.Budget
Leverett Elementary School Google Group related to Franklin County Public Education Study Committee
Together we won't
The governor plans to improve education by merging school districts. But other states have tried it - and it doesn't work.
By Elaine McArdle | March 8, 2009 Boston Globe
IN THE ONGOING effort to fix America's ailing schools, one of the most popular ideas is to shrink the number of school districts.
The country once had more than 130,000 independent districts managed by local communities. Merging them into larger units, advocates said, would lead to a more efficient system, reducing costs while offering students more opportunities and producing better academic results. This approach, part of a larger movement to standardize schools, reduced the number of districts by 90 percent between 1930 and 1970.
With budgets under fire, consolidation is again gaining traction as a way to save money. Today, more than a dozen states - including Maine and Vermont - have seriously considered or already implemented plans for fewer, larger districts. And last June, when Governor Deval Patrick of Massachusetts announced his comprehensive education reform agenda, he made consolidation a top priority. Reducing the number of districts will improve the quality of education, he has said. Virtually every district in the state is a candidate for consolidation if it's determined that merging with another district would benefit its academic performance, according to J.D. LaRock, chief policy adviser for the state education office.
But a wave of research from around the country shows that consolidation does not improve schools or lead to better academic results. Spending on education does not go down; indeed, budgets often balloon with increased transportation costs and more administrators to run enlarged districts. Consolidation leads to schools closing and to bigger schools, with less parental involvement and community participation. And, in many parts of the United States, it has led to children on unconscionable bus rides lasting several hours a day.
"There is either no advantage or actually a disadvantage to making these enormous uber-districts," says Andrew J. Coulson, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., who has conducted two major studies on consolidation. "They just don't help kids."
As a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University several years ago, Christopher R. Berry became intrigued with the idea that district consolidation was, in his words, "arguably the most profound reform movement in 20th-century education." Yet almost no one had studied its effects on students.
Now an assistant professor at the Harris School of Public Policy Studies at the University of Chicago, Berry set out to fill that vacuum. Focusing on 1930 to 1970, the most intense period of consolidation in the United States, he found that consolidation of districts inevitably resulted in the consolidation of schools - closing schools and moving to bigger schools. With regard to student achievement, consolidation was "generally negative," he says, because dropout rates and wages earned by graduates got worse following mergers. (There was no standardized testing of student performance at the time.) His study, "Growing Pains: The School Consolidation Movement and Student Outcomes," co-authored with Martin R. West and published in 2008 in the Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, also concluded that spending on education did not decrease following consolidation.
These findings challenged the entire consolidation movement, which was spearheaded with almost no critical inquiry by state officials and educational administrators, says Berry. "They seem to be convinced, almost as a matter of professional ideology, that bigger must be better," he says.
Several years ago, when Michigan began promoting consolidation, the Cato Institute's Coulson undertook a study there and in three other states and reached the same conclusion as Berry. If the goal is to improve academics, there is "no advantage whatsoever to either breaking up districts or consolidating districts," says Coulson. A 2007 study by Indiana University researchers found student achievement is not improved by consolidation; a 2008 study in Iowa found dropout rates did not decline after district mergers.
Proponents insist that larger districts are cheaper. In theory, big districts can achieve efficiencies of scale with lower per-pupil costs because fixed expenses are spread among a larger student body, and bigger districts have the power to negotiate better prices for supplies and utilities. But studies show the anticipated savings usually don't materialize. Like Berry's research, the Iowa study, by Brian Knight at Brown University and Nora Gordon at the University of California, San Diego, found per-pupil spending did not decrease after consolidation. It is true that very small districts - with fewer than 500 students, say - are the most expensive on a per-pupil basis, and merging them has the potential to significantly reduce per-pupil costs. But these districts represent a tiny fraction of any state's educational budget, so combining them has minimal effect on total costs, says John Yinger of Syracuse University, who in 2001 published with William Duncombe a study of district consolidation in New York State.
Moreover, there's no guarantee that consolidating even tiny districts will save money, Yinger emphasizes: The very process of consolidation is expensive, including new buildings and the often-substantial financial incentives states give to local communities to encourage mergers. Transportation costs can skyrocket with hauling kids to schools farther away. If there are cost savings, they often don't show up for a decade or more, according to Yinger, whose study was published as a working paper for the Center for Policy Research at Syracuse. Moreover, there was no indication that any money saved was funneled back into schools to improve academics, he says.
Meanwhile, Coulson has data that should give consolidation proponents real pause. If states are truly serious about cost savings, they should be focusing on breaking up big districts rather than combining smaller ones, he says. In Michigan, breaking up districts larger than 3,000 students would save the state 12 times as much as merging small ones: $363 million a year versus $31 million a year, he found. Yet there's rarely any discussion of this option, in Massachusetts or elsewhere.
Governor Patrick is on an ambitious schedule. He wants a substantial reduction in the Commonwealth's 329 districts, although he hasn't settled on the ideal number and district size, and legislation to that end will be introduced in the next year to 18 months, according to Secretary of Education Paul Reville. The governor and his administration are convinced that fewer districts will translate into better academics: each district will be larger, and larger districts perform better, they say.
In December, the governor's office released a study that found that larger districts in Massachusetts were academically outpacing smaller ones. Specifically, it found that on a continuum, districts closer to 5,000 pupils were more likely to have eighth-graders who perform better on the MCAS than smaller districts, as well as lower rates of student absenteeism.
"It's not all on one side, but there are some key indicators on which it does appear large districts have an advantage," says LaRock, primary author of the report. (The national studies on consolidation and research from other states are not particularly relevant, he argues, saying each state has a different educational structure.)
But a competing report in Massachusetts has found that small districts achieve better academic results. Last September, the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents' Small and Rural School District Task Force completed a yearlong study that examined student performance in the Commonwealth. It found that the graduation rates in small districts were 6.5 percent higher than the state average, and small districts had a lower dropout rate and better attendance rates. Only 6 percent of small districts were considered "underperforming," compared with 20 percent statewide, according to standards set by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
The 10th-grade MCAS is a more important indicator than the eighth-grade scores, the task force believes, and here smaller districts have an advantage. "On the 10th-grade MCAS, the small districts outperformed the midsized and large," says Nicholas Young, superintendent in Hadley and a vocal opponent of forced consolidation. "Some of the highest-performing districts are at or under 1,000 students."
If saving money is the goal, says Young, there are many studies that support effective but less-drastic approaches that keep schools in local hands, such as purchasing collaboratives, in which independent districts join together to buy supplies or utilities, or share certain teachers or administrators. In Maine, consolidation opponents are pushing this option. Reville says he is open to this approach but says it doesn't substitute for consolidation because fewer districts will lead to better schools through streamlined administration and centralized control over education.
"When we talk about thinking and acting like a school system instead of system of schools, I think of places like Maryland, where [the state superintendent of schools] can get 24 superintendents around a table a couple of times a month if she needs to talk about educational policy . . . to get everyone on the same page, to connect it with a system of higher education," Reville says. "There are operational advantages."
For more than 80 years, well-intentioned people have been trying to make schools better this way. And it seems logical.
It just doesn't work.
Elaine McArdle is a writer in Cambridge.
© Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
local news updates
updated
Friday, 1:34 PM
From the Metro staff at The Boston Globe
School districts to study regionalization
February 27, 2009 11:00 AM Email| Comments (0)| Text size – +
By James Vaznis, Globe Staff
Financially strapped communities from Cape Cod to the Berkshires will receive state grants to study the possibility of regionalizing their school districts, which state education leaders say could lead to greater cost efficiencies.
At a press conference this morning at the public high school in Greenfield, state Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Mitchell Chester announced that Greenfield's schools, along with other districts across the state, would receive the first batch of grants from a new state program that is urging regionalization. Each grant ranges between $15,000 and $25,000.
"This funding is meant to jumpstart a movement across the state to find ways for our smaller communities to work together, learn from one another and share expenses in a manner that makes sense fiscally and educationally," Chester said in a statement. "I am pleased that in a year when money is so tight we have [been] able to maintain this effort as a priority."
Greenfield, located in the western part of the state, is looking to merge its 1,500 students and eight schools with the neighboring Gill-Montague Regional School District, which has 1,000 students and five schools. Both districts have fallen upon tough financial times.
Merging the state's smallest school districts into larger entities is one of the many initiatives Governor Deval Patrick laid out in his sweeping state education overhaul effort known as the Readiness Project. The proposal calls for "dramatically reducing the number of school districts in the state" so less money is spent on administrative services and more can be spent in classrooms. All but 41 of the state's nearly 400 school districts serve fewer than 5,000 students.
Districts do not need to fully consolidate with a neighbor to yield savings. Districts could maintain independence while forming partnerships to run school buses, lunch programs, or special education services. The districts could even share superintendents and other central administrators, while keeping their districts as separate entities.
"In light of the current fiscal climate, this type of a collaborative effort is a key step towards finding a more manageable way of funding our public education system, and achieving the goal of providing all students quality education in the classroom," said state Senator Benjamin Downing.
In addition to Greenfield, districts receiving grants include: Ayer, Berkshire Hills Regional, Frontier Regional, Hadley, Harwich, Holland, Mahar Regional, Mohawk Regional, Nauset Regional, Westfield, and Boxford.
The Commonwealth Review podcast: Bob Pura talks School Regionalization
Monday, November 3, 2008
Remember to Vote TWO Ballots in Amherst tomorrow:-)
Remember that in Amherst, you need *two* ballots tomorrow, don't forget in all the excitement! Sample Amherst ballots
How Alisa is voting on Tuesday November 4, 2008:
Aaron Hayden for Amherst Select Board
(and yes, Obama/Biden & all the incumbents)
Questions:
1. NO A No vote would make no change in state income tax laws
2. YES A Yes vote would replace the criminal penalties for possession of one ounce or less of marijuana with a new system of civil penalties
3. NO A No vote would make no change in the laws governing dog racing
4. NO so that the CPA tax is retained at 1.5%, not increased to 3%
5. YES for single payer health insurance and for not penalizing people for not buying crappy overpriced insurance (editorializing mine:-) (non-binding)
6. YES for pressuring us to do better with the greening of America, although I also understand this reason to vote No (non-binding)
How Alisa is voting on Tuesday November 4, 2008:
Aaron Hayden for Amherst Select Board
(and yes, Obama/Biden & all the incumbents)
Questions:
1. NO A No vote would make no change in state income tax laws
2. YES A Yes vote would replace the criminal penalties for possession of one ounce or less of marijuana with a new system of civil penalties
3. NO A No vote would make no change in the laws governing dog racing
4. NO so that the CPA tax is retained at 1.5%, not increased to 3%
5. YES for single payer health insurance and for not penalizing people for not buying crappy overpriced insurance (editorializing mine:-) (non-binding)
6. YES for pressuring us to do better with the greening of America, although I also understand this reason to vote No (non-binding)
Thursday, February 7, 2008
BCG FY09+ Budget Forum on Monday February 11th starting at 7 pm in the Middle School Auditorium
[copy of email sent to 433 Amherst community members]
OK, folks, attached.pdf hot of the press from the schools (coming home in backpacks on Thursday, I think).
You can also provide a link to the Town website front page, middle:
http://www.amherstma.gov/
Get it out there, please. We need lots of people *throughout Amherst* to understand what's going on if we're going to do anything other than rearrange deck chairs while we decimate the elementary schools in FY09, and we need a *plan* that gets us on track to survive (and thrive!) without some magical infusion of funds from the state and federal governments, because they are *not* coming to save us, no matter how hard we lobby them! (although yes, you still have to do the lobbying:-)
Talk to a BCG member if you have any questions; this is their show:
http://www.amherstma.gov/departments/Budget_Coordinating_Group/default.asp?id=77&mypage=77&myName=Budget+Coordinating+Group
Thanks so much for helping make our community what we all want it to be!
Take care,
Alisa
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
February 5, 2008 Primary Amherst Precinct Returns
Clinton-Obama-Other Dems
Precinct 1: 136-291-12
Precinct 2: 242-477-09
Precinct 3: 104-213-05
Precinct 4: 104-213-03 (not a typo!)
Precinct 5: 167-351-14
Precinct 6: 305-611-25
Precinct 7: 236-527-24
Precinct 8: 364-749-14
Precinct 9: 194-465-05
Precinct 10:102-242-07
Total someone:-) provided: 1954-4139-128
Precinct 1: 136-291-12
Precinct 2: 242-477-09
Precinct 3: 104-213-05
Precinct 4: 104-213-03 (not a typo!)
Precinct 5: 167-351-14
Precinct 6: 305-611-25
Precinct 7: 236-527-24
Precinct 8: 364-749-14
Precinct 9: 194-465-05
Precinct 10:102-242-07
Total someone:-) provided: 1954-4139-128
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Random wonderings about how Town Meeting is going to go this Fall 2007
Interesting excerpt from the David Brooks New York Times "Happiness Gap" column published in The Republican (Springfield, MA) pg A16 Thursday November 1, 2007:
"In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt could launch the New Deal because voters wanted to change the country and their own lives. But today, people want the government to change so their own lives can stay the same. Voters don't want to be transformed; they want to be defended."
The basic upshot of Brooks' take on some Pew Research Center survey results is that as individuals, American voters are happy with their lives and also expect their lives to get better, although at the same time they believe their country and their government is going to hell in the proverbial handbasket.
I'm trying to figure out why this resonates with me for local politics as well as for the Presidential election that Brooks is focusing on.
Amherst has some number of folks who want the Town to stay the same as it was the day they arrived -- and given the transient (oops - mobile) nature of our population due especially to the five colleges, that arrival day may be last week, or ten years ago, or thirty years ago, or four generations ago -- and those folks don't seem to want to acknowledge that things in Amherst have changed and will change, like it or not, even since just ten years ago (disclosure: I've been here almost that long).
I'm trying to figure out why the clearly unhappy people, who fight so many of the changes we are challenged to consider as a community, are able to organize their unhappiness so effectively, while many of those who are strongly supportive of some change are too busy to sit through meetings and proclamations based on consensus. Sure, a lot of it in Amherst is the "aristocracy of time," as my friend Rich M refers to it. The people who can "afford" to spend time in all kinds of meetings -- plus the uber-meeting, Town Meeting -- are definitely people of some varied viewpoints, but all together they are admittedly unlikely to be representative of the entire breadth and depth of Amherst-resident views. So much of life is based on who shows up, so...
When it comes to community bylaws, zoning, and budgets, do retired white academics view the issues the same way as a single mother of color who has lived in poverty for two generations or more? Do we need to find ways to have all of us hear from the single mother on an ongoing basis, or is the retired white academic "channeling" his/her hopes for the "downtrodden" enough? What about retired academics of color -- should we worry that they're not serving in our numerous volunteer government positions in representative-of-our-population numbers? What about the number of visibly mentally ill people -- where do their views get meaningfully considered during any part of this process? And what about the college students? Do they get any say?
Do the folks we're not hearing from at meetings, in the newspapers, and/or on the listservs want Amherst to remain the same?
Do they notice the effect of state Proposition 2 1/2 on our town services? Have they suffered any ill effects due to the failure of our 2007 override vote?
Do they want to see some denser development in some areas of town, or do they think it's better to have more areas with a single large house on a two acre lot? Does "denser development" mean small, close together, single family houses? Accessory apartments in already built-out neighborhoods? Mixed-use buildings with retail on the ground floor, offices above that, and condos above that? Where?
Do they depend on the PVTA bus to get to work, school, food shopping, and/or medical appointments? Do they agree that significant local tax dollars should be spent on serving 5-15 riders at any given time, or are the routes paid for mainly by UMass (e.g., the Old Belchertown Rd bus that goes to Valley Medical) adequate for their needs?
That's just skimming the surface, of course.
Questions like these have indeed been considered in the Comprehensive Planning Committee's Planning Amherst Together process, including a survey, multiple questionnaires, small meetings, large meetings, etc.. Some progress in reaching those not often heard from has been made due to huge amounts of thought and effort on the CPCs part, but we all know that there is simply no way for the results of all those efforts to seem as though they've perfectly captured every single nuance of the issues. I'm something of a perfectionist by nature, but I know the efforts and results of the CPC work enable me to say "the perfect is the enemy of the good." The draft Master Plan is still being worked on, and should get to the Planning Board for their statutory approval a few months before Annual (Spring) Town Meeting. This will give everyone time to consider the many ideas in the Master Plan as they develop their Town Meeting warrant articles.
So why are we going forward with the zoning articles on the upcoming Special Town Meeting (the one we have every Fall, but it's always "special" if it's not the Spring Annual) beginning Monday Nov 5, 2007? Why not wait for the Planning Board to approve the Master Plan?
Because the results have already been made widely available through the town website and a variety of meetings, and ongoing meetings can always be attended by anyone. The zoning articles on this upcoming Special Town Meeting are significant and they can proceed now. For a great perspective, see this week's Amherst Bulletin piece by my friend Carol S.
Back to Brooks and how it applies locally: maybe the folks who are afraid are the ones who want the government to change to ensure their fear remains codified.
We don't need to be afraid of our decisions. We can decide to pass these zoning articles with the necessary 2/3 vote, and move on to making more decisions in the best interest of the viability of our community in both the short and long term. Arguing zoning pieces to death (or referring them, again) takes up time we need for figuring out how to deliver programs and services our residents need during these extremely difficult -- and likely to get far worse before they get better -- financial times. Keep moving forward!
"In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt could launch the New Deal because voters wanted to change the country and their own lives. But today, people want the government to change so their own lives can stay the same. Voters don't want to be transformed; they want to be defended."
The basic upshot of Brooks' take on some Pew Research Center survey results is that as individuals, American voters are happy with their lives and also expect their lives to get better, although at the same time they believe their country and their government is going to hell in the proverbial handbasket.
I'm trying to figure out why this resonates with me for local politics as well as for the Presidential election that Brooks is focusing on.
Amherst has some number of folks who want the Town to stay the same as it was the day they arrived -- and given the transient (oops - mobile) nature of our population due especially to the five colleges, that arrival day may be last week, or ten years ago, or thirty years ago, or four generations ago -- and those folks don't seem to want to acknowledge that things in Amherst have changed and will change, like it or not, even since just ten years ago (disclosure: I've been here almost that long).
I'm trying to figure out why the clearly unhappy people, who fight so many of the changes we are challenged to consider as a community, are able to organize their unhappiness so effectively, while many of those who are strongly supportive of some change are too busy to sit through meetings and proclamations based on consensus. Sure, a lot of it in Amherst is the "aristocracy of time," as my friend Rich M refers to it. The people who can "afford" to spend time in all kinds of meetings -- plus the uber-meeting, Town Meeting -- are definitely people of some varied viewpoints, but all together they are admittedly unlikely to be representative of the entire breadth and depth of Amherst-resident views. So much of life is based on who shows up, so...
When it comes to community bylaws, zoning, and budgets, do retired white academics view the issues the same way as a single mother of color who has lived in poverty for two generations or more? Do we need to find ways to have all of us hear from the single mother on an ongoing basis, or is the retired white academic "channeling" his/her hopes for the "downtrodden" enough? What about retired academics of color -- should we worry that they're not serving in our numerous volunteer government positions in representative-of-our-population numbers? What about the number of visibly mentally ill people -- where do their views get meaningfully considered during any part of this process? And what about the college students? Do they get any say?
Do the folks we're not hearing from at meetings, in the newspapers, and/or on the listservs want Amherst to remain the same?
Do they notice the effect of state Proposition 2 1/2 on our town services? Have they suffered any ill effects due to the failure of our 2007 override vote?
Do they want to see some denser development in some areas of town, or do they think it's better to have more areas with a single large house on a two acre lot? Does "denser development" mean small, close together, single family houses? Accessory apartments in already built-out neighborhoods? Mixed-use buildings with retail on the ground floor, offices above that, and condos above that? Where?
Do they depend on the PVTA bus to get to work, school, food shopping, and/or medical appointments? Do they agree that significant local tax dollars should be spent on serving 5-15 riders at any given time, or are the routes paid for mainly by UMass (e.g., the Old Belchertown Rd bus that goes to Valley Medical) adequate for their needs?
That's just skimming the surface, of course.
Questions like these have indeed been considered in the Comprehensive Planning Committee's Planning Amherst Together process, including a survey, multiple questionnaires, small meetings, large meetings, etc.. Some progress in reaching those not often heard from has been made due to huge amounts of thought and effort on the CPCs part, but we all know that there is simply no way for the results of all those efforts to seem as though they've perfectly captured every single nuance of the issues. I'm something of a perfectionist by nature, but I know the efforts and results of the CPC work enable me to say "the perfect is the enemy of the good." The draft Master Plan is still being worked on, and should get to the Planning Board for their statutory approval a few months before Annual (Spring) Town Meeting. This will give everyone time to consider the many ideas in the Master Plan as they develop their Town Meeting warrant articles.
So why are we going forward with the zoning articles on the upcoming Special Town Meeting (the one we have every Fall, but it's always "special" if it's not the Spring Annual) beginning Monday Nov 5, 2007? Why not wait for the Planning Board to approve the Master Plan?
Because the results have already been made widely available through the town website and a variety of meetings, and ongoing meetings can always be attended by anyone. The zoning articles on this upcoming Special Town Meeting are significant and they can proceed now. For a great perspective, see this week's Amherst Bulletin piece by my friend Carol S.
Back to Brooks and how it applies locally: maybe the folks who are afraid are the ones who want the government to change to ensure their fear remains codified.
We don't need to be afraid of our decisions. We can decide to pass these zoning articles with the necessary 2/3 vote, and move on to making more decisions in the best interest of the viability of our community in both the short and long term. Arguing zoning pieces to death (or referring them, again) takes up time we need for figuring out how to deliver programs and services our residents need during these extremely difficult -- and likely to get far worse before they get better -- financial times. Keep moving forward!
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Even as I try to shed some cynicism, Demotivators never let me down
...we need to get rid of cynicism in politics...
although then again, as quoted by Craig Sandler of the State House News Service at the MMA Massachusetts Selectmen's Association Fall Conference on Saturday October 13, 2007:
"No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up." - Lily Tomlin in "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe"
Tradition @Despair, Inc.
although then again, as quoted by Craig Sandler of the State House News Service at the MMA Massachusetts Selectmen's Association Fall Conference on Saturday October 13, 2007:
"No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up." - Lily Tomlin in "The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe"
Tradition @Despair, Inc.
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