First there was a moment of sweet anticipation, as a representative of the Foundation thanked the children of Sag Harbor Elementary for adopting Shadow, and making his return to the wild possible. Then, Shadow was carried in his transport cage from the foundation’s van down to a spot near the water’s edge. One of the students was called upon to help open the cage door. As the door began to open, Shadow first stuck his nose out and then cautiously emerged from his temporary shelter. Looking a bit confused, he headed for the water, then changed his mind and tried to reverse direction and return to the safety of his cage. Apparently prepared for this eventuality, volunteers from RFMRP (as the foundation is awkwardly known), used large plywood squares to block his way, gently encouraging the seal to move seaward again, which he quickly agreed to do. A few minutes later Shadow was in the water. After swimming a few quick circles in the immediate vicinity of the beach, with just one quick backward glance, he was gone.

I’m not sure if Shadow was entirely happy about this turn of events — after all, he will now have to catch his own meals, after being hand-fed for many months — but we humans at least could bask in the happy feeling of having participated in a small worthwhile act of kindness and community. For us, it really doesn’t get any better than this.

Enjoy the photos.

Carrying Shadow to the water's edge.

A student helps to open the cage door

Shadow pokes his nose out.

Taking a look around.

Heading for the sea.

A bit reluctant, but almost there.

On his way.

A quick look back, and then he's gone.

So, at 7:30 p.m. tonight the Board held and “executive session,” which is a way for them to meet out of the public eye to discuss things that require a degree of privacy such as personnel issues, negotiations, legal issues and the like. Then, at 8:00 p.m. they went into public session to vote on hiring Dr. John Gratto as the District’s new Superintendent, which they did. They did not allow any public input at this meeting. When some members of the public spoke anyway, voicing their displeasure at the Board’s lack of openness during the process of selecting the new Super, the Board did its best to ignore what was being said. Eventually, Theresa Samot, the Board President, asked for a motion to go into executive session again “to discuss personnel issues.” The motion was made, seconded and voted on, and the Board walked out, leaving behind not only the public, but a somewhat stunned looking Dr. John Gratto, who had been expecting a cookies and punch reception.

That’s the bare bones of what happened tonight. There was much more, but I’ll leave it to the local papers to report and speculate about all that. What I would like to draw your attention to in this space, is the very sad fact that our friends and neighbors who serve on the School Board seem to have forgotten that they are also members of the very same community that they ignored and stonewalled tonight. How did that happen? I’ve known one of the Board Members for many years, having served on the Board with her decades ago, and maintained a passing friendship with her every since. I’ve served on committees with two of the other Board Members, and my wife also knows and/or has worked with a couple more. By and large, we like and respect these people, and believe they feel similarly about us. Yet tonight, they were able to build a wall between themselves, in their roles as board members, and their friends and neighbors who were sitting in the audience asking for a chance to be heard. That they were able to create this imaginary wall, and sustain it in the face of public outcry was much more disturbing to me than the fact that these normally caring, concerned and thoughtful people made a bad choice in how they handled the hiring process.

At tonight’s meeting one community member stood up and pleaded with the Board to recognize the many errors they were making by sticking doggedly to the path they had chosen. He asked them, “Is this really how you want to start Dr. Gratto’s tenure in Sag Harbor?” He appealed to their common sense and their humanity. But the Board had apparently checked their humanity at the door.

But why? It didn’t have to be that way. Even in the face of having already committed to Dr. Gratto, the Board could still have listened to what the public had to say. Perhaps it was too late for them to change course, but they could have opted to remember that they are also community members, and listen to what their fellow Sag Harborites had to say. It would have taken so little effort just to listen. Nothing else was necessary. Perhaps they would have heard a comment or two that would lead to a better decision, or at least a better decision making process, but we’ll never know. That’s a loss for everyone; but the people who lost the most tonight were the members of the Sag Harbor Board of Education — they lost their humanity. Not permanently, I’m sure, but for long enough to do damage both to their standing in the community and their own psyches.

Sometimes we just identify too much with the role we are playing at a given moment, and forget that underneath that role, we’re all just human beings. The Board of Education had a collective forgetting tonight. I’m guessing that somewhere along the way they fooled themselves into thinking that because they get to vote on the decisions, that the decisions are really theirs to make. Though they tried mightily to hold onto that illusion, they were reminded tonight, that that’s not how it works. In the end, the community makes the decisions; the Board just implements them.

It’s my hope that the Board wakes up soon from this dream of ‘being in charge’ and remembers that they are us.

]]> http://www.saghampton.com/2008/06/were-all-only-humanincluding-the-board-of-education/feed/ 9 http://www.saghampton.com/2007/05/is-this-the-land-of-no/ http://www.saghampton.com/2007/05/is-this-the-land-of-no/#comments Tue, 15 May 2007 03:32:26 +0000 Saltbox http://www.saghampton.com/2007/05/14/is-this-the-land-of-no/
Many folks said no to the NYS Department of Transportation a few years ago when they proposed a roundabout at the wharf end of Main ... ]]> Sometime it feels like we’re living in the Land of No. There are quite a few things in recent memory to which one or another Sag Hampton group has said (or tried to say) NO!

Many folks said no to the NYS Department of Transportation a few years ago when they proposed a roundabout at the wharf end of Main Street.

CONPOSH (Coalition of Neighborhoods for the Preservation Of Sag Harbor) and others said no to the expansion of 127 Main Street by its former owner, Jon Gruen.

The John Jermain Future Fund said no to the idea of a new library building near Mashashimuet Park.

The Sag Harbor CAC (Citizens Advisory Committee) — of which I am co-chair — tried to say no to the new Bayburger Restaurant opening soon on the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike.

More successfully, the CAC said no to the Reid brothers’ plans to expand their service station to include a full-service car wash, and large parking facility for the use of contractors working locally.

Many in the community, including columnist Tony Brandt and newspaper editor Rick Murphy, would very much like to say no the the Sag Harbor School District’s  budget.

The Water Mill CAC, and the Village of Southampton are attempting to say no to LIPA’s effort to run new power lines on immense 60′ metal poles through the Village and parts of Water Mill and Bridgehampton.

Neighbors tried to say no to Wolffer Vineyard’s effort to erect new workforce housing on Narrow Lane in Bridgehampton, adjacent to the vineyard.

Almost everyone on Long Island, except the mayor of Greenport, wants to say a loud no to Broadwater’s floating Liquid Natural Gas terminal proposed for Long Island Sound.

Many, many people, including County Executive Steve Levy as well as the Southampton Town Board, and East Hampton Village’s powers-that-be are vociferously saying no to any kind of hiring hall or worklink center for day laborers wherever they gather looking for work.

Some folks in Sag Harbor want to say no to the new condominiums proposed for the area at the foot of the North Haven Bridge where the Sag Harbor Professional Building now stands.

Back to Narrow Lane where (the same?) residents said no to a bike lane along their street.

Sag Harbor citizenry said a most definite no to the purchase of two properties adjacent to the High School by the school district.

Barnes and Noble in Bridgehampton? No.

Affordable housing Remsenberg/Speonk? No.

Anti-war protesters in Southampton’s Independence Day Parade? No. (Well maybe, now that the courts have spoken.)

How about expanding Sunrise Highway all the way to the Bridgehampton-Sag Harbor Turnpike so that then-Governor Hugh Carey could get to his summer home on Shelter Island more easily? No. (Alright, that was a really dumb idea.)

A nuclear reactor in Shoreham? No way. (Yeah, that one was pretty dumb too.)

I could go on. I seem to have an almost photographic memory for ideas and projects that were shot down by community activists and/or local government. Frankly, I was one of the community activists expressing my disapproval in many (but not all) of the aforementioned instances. While I don’t regret my involvement in those issues, the cumulative weight of all those “nos” has got me thinking that I’m really tired of saying no. I’ve reached the point where I just want to say YES to something. Yes, Yes and Yes. And I’m going to start right now.

I say yes to Mike and Pat Trunzo’s proposal to create a mixed-use affordable housing/office development on their property on the Turnpike.

Yes to Five Towns Rural Transits’ efforts to create a light-rail and bus network here on the East End.

Yes to a new and/or expanded Library, wherever it may be located.

Yes to the Sag Harbor Village zoning code overhaul, and the Mayor’s and Trustees’ efforts to create more opportunities for affordable housing in the village…and yes to accessory apartments.

Yes to cops and cones on County Road 39, whatever the hell it costs.

Yes to more bike lanes, sidewalks and safer routes for kids walking and biking to school.

And finally, yes to acknowledging our common humanity and kinship to each other; to treating all people with dignity and respect; and so, yes to providing safe places where people who want to do needed work can find the work they need to do to support themselves and their families.
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Currently listening to: Long-Forgotten Fairytale by The Magnetic Fields

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My wife and I have three children, all Pierson graduates. To varying degrees, we think that the Sag Harbor School District did well by all of them, although I often think that Lauren, our oldest, suffered a bit for being just a year or two ahead of some significant changes at both Sag Harbor Elementary and Pierson that made them better schools. Well, as I said: “varying degrees.” Each of our children has his or her own tale to tell about going to school in Sag Harbor, but as I write this on an airplane coming home from a long weekend in Portland, Oregon, it’s our son Alec’s Pierson story that I’m thinking about.

Back around 1994, give or take a year, Pierson introduced what I believe was a first-time program, which involved inviting a local artist to teach an elective at the school. In this case, the artist was the now deceased award-winning documentary filmmaker Richard Kotuk. The elective was the art of documentary filmmaking. My son Alec and his friend Jonathan Nastasi, sophomores at the time, enrolled in the  class. Although we weren’t sure what to expect, what actually occurred vastly exceeded our expectations. When I say “our,” I’m speaking of my wife and me. I’m not sure what Alec’s expectations were, or even why he took the class. To my knowledge, he had not expressed an interest in film prior to enrolling in the course.

During the course of the school-year, the first-time student film makers, working in teams, were able to create their own complete short films. They were surprisingly good first efforts. For Alec and Jon, this began a (so far) decade-long enchantment with films and and the art of film making. A few years after graduation from Pierson, Jon and Alec collaborated on a self-financed documentary film called Ni Una Mas about the U.S. Naval bombing range in Vieques, Puerto Rico, and the local inhabitants’ desire to have it shut down, which led to protests and to civilians occupying the range in an effort to halt the bombing runs. Their film received much acclaim, several local showings here in Sag Hampton, and invitations to several film festivals. Part of the film was even shown on French television. Alec also found occasional work locally at LTV’s East End Studios where he functioned as a camera operator for several locally-produced TV series.

After this initial success, Jon and Alec decided they needed to be closer to the action, so to speak, and moved their budding enterprise to Portland, Oregon, which was, and is, cultivating a very active community of independent film makers, and small production houses. “It’s the new Seattle, which was the new L.A.,” Alec said at the time. O.K., he probably didn’t say exactly that, but I remember hearing something like that, at some point. It may have had more to do with affordability, though. So off they went to Portland, where they made some good industry connections, and gained some valuable experience. Eventually, Jon moved back to New York City where he continued to pursue a career in film and TV, and Alec enrolled in the Art Institute of Portland’s Digital Media Studies program.

Over the next five years, Alec worked his way through AIP, creating many interesting short films, while simultaneously working professionally on independent films and television commercials. One of Alec’s student projects, a music video, was awarded the grand prize at the Portland International Short Short Film Festival (PISS Fest, for short). At the same time, Jon was developing a reputation as a talented camera operator, director of photography and documentary film maker.

As regular readers of this blog already know, Alec and his fellow students Uli Beutter and Kurt Nishimura also entered a film in the Tropicana Fresh Take on Portland film contest which won the grand prize of $12,000 (incorrectly reported here earlier as $10,000) and a year’s supply of orange juice. Just to set the record straight, because many readers assumed that Alec was that film’s director:  Alec acted as art director and editor on the Tropicana film, which was written and directed by Uli Beutter.

So, we’ve now taken the long way around to the events of this past weekend, which made me realize how grateful I am to Pierson High School, and its artist in residence program. (I’m not sure that’s what they call it, but it will do for now.) On Friday, Alec, Uli and Kurt graduated from from AIP, and on Sunday, announced the official launch of their production company, SandyMontana; reason enough to celebrate, but there’s more. At the SandyMontana launch party on Sunday night, the trio were also able to announce that their newly formed venture would immediately become a division of Portland’s Red Door Films, and that they would be creatively involved not only with their own projects and clients, but also with the projects of the parent company. Zowie!

Jon meanwhile, has been very successful in New York, and now holds down the position of camera operator on TLC’s hit show, What Not to Wear, in addition to other work he takes on in film and TV through his company, Moving Films. Happily, Jon and Alec have not lost touch, and even find occasion to work together from time to time. Most recently, Jon took on the role of director of photography  for Alec’s senior project, I Got Shot With a Bullet and performed the same function for Uli Buetter’s video installation White, on which Alec worked as set designer. White also had its world premier this weekend at a gallery in Portland. Both Jon and Alec were there to help Uli celebrate; three successful members of Portland’s (and New York’s) growing film community, two of whom just happened to get their start thanks to Pierson High School in Sag Harbor.

Although I have not followed developments at Pierson closely, I do know that the program I have been referring to as “artist in residence” did not end with Richard Kotuk’s film making class. In fact, my younger daughter Corinne also benefited greatly from this program several years later when she was able to take class with fine artist Peter Solow (before he became a full-time teacher), and, I’m sure there have been and will continue to be other instances of this fine program making a difference in the lives of Sag Harbor students.

Postscript: Since returning home, I’ve read in the Express that contrary to the recommendation of the District Budget Committee, and strong opposition from several School Board members, the Sag Harbor Board of Education voted to add an additional art teacher to the staff at Pierson, and include the amount of his or her salary in the budget they will put before the voters this May. Just a thought, but might they not achieve the same result using one or more “artists in residence?” It’s worked before…

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Currently listening to: N
il Na La by Solas.

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It’s almost indisputable that local districts would benefit from some form of consolidation –  economically, if in no other way. While relatively small itself with about 950 students, Sag Harbor is surrounded by a group of even smaller schools including Sagaponack with about 15 students, Wainscott also with about 15, Shelter Island with roughly 260 and the aforementioned Bridgehampton with 153. (All enrollment figures are estimates based on 2005 enrollment, except Bridgehampton’s which was taken from the story in the Southampton Press.) According to NYS Education Dept. figures, “instructional expenditures” per “general education pupil” for 2005 were: Sag Harbor – $10,491, Shelter Island – $13,277, and Bridgehampton – $34,423. Costs per special education pupil are higher. Figures for Wainscott and Sagaponack were not given.

I don’t think that I have to connect the dots here, the figures speak for themselves; combining districts will result in lower costs, spread over a larger tax-base. But what about the quality of the education? Will it suffer or improve? Of course, there’s no way to actually know, but at least one study shows that even were all these districts to consolidate into one, the resulting district would, at least at the high school level, have just about an ideal number of students. Dr. Sandra Stotsky, writing in EdNews.org cites the following research findings of a study reported in 1997 by Valerie Lee of the University of Michigan and Julia Smith of Western Michigan University.

“After analyzing progress in mathematics and reading from 8^th to 12^th grade for 10,000 students in a federal data base from almost 789 public and private schools of varying size, the two researchers concluded that “the ideal high school” enrolls between 600 and 900 students. Size matters, they believe, because it affects social relations within the school and the school’s ability to provide a strong curriculum for all students. Very large schools lack a sense of community and cannot shape student behavior, while very small schools cannot offer a full academic curriculum. In the Lee and Smith study, low-income students made the greatest academic gains in schools of 600-900 students. Academic gains for both low-income and high-income students declined in schools enrolling fewer than 600 students, and declined again in schools enrolling fewer than 300.”

The other potential problem resulting from school consolidation is the loss of the school as a focus of community identity and pride. Schools often serve as a locus not only for students, but also parents, alumni, sports fans and civic boosters. Community members often fear that without their school, the community will lose its sense of identity, which is exactly what Jim Walker, Vice President of Bridgehampton’s School Board, said in the Southampton Press article. Yet on its editorial page, the Press pointed out that other communities have overcome this problem, specifically mentioning the Eastport and South Manor school districts, which together opened a new high school. And, let’s face it, Bridgehampton and Sag Harbor are close enough to each other that sharing facilities would not be a logistical problem. Neither are we so different as people that we could not come together as one school community. The most difficult problem might be what to call the basketball team. I, for one, vote for The Killer Whales.

(Note to those readers who are not from this area: Bridgehampton High School’s basketball team, which has won several state championships, is known as the Killer Bees. Sag Harbor’s also very competitive teams are known as the Whalers.)

“Ross School does not market itself,” said Head of School Tim Kelly this week, choosing to focus on its programming and unique curriculum structure. The mission of the school, which Mr. Kelly said may be responsible for attracting some students, “focuses on changing the world.”

Now, you may be wondering why I threw in that “a tad defensively” comment above. On the surface, there doesn’t appear to be any defensiveness in Mr. Kelly’s remark. But, I guess it depends on what you call marketing. Actually, I guess marketing is the wrong word. Maybe arm twisting is a better way to put it.

Let’s cut to the chase. Say you’re a typical Sag Harbor parent with 2.1 children. Your son is entering middle school, and for one reason or another, you believe he would do better at the Ross School. Your younger child is in first grade, and both you and she love the Sag Harbor Elementary School, and so you plan to keep her there. Then reality hits in the form of your son’s Ross School tuition. You’re shocked and dismayed at the cost. Frantically, you call the admissions office to see if there’s something they can do. And, of course there is, provided you send both your children to Ross. We can offer a much better financial incentive to families sending all their children to our school, they tell you. Not marketing, exactly…

Not-marketing scenario #2: Your daughter has just completed the fourth grade in Sag Harbor Elementary and is doing well there. You’re planning to let her stay there for fifth grade, her final year at SHES. However, you’re not sure about sending her to Middle School at Pierson. Middle school can be a tough time, you’ve heard, and you think your child may do better in a private school during those years. So, you pick up the phone and make a call to Ross to get the ball rolling. Oh, you want to send your daughter here starting in sixth grade, they say. That’s our most popular year. We fill up really quickly, and can accept very few new students in sixth grade. However, if you send her here this fall for fifth grade, then she will be assured of being here throughout her middle school years. Again, not what most people think of as marketing, but the results are the same…maybe better. (By the way, this one’s been going on for years.)

Now there’s nothing dishonest, illegal, or even immoral about either of the above tactics. It’s just that school board members, school administrators, worried parents and the editor of the local paper want to know why kids parents are choosing private schools, and I thought all the facts should be out in the open. Now you know two reasons; there are undoubtedly many others. What do you think is going on? Should the District be concerned? Do they need to take steps to counter the trend? I’ll probably have more to say on this subject (I always have more to say), but now it’s your turn. Click on “Post a Comment” below to join the conversation.