The Hudson Children's Book Festival has been an anticipated event on the Hudson calendar for more than a decade. This year's festival, which took place on May 4, was the 13th annual festival. (The festival took a couple of years off because of the pandemic.)
I was present at a meeting in 2008 when plans for the Hudson Children's Book Festival were first announced. The meeting took place in the library at Montgomery C. Smith, then the middle school of the Hudson City School District. Lisa Dolan had just been made "Reading Coach" for HCSD, and she and HCSD superintendent Maria Suttmeier were both present at the meeting. The festival was touted as a way to promote literacy in the Hudson City School District and improve reading scores. Sadly, over the years, there has been no evidence that the festival actually achieved the latter goal, but, as one of the largest children's book festivals in New York State, for a while the largest children's book festival in the state, the event was and continues to be hugely successful, bringing positive recognition and accolades not only to the Hudson City School District but also to the City of Hudson.
COPYRIGHT 2024 CAROLE OSTERINK
There is something fundamentally wrong with the HCSD. I got that vague sense early on and it's been reinforced by a number of strange incidents that have occurred recently.
ReplyDeleteAs far as elected positions go, becoming a member of the Board of Education is one of the harder positions to achieve given that there's a convoluted petitioning process that needs to precede it. Yet, inexplicably, we wound up with members of Gestapo on this board. Their main concern ought to be the edification of their children but clearly, after this latest clown show, nothing could be further from the truth.
I don't know what the specific powers are that the mayor holds over the schools but however limited they are, the least I expect of him is to make obvious shortcomings a public topic of debate. But no such thing. All I see is a self-congratulatory love-fest between him and Dr. Pennyman who, as a veteran of 30 years in education, should know better.
It is quite literally an achievement how the HSCD, despite being a rural school district, manages to effortlessly replicate all the problems of an inner-city school in the Bronx.
First, HCSD isn’t a rural school district. It is in fact a mixed urban and rural district. That doesn’t explain or excuse its staggering dysfunction or consistent inability to do its basic job. Second, even if the mayor had any jurisdiction over the SD (he has none) he’s shown himself time and again to be essentially unconcerned with Hudson and its citizens except for those whose last name starts with “Gal.”
DeleteAll that being said, it’s a good thing Selha is gone if she thinks an address on a web site is more important than the fact that the HCSD is, by every measure, a failure. And her demeanor and language during the “hearing” (or whatever that HUAC-like display of hubris at the BoE meeting was) merely underscored that the voters got it right.
The book festival is and has always been a grand success for Hudson’s children. You’d think a failing operation like the HCSD would embrace it, not alienate it.
Well, there's nothing urban about a county seat with a population of less than 6,000 people. Calling it mixed urban and rural strikes me as a very American view. I grew up on the German country side and my high school was in a city of 14k people. Our county seat had a population of 45k. No one would have considered it urban and typical urban issues were unknown.
DeleteThat said, we also didn't have school boards which are at the core of the problem here. Giving parents de-facto control over teachers is a terrible idea. The state ought to set a reasonable curriculum, the schools teach it and everyone else gets to shut up.
The alternative is someone like Selha ultimately putting the kibosh on the one thing that was good about the HCSD.
Well you can deal with the situation we have here or you can reminisce about your idyllic childhood. The urban/ rural dichotomy goes to social matters, not headcounts.
DeleteYou seem to imply that what makes Hudson "mixed urban" is the presence of certain social issues. I am saying that, a priori and based purely on population density, Hudson and the surrounding county are rural.
DeleteThe question I was asking is why the HCSD (and not just the school district by the city itself) has problems commonly associated with urban centers and urban density when there isn't any. This is the actual dichotomy that ought to be talked about.
This comment was submitted by email from Tiffany Martin:
DeleteHCSD is classified as a small city school district, which you can learn more about here: http://mobile.smallcityschools.org/
In response to your question, the site above provides the following info:
“…small city school districts have many of the same demographic characteristics as the five large city school districts in New York State. These characteristics include higher percentages of disadvantaged students, limited English proficient students, dropouts and students with special educational needs. Small city school districts are also typically characterized by higher percentages of families living on incomes below 200% of the poverty level, minority children, unemployment and single parent families.”
It is no coincidence that that this same Board kicked out one of the best literacy programs it had, with School Life News. In the words of the New York Times, SLN "delivered literacy with journalism" to some 2,000 third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and ninth-graders for nearly eight years, helping improve student ELA scores by as much as eleven points in some cases. Hopefully, with two new board members and a growing community appreciation for our childrens' limitless potential, we will continue to honor, support and promote programs like the Hudson Children's Book Festival and School Life News. --peter meyer, founder, SLN
ReplyDeleteThe more things change, the more they stay the same.
ReplyDeleteTell me that your alternative academic program at Greenport wasn't something new and that it improved students' academic outcomes. --peter meyer
DeleteYes Peter is was new and did improve student academics and behavior. And we were working with the students who were not doing well in the mainstream school system. But when push came to shove it was the "mainstream" population that benefited from the cutting of the program since the $400,000 grant from the state to run ALP was confiscated to keep from any programs from being cut at at the "mainstream" school.
DeleteThis is my point of reference Peter. That program was trashed, and now the Book Fair was being trashed. Certain mentalities just never go away.
Bookfair: do yourself a favor and pull the festival from the HCSD. Any board that acts like that, doesn't give you a heads up beforehand, and includes chastising an assistant in a public forum doesn't deserve the benefits of a first class event. They have clearly revealed where they stand, and your path forward with them will get mired in bureaucracy. Find new partners (Spark of Hudson), galleries, and others, to host various downtown venues for the speakers/readings. Logistics may be more difficult at first but overall you won't need to deal with a "host" with such a bad attitude.
ReplyDeleteIn theory, giving "a first class event" to a dysfunctional organization should improve the latter. But not so fast. It turns out that the gears of dysfunction are complicated and multi-layered. The dissing of the Bookfair and of School Life News come from a similar cause: ignorance without vigilance. God bless Carole and Gossips for providing these news stories which expose HCSD's ignorance. But it's not nearly enough to provide the public with the "constant vigilance" needed to show the public what is really going on in this $50 million-plus public funds operation. The numbers are staggering: $56 million for 1600 kids = $35,000 per student! Two thirds of whom don't read at grade level. The BOE is spending $70,000 a year just to spin the new superintendent's ignorance (on top of her $200k salary) . The answer is not taking our world-class programs elsewhere, but to convince our voters and taxpayers to demand INFORMATION from our news organizations to tell us about the terrible results produced by the public institution that holds our community's future -- literally!!! -- in its hands. --peter meyer
DeleteSo, this is what the community elected to run the school? we are all doomed
ReplyDeleteBill, as some little ol' lady once wrote, "It takes a village...." What she didn't anticipate was what dysfunctional villages create...... --peter meyer
DeleteOh, it's that Selha! Pals with Tom Depietro Thursdays on the radio, real jokesters the two of them. Yada yada, can't shut up, always laughing at their own jokes. So full of herself she can't help constantly interrupting Tom. Good riddance to her! (Maybe Tom's bad habit of regularly interrupting Council members during meetings, especially women, is payback from the interruptions and disrespect he gets from Selah!)
ReplyDeleteMaking fun of and insulting hard working volunteers who have donated large amounts of time working to improve the school and community really drags yourself into the gutter. Both my kids went through the HCSD, one is still in 9th grade, the other in college. I found the teachers, administrators, councilors and facilities to be more than adequate. If a parent is involved and the child motivated, the educational opportunity at HCSD is good.
ReplyDeleteThe school has terrible ratings, based on graduation rates and student performance.
Due to this many families in the district who have the resources will homeschool their kids or pay to send them to some other school. This results in poor ratings. The school and teachers do a pretty good job under the circumstances, seems to me.
Dear Slow Art, there are many good and and wonderful people who work in HCSD, but there are many bad and ignorant education practices used by these wonderful people. You have to ask yourself, why the district has "terrible ratings, based on graduation rates and student performance." It's a cop-out, sorry to say, they "do a pretty good job under the circumstances." I challenge you, and all voters and taxpayers who think we have these ratings because of poverty or bad parents, to meet me on Warren Street at high noon to hear me shout, "it ain't poverty or bad parents that cause the bad ratings: it's bad leadership and bad pedagogy. We have the resources; $36,000 per kid. Plenty of school districts with high rates of poverty and those other factors that you and many are afraid to talk about, do just fine with their $36k. Please, no more excuses. --peter meyer
DeleteAmazing. We have a village supporting our children and a school district that seems to want nothing more than to burn that village to the ground. Tell me why, as a City, we're screaming for housing when we should be screaming for a charter or STEM school?
ReplyDeleteMaybe there's a backstory here that I'm unaware of, but having watched the exchange I am shocked at Ms Graham's antagonistic and officious attitude, which seems completely uncalled for. Even if there was a suspicion that the Book Fair was intentionally misleading the public – for which zero evidence was presented – the appropriate thing to do would be to handle it by correspondence (email), and politely, so that the matter could be resolved. There seems little doubt of the good intentions of the Book Fair organizers, and the fact that it's been this way for many years without comment.
ReplyDeleteBeing so unpleasant reflects back on you, Ms Graham, not on the Book Fair. What a sour note on which to end your tenure!
If you knew Cece Graham, her behavior at the meeting probably wouldn't surprise you one bit.
Delete