Graduation Time!
We are a month beyond this year’s school board and budget votes, on the eve of yet another high school graduation at our beloved Onteora. The time is right for both looking back and looking forward, for seeing what we bring with us and what we’re aiming at.
The outgoing board will preside over the upcoming festivities, marshalling the community’s pride for its graduating seniors. The community should also make sure that these three, Board President MaryJane Bernholz, Vice President Cindy O’Connor, and former VP Rita Vanacore, be celebrated for the hard work and dedication they have given Onteora as board members over the past three years, as well as concerned and active parents and committee members for the entirety of their adult lives in the district.
After ensuring the disappearance of the Large Parcel issue that so disrupted Onteora peacefulness, at least for the time being, Bernolz, O’Connor and Vanacore worked hard to ensure careful fine-tuning of a mass of school policies, including a line-by line- budget paring approach the incoming board will have to work hard to match. They hired a new superintendent and raised key questions about the district’s future, both financial and educational.
Their only points of downfall may have been the result of overreaching, in terms of their unpopular redistricting plan to create a new 5-8 Middle School that necessitated the closing of at least one more elementary school. As well as of a difficulty communicating their concerns, and overall agenda, beyond the scope of the immediate school district and its community.
The incoming board members also deserve a warm welcome… they arrive with great intentions, openness, a great sense of caring for the district, and an enthusiasm that most be applauded. Furthermore, their instincts seem in the right place… to approach the current shifts in the economy carefully, without big changes. To search out new ways of reaching out to ALL of the wide Onteora community. And to look for the sorts of alternatives to what other places do that matches the alternatives our local towns and other organizations have tried in this area for decades.
While we’re at it, we should also send out kudos to District Superintendent Leslie Ford and District Business Administrator Victoria MacLaren for their recent contract extensions. Our gut feeling is that it’s a good time to accentuate the solid elements of Onteora for the moment, and work with what we know for a while until we get fully past the wild swings of change that have marked the district’s last decade.
The only change we ask is that, from here on in, we take it for granted that everyone involved in our schools respect we, the people, the “Onteora stakeholders,” as a thoughtful, involved citizenry that should never be pandered to with token smiles. We ain’t that… sorry. From here on in, let’s show all around us, including the national body politic, what real “straight talk” and meaningful, well-conceived change is all about.
Let’s look at the upcoming ceremonies as a needed graduation for ALL of us.
PS