From the BCCT.
Kadri to resign as superintendent
School board members said they haven’t met to select an interim superintendent or possible replacement.
By RACHEL CANELLI
Neshaminy Superintendent Paul Kadri submitted his 90-day resignation Thursday after the Groton Public School District in Groton, Conn. agreed to hire him as its new superintendent, Kadri confirmed Thursday.
Groton school board members Wednesday night approved a three-year, roughly $165,000-a-year contract with Kadri. He’ll replace a longtime administrator in the Groton district. That salary is about $10,000 less than he’s making in Neshaminy, he said.
With 5,200 students, Groton is roughly half the size of the Neshaminy district, officials said.
“Obviously, this is a very bittersweet emotion that I have right now,” Kadri said from his cell phone as he visited the Connecticut district’s 11 schools to meet students and staff.
“I genuinely love the Neshaminy system and community,” he said. “I will miss working with them. But I’m very excited about this community and I look forward to building the same type of relationships. This just seems like a fantastic fit up here in terms of my skills and philosophy.”
Kadri, 43, came to Neshaminy from the Moorestown School District in Burlington County in 2006. He signed a four-year contract with Neshaminy. Earlier this year, he was a finalist for a similar spot in Michigan, administrators said.
“I, along with many in the Neshaminy community, am very disappointed to see Mr. Kadri leave,” said Neshaminy board member Joseph Blasch. “I wish him well and I think his ‘footprint’ will be here for a long time. I can only hope that his vision for the district will somehow be carried on.”
With a background in finance, technology and assessment, Kadri was described by parents and residents as studentfocused. Some have credited him and his administration with recently reaching budget goals and improving the high school’s standardized test scores.
Blasch said he understood Kadri’s decision to leave, since “there hasn’t always been harmony between some of the board members and Mr. Kadri.”
That discord was evident at board meetings. A few board members, including board President Richard Eccles, have disagreed with Kadri over hiring processes, the budget and recent state exam results.
“I want to wish Mr. Kadri the best in his new endeavor,” Eccles said.
“The Neshaminy School District is presently involved and facing a great many educational and financial challenges in the coming year. The Neshaminy community is very fortunate to have a number of highly-qualified educational professionals that are more than ready for the challenges that will face our new superintendent,” Eccles added. “It is very important that whoever is chosen that he or she can hit the ground running and make the decisions that will propel this district to the prominence that this district, the children and community deserve.”
Regarding his job hunt, Kadri previously had said he and the Neshaminy school board lacked similar expectations and priorities and it was in the board’s best interest for him to move on.
Neshaminy school board members said they have yet to meet to pick an interim superintendent or possible replacement. Before Kadri was hired, Assistant Superintendent Lou Muenker served on an interim basis, but officials didn’t specify who would be considered.
Friday, October 10, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Also from today's BCCT. Apparently, you can encounter environmental problems like asbestos when renovating older buildings. Apparently, this is not a problem when it's your idea - it would only become a massive life & death issue if it was the idea of someone else you disagreed with politically.
Renovation project delayed
By GEMA MARIA DUARTE
Bucks County Courier Times
BRISTOL - Renovations to the Bristol Police Department and the Bristol Consolidated Volunteer Fire Co. building were supposed to be completed last month. Now they're expected to be finished next month at the earliest and spring 2009 at the latest.
Some environmental problems, including asbestos, have held up the work, according to Angelo Rago, the renovation project manager. The extra work will cost taxpayers, but council President Ralph DiGuiseppe said the project still will be within the $2 million that was budgeted.
“It's an old building with a lot of problems,” said DiGuiseppe, who expects the project to be finished in 2009. “Maybe March or April,” he said.
At a work session Monday night, Rago told the borough council he expects the work to be completed by mid November.
If he's right, the cost to taxpayers could be an extra $13,500, since Rago's project management fee is $4,500 a month. If the council president is right, the extra cost could reach $31,500.
The council will decide at Tuesday's meeting whether to extend Rago's contract beyond the original eight-month deal, which ended in August.
Since January, Rago has been paid $80,000 for architectural and engineering work, $36,000 for the eight months of management and $3,000 for additional work caused by a deteriorating ceiling and a blueprint for a possible future project involving the fire department's merger with another fire company in another building. That would open up more space for the police department.
“We are still within our budget,” DiGuiseppe assured Councilman Jim Lutz, who has opposed the project since its inception. “It will not exceed what we put in the budget.”
From yesterday's BCCT. Apparently, T-Mobile is on a cell tower building spree in this area. Apparently.
A conditional use hearing for proposed cell phone antennas atop a building in Newtown's historic district has been postponed for a month, borough officials announced Wednesday night.
T-Mobile Northeast LLC wants to put six to eight telecommunications antennas extending from the smokestack at the Stocking Works building on South Main Street. Originally scheduled for next week, the hearing will be held at the council's 6:30 p.m. Nov. 11 meeting.
One of the issues that need to be resolved for the proposal is that a borough ordinance says that communications antennas are not allowed in the historic district. However, the site's V-2 village gateway zoning permits telecommunications antennas by conditional use.
The antennas would be housed in a smokestack that rises from the building and would extend about 13 feet above that smokestack. The extension would be enclosed in something matching the smokestack's look, T-Mobile says. The proposal includes a 12-by-22-foot enclosure for accessory telecommunications equipment.
From today's Phila. Inquirer. I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something familiar about this guy.
Chestnut Hill's curmudgeon saying farewell
By Karen Heller
Inquirer Columnist
Chestnut Hill is a tidy, pretty, polite community composed of tidy, pretty, polite people. Know what? Ed Feldman is not like that. He is, according to 75-year resident Tom Fleming, "rude, crude and unattractive."
Feldman, with his gray ponytail and beret, sits in the Chestnut Hill Coffee Co., trashing the owner.
Does Feldman care? No, he does not.
He's lived here 13 years, a burlap sack in a sea of cashmere. For the first seven years, he insists, "I was the model of decorum."
Nobody remembers those years.
Then Feldman, 55, the self-professed "last of the yippies," unleashed havoc on the Chestnut Hill Community Association and its board, on which he served twice. He would yell. He saw corruption everywhere. He loved histrionics, invoking philosophers and the Soviet Union, once kidnapping his own duck. (Don't ask.)
"They stifled dissent. Most of the people here didn't care," he says. "They're a bunch of arrogant and apathetic rich people."
Diplomacy? Not Feldman's strong suit.
On PBS, then cable, Feldman was one of the "Furniture Guys." In Chestnut Hill, he was known as a lot of things, most unprintable.
His letters, so voluminous as to constitute a political manifesto, were a constant, anarchic feature in the Chestnut Hill Local.
"Obviously Ed Feldman has too much time on his hands, a flowery, vivid imagination, and an incredible command of the English language," Lou Aiello wrote.
Another resident argued that "Ed Feldman should not write anything in the Local" because "it is apparent from his hair, dress and demeanor that Feldman takes his orders directly from Comrade Stalin and the Central Committee of the Politburo."
Oh, wait. Feldman wrote that.
Shining town on the hill
In 1996, Feldman moved from Germantown to Chestnut Hill for his daughter. "She liked to hang out here. I got sick of driving. And I liked a small-town atmosphere."
Chestnut Hill is a small town. In many ways, it's more Main Line than the Main Line. There have always been dissent and disagreement at community meetings, Fleming says, "but they've been civil."
Feldman doesn't do civil.
"The worst crime you could commit in Chestnut Hill is to be rude and not follow the rules," says Local editor Pete Mazzaccaro. "Ed has no regard for being polite. He interrupts. He's convinced his way is the right way." He's been yelled at more often than a Phillies pitcher on an off night, often by people who never yell.
This is one of Feldman's proudest achievements.
"Look, I'm lazy. If they had held their community meetings at the bottom of the hill, instead of a few yards from my house, I might not have gone," Feldman says. "They held their meetings Thursdays. Seinfeld was off the air. I had nothing else to do. You know why I did this? I couldn't get into Cheney's office."
But here's a news flash: Feldman sold his house and is moving West!
Almost gone, hardly forgotten
"Everybody's happy that he's going to California," Fleming says. "I would be surprised if you can find anyone who supports what he did."
That's not quite true. On Germantown Avenue, the central business artery, everyone greets Feldman - blue bloods, graybeards.
"People are split. They love him or hate him," Mazzaccaro says. "There are people who miss him, and there are those who are very happy he's not writing."
Moving to California has been a long-held dream. Feldman bought a place in El Sobrante, north of Berkeley, a sleepy town that doesn't sound remotely like Chestnut Hill. He's fixing up the house, pitching a green-energy show to PBS.
Won't Feldman be bored not playing community agitator when he's 3,000 miles away?
"I get the Local online. I've got free long distance on my cell," he says throwing out his arms. "So what's the problem?"
Post a Comment