Morrisville parents want long-term plan

From the BCCT.

What a shock. We want a plan. That's the first time I've heard about that request...NOT!

One of our own borough councilmen lost total control at a school board meeting once shouting "Shame! Shame!" at the late Ed Frankenfield. Mr. Frankenfield's crime? Demanding a plan from the Emperor. (Side note to all who have heard about the Emperor's removal of public speakers from the January 28 meeting because they were disruptive. Not only did he not stop Mr. Worob, he applauded Mr. Worob's comments when they were concluded.)

Do you get it now, your Lord Highness? Where is the plan?

Be sure to send your written comments on the closure plan by Monday at 3:00 P.M. The Emperor and Solicitor Fitzpatrick promised answers to the questions posed.

Morrisville parents want long-term plan
Residents are encouraged to submit written opinions about the proposed closing of M.R. Reiter Elementary by Monday.
By MANASEE WAGH

Whether or not their district is one school short, residents would like to see a long-term plan for Morrisville’s children.

People scattered across the auditorium at the Morrisville Middle/Senior High School listened as about 20 residents, most of them parents, give testimony during a public hearing Thursday evening to close M.R. Reiter Elementary School.

Parents expressed frustration with a December furnace explosion that has required the roughly 250 Reiter students to attend class in various district locations, including the high school. Starting next month, modular units will be installed on Grandview Elementary’s property for grades one and two.

“What are you going to do next? How do we address the children’s safety, especially if we put kindergarten kids with high school kids?” said resident Kevin Waters.

Various parents said they laud the administration’s efforts to continue their children’s education during the emergency, but denounce the board’s lack of full disclosure about a long-term plan if Reiter is permanently closed.

“I’d like to see what they promised during the campaign, that they were going to work on education and safety,” said Susan Hough, the parent of a child at Reiter.

Ed Bailey, the father of a child in the district, said he’d like to see a referendum to decide whether or not Reiter should be closed.

“I don’t want see-sawing. We should come up with a reasonable compromise that most voters will support. There’s been a lot of anger, and I’d like to see us come together,” he said.

The two boilers in the aging building are about 50 years old and should have been replaced twice during their lifetime, said Paul DeAngelo, the district’s business administrator, at the hearing.

Reiter is in poor shape, with cracking that allows water to seep into the building and some features that date back to the 1920s, said Bill Corfield, a representative from Vitetta, an architectural and engineering firm that performed an assessment of the district’s two elementary schools, Reiter and the smaller Grandview.

If the Reiter building and property are sold, the remaining two schools could use the money for renovation, board President William Hellmann has said. Vitetta is starting the design phase for renovating the high school soon and the board has directed the firm to look at fixing problems in Grandview as well.

Renovating Reiter’s structural issues and physical systems, including windows, boilers, electrical, plumbing and lighting, would cost about $4 million. Renovating Grandview would cost about $2.6 million.

“Grandview is not large enough for the children we have. I haven’t seen a long-term plan to place students,” said Johanny Manning, a former school board member who has a child in Reiter. She said the cur rent situation crams elementary students into makeshift classrooms, and doesn’t allow for proper instruction in either core subjects or extras, like music or art.

After the hearing, the board cannot make any decisions about closing Reiter for at least 90 days, according to the school code. District solicitor Michael Fitzpatrick encouraged residents to submit written opinions about the proposed closing by Monday, Feb. 2 at 3 p.m. to contribute to the public hearing record. The opinions can be given to the administrative offices at 550 West Palmer St.

Financial problems have plagued the district for years, with previous boards trying different options to provide a quality education in better buildings. The current board is looking into possibly housing preK though grade eight in the high school building, a plan that requires sending grades nine through 12 to other districts on a paid tuition basis.

Fitzpatrick said at the Wednesday board meeting that he has not gotten “entirely positive” responses from neighboring districts about this proposition.

About 855 students currently attend school in Morrisville’s three buildings.

Though parent Elvin Velez did not give testimony at the hearing, he said he’d like to see a consolidated school done properly.

“As a taxpayer, it could be cumbersome, but that’s the nature of the beast,” he said. “We could pull through this as a community to find solutions.”

Chicken Alert, Revisited

For a long time, I've been pointing out the silence of the stop the school people. Here's an entry from where the former Gibson board was moving forward with the new school and Angry Al Radosti emerged as the voice of reason...with no comment.

While the Emperor was marking up old board minutes for his own purposes to show that he was interested in health and safety, let's look back even farther.

Let's set the wayback machine for August 10, 2007.

Board member Alfred Radosti, a Republican who won both the Democratic and GOP primary election in May, said, “this community has spoken more than once and they [school board members] don't listen to the community.”

Radosti, who opposes a new school, refused to comment further.

Gibson, in defending construction of the new school, said, “It's a life, safety and health issue to allow these buildings [the existing schools] to continue to deteriorate.”

Oops...it looks like the former board was worried about the same health and safety thing. It's just that William R. Hellmann CPA, Angry Al Radosti, Marlys Mihok, William Farrell, Gloria Heater, and Robin Reithmeyer ran on a platform to STOP THE SCHOOL and not one bit more. They were elected and with Brenda Worob, did just that. They stopped the school.

Last week's Reiter blast and the deteriorations since then fall squarely on these shoulders. Anyone who disputes that needs to re-read the stop the school campaign literature.

Reithmeyer took the school board job with open eyes. From the beginning she's recognized there's more to running a school system than being a taxpayer advocate. Very quickly, she joined the late Ed Frankenfield in asking "where's the plan?"

Just as quickly, the stop the school purists produced all sorts of fatwas and shunnings against Reithmeyer. She was defying the one true way: HELLMANN!

She doggedly kept on and is exposing Hellmann's shady and underhanded activities left and right. Now Heater has done a similar expose showing more of the Emperor's tacky tactics.

Perhaps Non Sequitur illustrates their leadership principle best:



From the beginning there was no plan, and there still is no plan. All they wanted was to stop the school and lower your taxes.

Your kids? Collateral damage.

But Where's the PLAN??

From the BCCT.

And so the renovations begin. The overarching renovations plan is STILL missing in action. It looks like we're going to piecemeal ourselves to death on uncoordinated fits of renovation spending.

The board members who make the political decisions won't comment on the record, so they send out Tim Lastician to take the slings and arrows instead. We're not sure when the renovations will be done...We hope it will be half done before September 2009.

This is all very reassuring...NOT! What will we do when the "Welcome Back, Students!" signs next September are accompanied by "Caution: Construction Zone" signs?

Channeling the departed Ed Frankenfield for a moment, we've been waiting, and waiting, and waiting for a plan. The plan is probably out there, shrouded in secrecy and known but to only a few of the Emperor's most dedicated Kool-Aid cronies.

Why don't we want to upgrade our schools and welcome those with disabilities? Isn't it ironic that many of those taxpayers who most oppose making the schools a little more user friendly are among those who hobble most desperately up the steps to attend board meetings.

Paging Clara Peller: Where's the plan?

LOL: I don't think there's anyone back there, either.

Renovation plans moving forward
The parts and labor for the long-anticipated renovations are estimated to cost about $3.7 million plus another $400,000 in contract fees.
By MANASEE WAGH

Renovation plans at the 50-year-old Morrisville high school are swinging into gear.

The recent decision has come after years of wavering among previous and current board members about what to do with the district’s high school and two elementary schools.

Morrisville’s school board is working with Vitetta, a Philadelphia-based architectural and engineering corporation, to update old heating, ventilating and air-conditioning systems at the Middle/Senior High School.

The project’s scope includes a range of new components, including ventilators for heating in classrooms, windows with better weatherproofing, expansion tanks for boilers, heating and ventilation units in the gym, locker rooms, auditorium and kitchen, gas-fired hot water heaters and parts for the air- conditioning units in the library and administrative offices.

Vitetta also will test the hot water supply and piping at the high school because it probably has corroded due to age, said the facilities manager, Tim Lastichen.

There have been no sizeable renovations to any of the district’s three schools in decades, Lastichen said.

Morrisville’s two elementary schools are also in need of similar repairs, and the school board is in talks with Vitetta to perform upgrades there.

Morrisville residents have been calling for a plan to improve the deteriorating school buildings since the current board canceled plans to build a consolidated K-12 school early this year.

Part of the original $30 million bond meant for the new school will be used instead for the renovations.

The company’s fees for overseeing the high school upgrades total about $400,000, and the cost of replacement parts and labor is expected to be around $3.7 million.

At the previous school board meeting, board member Robin Reithmeyer voted against the initiative to pursue these renovations because the district isn’t applying for state reimbursement.

Under certain circumstances, the state Department of Education can refund a school district a portion of construction project costs if the district follows the department’s approval process, called PlanCon.

Vitetta architects found the project does not meet state guidelines necessary for PlanCon approvals, said William Hellmann, board president.

Either renovation or construction is eligible for state reimbursement only under two criteria, according to the state Department of Education: adding capacity to the building, as in the case of a growing student population, or bringing the building up to modern American Disabilities Act standards.

Therefore, Morrisville’s renovations wouldn’t be eligible, according to the state.

“Believe me, if I could get money from the state, I would be the first to do it,” Hellmann said. “This work is for the health, safety and welfare of the children and teachers and needs to be done as soon as possible.”

Though a concrete timeline for completing the upgrades is not available yet, the district plans to dive in as soon as the school year is over in June. Hopefully, the work will be at least half finished before the summer ends, Lastichen said.

Originally built in 1925, the district’s two elementary schools, Grandview and M. R. Reiter, are much older than the high school.

Grandview’s front section was added to the original building in 1957 and its back section was added in 1968. Reiter needed to be renovated in the 1960s after catching fire.

“But nothing’s been touched since,” Lastichen said. “So it needs it.”

Fortune Telling in Morrisville

The Morrisville School District is performing the same dance I've seen in business quite often, and even participated in a few times. The organization is making the transformation from a vibrant and viable entity to something we talk about from the dim mists of the "good old days."

Sometimes the death throes come in a blaze of glory, as we learned recently with Bear Stearns. The comet blazes mightily and flames out leaving everyone stunned and confused. No, MSD is not going to go out with a bang, but with the metaphorical whimper.

The board of directors (our intrepid Stop the School board, also known as the Emperor and his Accomplices) is providing uncertain and confusing direction for the future. Remember the Frankenfield question: "What is your plan?" In every single job interview and at least once a year in my annual reviews, the question is asked: "What is your plan? Where do you see yourself in five years?" Everyone works toward a goal. That goal has to be defined by the vision makers at the top.

Since the vision is undefined, we have to read between the lines, and the lines speak of destruction: Don't hire teachers or staff. Lower the taxes, no matter the cost. Close the schools. Tuition out the students. Treat the administration like untrustworthy lackeys. That attitude filters through the organization and sets off the alarm bells of self-preservation in everyone. When they start asking the "five years" question of themselves, they are faced with what the district is expected to look like in 2013. "It's the end of the world as we know it" is not an unexpected conclusion.

These people have families, homes, cars, and visions and plans of their own for their lives. They all depend on an expectation of continued employment to make these dreams come true.

So now, those who are able or willing will be making the circuit on Monster.com and sending out their resumes. We're going to see a drain of some of the best and the brightest from MSD leaving for other greener pastures.

That happens all the time, but the reverse side of the exodus is that replacements come in. Here's where the dynamics fall apart. The future of MSD is cloudy and murky, and even the medium on Pennsylvania Avenue can see that. I think Helen Keller would have had a 90% chance in seeing it.

Imagine an applicant coming into a board meeting to see what the district is like. I would expect that a cartoonish outline of the person would be left in the wall as they made the hastiest exit known to man since Bugs Bunny.

The first interview question would be, "Do you want to work for the Emperor and his Board of Accomplices?" How many of us would answer yes? Tends to cut down the interviewing time, doesn't it?

Let's fast forward a year from now. Who replaced any of the departed people? Were their positions left vacant and the "do more with less" slack taken up by the survivors? How many of these survivors saw the handwriting on the wall and lit out for greener pastures of their own? No disrespect meant to any future district hires, but what of the caliber of the people who came in? We're not paying the best wages and overall job security is pretty minimal.

It was easy to attract applicants to the RMS Titanic when it was the indestructible behemoth. When you hire on a crew to staff a doomed ship, the applicant flow diminishes slightly.

Can this still be reversed? Possibly. Without more parents and concerned taxpayers showing up to challenge the self-destructive behavior of this board, this is the future. The PDE or the state appointed undertakers will just sift through the wreckage. Let's remember that our kids are in that wreckage.