“For the Children…..”

                 

(Ed. Note:  LT Ben Dover has been begging for another chance at reporting on the local situation, so we’ve graciously decided to let him have his way with this post.)

Ref: http://othersideofbrunswick.blogspot.com/2013/03/shirley-this-cannot-be-21-million-may.html

Ref: http://www.brunswick.k12.me.us/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/k-8.pdf

Mum’s the word for the Moms??

Hi, everybody.  And thanks to Mr. Poppycock for giving me another shot at building my reporting skills.

I’d like to review the school budget/planning scenario unfolding before our eyes.  Especially in light of this “school renovation” information posted just about a month ago:

Curiously, things have been kind of silent since these numbers were presented to the public.  Town Councilor Benet Pols, who has his own blog, has been completely mute on upcoming budget expectations, and in particular, the possibility of a $40-50 million proposal for school ‘renovations.’

Brunswick Community United, the gathering place for ‘schoolies,’ under the tutelage of a Bowdoin faculty member, has been similarly silent on the subject.  You remember them; they’re the ‘Imagine and Invest’ group, featuring Sally Sellit and others. 

In their own way, they’re school ‘bullies.’  They intimidate the school board, the town council, and cowering town taxpayers into paying for whatever it is they want on behalf of the teachers and staff; oops, I’m sorry, “for the children.”  Funny how being an emotional bully is perfectly acceptable in some cases, but not others.

Then there’s the School Department web page, which is also uncharacteristically AWOL on the major foreign object floating in the town punch bowl.  Other than for this mind-numbing and largely uninformative presentation on High School budget details.

When the School Department, Pols, and the BCU are silent on the iceberg ahead, I can only think of two possibilities.  The first is that public reaction to the huge numbers posted above has been so negative that those involved are distancing themselves from the numbers as fast as they can.

The second is that they’re all colluding in a higher level strategy to spend the huge sums shown above with the minimum possible public resistance.  The first step in that strategy is to completely ignore the subject as the annual operating budget moves through the standard Kabuki Theater act over the next two months or so.

I’m not a gambler, but I’ll put my discretionary pocket change on the second possibility.

I’m also not near the reporter that the owner and publisher of Other Side is, so I’m not going to go on and on and on trying to tie this all into some sort of integrated story line.  Instead, so I can make the deadline he’s imposed on me, I’m going to resort to listing the various factors that play into this scenario.

• There’s never enough money to keep the physical plant assets you have in good repair, as public stewards should, but there’s always enough money to tear them down and build new ones.
• Similarly, there’s never enough money to tend to facility problems, but there’s always enough money to pay teachers more.  Broken toilets anyone?
• What position will John “Johnny Protocols” Richardson stake out as he plays the schoolie crowd to forward his political ambitions, gubernatorial or otherwise?  See  http://othersideofbrunswick.blogspot.com/2013/01/hes-baaaackkkk.html
• Similarly, what position will Jacquie “J.P.” Sartoris adopt as she pursues her political goals? 
• Wow; isn’t it interesting that we now have ‘space problems,’ after shutting down three schools: Longfellow, Hawthorne, and Jordan Acres.
• Come to think of it, who paid the price for allowing Jordan Acres to crumble under snow load on the roof?  It’s not like snow is a new thing around here, is it?  What about the architects?  Did they screw up the design so it couldn’t handle the load?  Was it PDT?  Didn’t the school come with a user’s manual that said “don’t allow snow to build up on the roof?”
• Do you suppose the Architects happened to see the public statements made last year by the School Dept facility manager?  You know, this one:  “School buildings aren't being kept in good condition, the department's director of facilities told the School Board Wednesday night.  (snip)  The total value of the department's facilities is $88 million, Facilities Director Paul Caron said. But the cost to fully repair all of the buildings has risen to $44.4 million, more than 50 percent of their total replacement value.”  From: http://othersideofbrunswick.blogspot.com/2012/04/school-department-priorities-in-case.html
• The above sounds like an open invitation, almost a plea, to submit an estimate at least in the $40 million plus range!  Talk about easy marks.  It’s almost like taxpayers walking around town with cash hanging from every pocket.                        
• Now that you mention it, I wonder how the repair estimate from Caron was composed before engaging the ‘right’ architects?
• Furthermore, who (and there should be more than one) is losing their jobs for allowing the few schools left to fall into such a state of disrepair?  To the point where our kids are in danger?  And broken toilets are not getting repaired?
• Apparently such concerns are secondary to continuous raises fro the teaching corps.
• You’ll also note PDT is proposing a $17 million upgrade to Freeport High School.  Not bad; didn’t the new Brunswick High School cost around $18 million some time ago?  But as PC has said, it’s getting a bit long in the tooth, and will probably need a major investment sooner rather than later.
• Once we sign up for the $40 million plus renovation plan, and make no doubt about it, we will, some other problems creep up.  Unless the $40 million in work can be done during a couple of summer months, we’ll need someplace else to conduct classes for displaced students while the work is done.
• The renovations, if we cheap out as a community (cue the schoolies, cue Sally), will take at least 18 months, right?
• Oh…..maybe no one has thought about the need for ‘bridge’ facilities.  Guess we’ll have to build something new to house them, even if we’re only going to put some band-aids on the not very well-built facilities we’re currently using.

Look at the summary table above; it’s not hard to see a $50 million plus bill coming our way.  How much will that add to your property tax bill?  Figures we’ve seen for the now discredited $21 million figure would have added 6% or so to your property tax bill by themselves, not including Police building debt service, fixes to the McClellan building, ordinary year over year budget increases, and anything else in the CIP. 

Now that we’re staring at a $50 million bill for the schools, you can figure more like 15% just for the school borrowing alone.  With all the ‘other vital needs’ facing us, a 25% property tax increase is not beyond our grasp.  We just need to find leaders willing to ‘go for the gold.’  (I have some candidates in mind, thank you.)

I need to remind you that last May, the Super proposed adding at least 36 heads to school staff, including 16 for a ‘clinical day treatment program.’  Well, on top of meals, why don’t we start providing housing as well?

Don’t forget the McClellan redo; last time we heard, it grew from $300,000 to $800,000.  Now that Johnny Protocols is on the council, we assume the plans will be expanded to include a grand, elevated Chairman’s Podium, to bring the dignity of the House Chamber to Brunswick’s ruling class.

I encourage you to think of the majority of the school debt service as going to fund teacher salary increases.  Why?  Because to begin with, these dollars are fungible.  And as our editor has described a number of times, School Department priorities have always put teachers compensation increases first, with facilities and other burdens secondary. 

So in a manner of speaking, all this ‘deferred maintenance,’ which has now reached ‘crisis’ stage, stems largely from a conscious decision to let the buildings go while keeping salaries ever increasing, and per student costs growing at rates that are simply unjustifiable.

            

So how will they pull this off?  I believe it will happen in the shadows.

Judging from the silence  on the School Department web site, the BCU site, and even the Pols blog, I predict that ‘mum’s the word is the agreed upon strategy during the next ten weeks or so of the standard budget run-up, hearings, passage, and public vote on the School proposal.  This will cleverly avoid a catastrophic and chaotic discussion, and coverage, of a $40-50 million school construction plan while the bright lights are shining.

Imagine and Invest signs may well be kept in storage this spring, just to avoid creating attention and scrutiny.

Better to wait until the budgets are approved, the school budget vote is over, and the dog days of summer set in.  People go to camp, and engage in all the usual things that turn summer into a time when little attention is paid to civic matters, especially since budgets for the coming year were just passed, like it or not.

This is when the School Department will come before the Town Council, in a very unheralded way, and propose that the plan for $40-50 million in school spending be placed before the voters in November.  Unless a miracle occurs, the Town Council should don hard-hats and put up signs saying “danger – heavy equipment in the area,” because they will get steam-rollered by the School Department and their groupies - the schoolies of the BCU. 

All while taxpayers and residents are tending the tomato plants, swatting mosquitoes, and scarfing up Danny’s Dogs and Cote’s Ice Cream.

The council will acquiesce with a few brief comments of concern from the usual suspects, concluding they don’t see a way out, and that ‘it’s up to voters to make the decision.’

The question will go before the voters as the only item on the November ballot in a completely un-noticed non-election.  Two thirds of the population won’t even know there is an election, let alone one proposing to raise property taxes by the biggest margin ever seen in town.  Voter turnout will be in the range of 1,000 to 1,200 total at best, of which at least 80% will be BCU schoolies and those they drive to the polls, or otherwise coerce to get out and vote yes.

Does the term slam-dunk mean anything to you?  If not, it will soon enough.

To summarize, they will postpone the bond issue beyond the budget gaze…..and ask voters to say yea or nea, outside the scrutiny of budget impact and any chance to stop it at the budget level.  And then next spring, in classic fashion, the approved borrowing will show up as ‘costs beyond our control.’  It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it?

Console yourself with the knowledge that you live in Brunswick, a town seemingly gone wild. Wait - that’s unfair; we’re just the richest little town in America.

As an added bonus, you’re about to find out what bull riding is like, in more ways than one.  As the editor has said before, “sometimes you’ve got to grab the bull by the tail and face the situation.”

If you wish to do do further study, or remind yourself of how we got here, you might review these items.

http://www.theforecaster.net/news/print/2013/02/27/cost-brunswick-school-upgrades-could-top-21m/152457

http://othersideofbrunswick.blogspot.com/2012/02/lt-ben-lt-ben.html

http://www.theforecaster.net/news/print/2012/11/21/brunswick-school-advocates-flex-organizational-mus/143191

               

If nothing else, you need to work on your toe-touches.  Assume the position, Brunswick!

Technorati Tags: Brunswick,taxes,school department,town council,budgets

Bowdoin Security Update

Put this one in the “you can’t make this stuff up folder:”

Monday, April 1:  A Yellow Bike Club bike was reported stolen from outside Coles Tower.  The bike’s name is Zeus.

Which leads to the following questions:

- Will the bike come when you call it?

- Is this a Bike Club of Yellow hue, or is the bike yellow?

- Is this an April Fool’s joke perpetrated by the Security Dept?

We note as well in this week’s report several instances of students being transported to “Parkview Medical Center.”  We wonder if this facility is affiliated with Parkview Adventist Medical Center here in town.

Or does the Bowdoin administration simply have a corporate aversion to uttering, writing, and/or printing words like ‘Adventist?’

We’ve got our guess; you can make your own.

Technorati Tags: Bowdoin College,security reports

Echo and Narcissus: Bowdoin as Fine Liberal Art

Waterhouse: “Echo and Narcissus:”

It’s a matter of record that Side is prone to silliness.  And that we’ve often been known to go out of our way to engage in it.

But, hey, someone’s gotta try to generate a few laughs around here; humor in Brunswick is in pretty short supply.

There are times, though, where the local environment is so rich with targets for our frivolity that we simply cannot, in good mirth, ignore the challenge right before our eyes.

The Bowdoin Project report, discussed in our recent posts, has generated much comment in response, especially at the campus newspaper, The Bowdoin Orient, as you might expect.

Before we get to that, though, we must tell you that we have often thought of Bowdoin as an intellectual and ideological echo chamber, and one that is over pressurized to prevent any stray wisps of fresh intellectual air from leaking in.  We’ve lived for years in the presence of the Ivory Tower, and read of it in any number of ways, including The Ostrich and The Orient.

Further, we’ve watched representatives of the student body, the administration, and the faculty engage in civic discourse in our little town, which as one student famously said, ‘would be nothing without Bowdoin.’  Some public, some not.  The Klingles of the faculty have done little to build our esteem, as regular readers well know.

Through this experience, we’ve come to think of self-absorption as more or less the norm for those who inhabit the ‘Bowdoin Bubble,’ whether it be individual or corporate narcissism, or both.  In some respects, Bowdoin is Facebook writ large, if you get our drift.

Hence our delight in stumbling across “Echo and Narcissus” to serve as an artistic interpretation of the Bowdoin zeitgeist.  At the end of this post, we provide a footnote describing this scene from Greek mythology.

Now to our focus: in an Orient article dated today, Professor of Government Paul Franco makes this statement:

"“My worry about the NAS report is that, for the sake making (sic) a predictable point in a now stale culture war, it will render precious institutions like Bowdoin more vulnerable than they already are, feeding the anti-intellectual perception that they do not provide a practical education and therefore aren’t worth the money,” Franco added."

As the Church Lady might say:

We’d like to parse Franco’s statement, which is the underlying stimulus for this post.  We simply couldn’t let it pass without a few pokes of our own.  (We understand from a former student that Franco is a fine teacher; so be it.  That in no measure diminishes our reaction to his words; it may well increase it.)

“Now stale culture war:”  We take from this that Franco believes game over, progressives won, and the culture loses.  To which we say au contraire, Professor.  For those of us outside the bubble, the culture war is getting hotter by the moment, and if you can’t see that, you better get your intellectual eyes checked, and start planning a sabbatical outside the echo chamber.

“Precious institutions like Bowdoin:”  We assume Franco means the faculty and student body make Bowdoin “precious,” including himself, obviously, because brick and mortar and sidewalks and kegs are rarely seen as precious.  Just for fun, note that precious and  precocious only differ by two letters: co.

Precious (adjective) has the following definitions:

1. of high price or great value; very valuable or costly: precious metals.

2. highly esteemed for some spiritual, nonmaterial, or moral quality: precious memories.

3. dear; beloved: a precious child.

4. affectedly or excessively delicate, refined, or nice: precious manners.

5. flagrant; gross: a precious fool.

We’ll give the Professor the benefit of the doubt and take #5 off the table; the others, no matter your favorite, certainly reek of Narcissus.

“Vulnerable:”  Excuuuuuse me?  Vulnerable to what?  This fortress of intellect, wealth, and self-regard needs knights in shining armor to protect its virtue?  Are its intellectual barricades that weak and threatened?  We’ll gladly add paranoia to Bowdoin’s defining characteristics if the Professor wishes, but we doubt we can find a painting named “Echo and Narcissus and Paranoia.”

“Feeding the anti-intellectual perception:”  OK, that does it; paranoia makes the list.  Apparently Bowdoin embodies, nay IS the very definition of intellectual, and any statement or idea or thesis that challenges its primacy is, by decree of Franco, and likely all the other bubble boys and girls (and questioning), anti-intellectual!  Heresy!  Out damned spot!

To the stocks, you peasants, philistines, and troglodytes!

We’re ready to close now, but before we do, for those of you who can’t appreciate the fine art rendering of Echo and Narcissus that we opened with (subtle irony there, right?), we offer the following visuals to get across the notion of echo chamber:

 

and narcissism:

             

         

And don’t forget to read the end notes just below that will start you down the road of intellectual enlightenment, if only on the highway of sarcasm and incisive criticism. 

Of the obviously deserved sort.

Technorati Tags: Bowdoin College,intellectual diversity,vulnerability,narcissism,echo chambers

===========================================

The Legend of Narcissus

(A story to retell)
Narcissus was a youth who knelt daily beside a lake to contemplate his own beauty. He was so fascinated by himself that, one morning, he fell into the lake and drowned. At the spot where he fell, a flower was born, which was called narcissus.
      When Narcissus died, the goddesses of the forest appeared and found that the lake, which had been fresh water, transformed into a lake of salty tears.
            “Why do you weep?” the goddesses asked.
            “I weep for Narcissus,” the lake replied.
            “Ah, it is no surprise that you weep for Narcissus,” they said, “for though we always pursued him in the forest, you alone could contemplate his beauty close at hand.”
            “But… was Narcissus beautiful?” the lake asked.
            “Who better than you to know that?” the goddesses said in wonder. “After all, it was by your banks that he knelt each day to contemplate himself!”
      The lake was silent for some time. Finally, it said:
            “I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depth of his eyes, my own beauty reflected.” (Paulo Coelho)

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Wikipedia:

The story is told in Book III of the Metamorphoses, and tells the story of a "talkative nymph" who is admired by the goddess Aphrodite for her magnificent voice and song. When she tricks Zeus's jealous wife, Hera, she makes her only able to repeat the last words said, and couldn't say anything on her own. "Yet a chatterbox, had no other use of speech than she has now, that she could repeat only the last words out of many." This is the explanation of the aural effect which was named after her. She falls in love with Narcissus, whom she catches sight of when he is "chasing frightened deer into his nets." Eventually, after "burning with a closer flame," Echo's presence is revealed to Narcissus, who, after a comic, yet tragic scene, rejects her love. Echo prays in her mind of this to Aphrodite, who makes Echo disappear, until she "remains a voice" and "is heard by all."

Then, Narcissus "tired from both his enthusiasm for hunting and from the heat" rests by a spring, and whilst drinking, "a new thirst grows inside him" and he is "captivated by the image of the beauty he has seen" and falls deeply in love with "all the things for which he himself is admired." He then wastes away with love for himself, echoing the manner in which Echo did earlier on. A while later his body is gone, and in its place is a narcissus flower. The pale flower is still found near river banks so that it can be reflected on the water.

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PS on the Bowdoin Project

Here are links to two immediate reactions to the report described in the previous posts:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/04/03/the_sad_state_of_liberal_education_at_bowdoin_117774.html

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/344548/queer-gardens-pocahontas-and-prostitutes-eliana-johnson

 

Technorati Tags: Bowdoin College,the Bowdoin Project

The Bowdoin Project Report: A very quick look…

And we mean REALLY quick!  As we expected, the report talked about in yesterday’s post is now available for downloading.  You can find it here: http://www.nas.org/images/documents/What_Does_Bowdoin_Teach.pdf

The higher source page is: http://www.nas.org/projects/the_bowdoin_project.  As we suggested before, be sure to click on the ‘preliminaries’ tab as well.

This is some serious reading, friends; more than 350 pages. 

Here is the concluding paragraph of the entire report:

What does Bowdoin not teach? Intellectual modesty. Self-restraint. Hard work. Virtue. Self-criticism. Moderation. A broad framework of intellectual history. Survey courses. English composition. A course on Edmund Spenser. A course primarily on the American Founders. A course on the American Revolution. The history of Western civilization from classical times to the present. A course on the Christian philosophical tradition. Public speaking. Tolerance towards dissenting views. The predicates of critical thinking. A coherent body of knowledge. How to distinguish importance from triviality. Wisdom. Culture.

We can’t wait to watch the ensuing local reaction, and discussion.

We should, of course, allow a respectful pause so smelling salts can revive members of the Bowdoin faculty and administration. 

Or maybe they’re all being transported to Parkview Adventist Medical Center.  Perhaps you’ve noticed their official security reports tend to leave out the “A-word” in the hospital’s name.

So what’s up with that, Polar Bears?

Technorati Tags: Bowdoin College,National Association of Scholars,Bowdoin Project

Bowdoin & Diversity…yah shurr.

                

Now that you’ve gone and brought up the subject, thank you, we do have a few things to pass along.

To begin with, M.D. Harmon, opinion columnist in the Portland Paper, recently penned a column on this very subject.  Titled “There’s more than one kind of diversity – but not at Bowdoin,” it refers to a research project by the National Association of Scholars that will be publicly released tomorrow.  The NAS report is labeled “The Bowdoin Project,” and you can read about it’s public release here.  The NAS project page lists several ‘preliminaries’ for your study.

We found this little nugget of particular interest:

In particular, we highlighted Bowdoin’s reimagining and refashioning of its curriculum and of its faculty.

To review, the curriculum in 1968 featured a well-coordinated system of general education requirements; as of 1969, those requirements were abolished, and students could graduate from Bowdoin having completed 32 courses of their choosing, provided they fulfilled the requirements of a major. This has had lasting effects on Bowdoin's curriculum.

Note that Harmon is a Bowdoin grad.  Here’s an excerpt from his column, which you can read here:

Finally, the preface says the college falls flat when it comes to intellectual diversity: "We estimate that perhaps four or five out of approximately 182 full-time faculty members might be described as politically conservative. Bowdoin doesn't dispute the imbalance is extreme; instead it argues that its liberal faculty faithfully represents many views, including conservative ones."

The Bowdoin Orient published an article on the report as well.

As chance would have it, some eleven years ago we had a relationship with The Bowdoin Patriot, an intermittently published campus conservative publication.  They had done an interview of then new President Barry Mills, which, unfortunately, we cannot recover electronically and pass along to you.  But we are working to solve that problem.

In response to the Mills interview, we submitted a letter to The Patriot, which they graciously printed.  We did have that in our archives, and it is shown in full just below.  From our words, you’ll be able to get the gist of Mills’ thoughts.  We hope you enjoy it.

=====================================================

20 February 2002

To the Patriot:

Congratulations on another stimulating issue, although sadly….let me take that back….although gladly, it ends with an amazingly revealing interview with Barry Mills, Bowdoin’s new President.

I, naïf that I am, am stunned at the duplicity of President Mills in the interview. He begins by rolling out all the usual bumper stickers of academe: “academic freedom”; “freedom of ideas”; “every viewpoint should be acceptable”. He worries that “across the whole band of political spectrum, people ought to be able to say what they think and be respected for it”.

He then proceeds to demonstrate clearly that College policies, especially as they relate to faculty hiring, are diametrically opposed to such “freedom of ideas” and broad representation of the entire “political spectrum.” Let me explain.

In the interview, you cite the one-sided faculty debate post 9-11. President Mills spins away from your point, and responds by saying that it’s “very dangerous to think about selecting faculty based on their political beliefs”, and “I would be very worried if we started creating quotas or even designed a faculty around political views.” (Elsewhere in the same edition, you estimate there might be five conservatives on a faculty of 160. Even if you are off by a factor of five on that estimate, one could hardly conclude that faculty hiring was politically neutral!)

Following his resolute stand that faculty selection should be based on anything but politics, he proceeds to describe how he (the College?) endorses doing just that. The difference is, identity politics is used as the standard, in lieu of the “dangerous,” but more conventional ideological politics that you questioned him about. The politics he chooses to apply in faculty selection (and student admissions as well, I have no doubt) are the politics of race, gender, diversity (funny, how it never applies to political thought), multiculturalism (moral relativism), socio-economics and the like. Selection based on these is, of course, a de facto way of establishing the political tilt he so sincerely warns us of earlier, and which you documented with anecdotal statistics.

There are two distinct problems with his whole line of thought. First, when you begin by restricting the political spectrum within which you define “academic freedom” and “freedom of thought”, you put the lie to the very concept. Freedom of thought and speech within the Vatican is no doubt far different than freedom of thought and speech within society at large. I assert that President Mills’ and Bowdoin’s (as well as countless other schools) notion of academic freedom and freedom of thought is in fact exactly the opposite. Only those freedoms that have been endorsed by the anointed and tenured faculty right-thinkers, and by default, the entire administration, are countenanced.

Second, the campus atmosphere has no checks and balances to see that true, unconstrained political thinking (and thereby the freedoms cited) is the norm. Entrenched, politically correct faculty, if not responsible for selecting their administration, certainly have the ability to control it through the power to make it fail. Incoming freshman are unlikely mature enough in their political convictions to detect the political bias before it swallows them whole, or to confront it. (With the obvious exception of the Patriot staff, that is!) President Mills represents no threat to faculty biases, having been educated himself at the feet of these “free thinkers”.

How disingenuous of Bowdoin, its President, and the hundreds of others like them to laud themselves as the keepers of intellectual objectivity and freedom of thought. They are too blind to see how they define it, and themselves, only within their own approved intellectual free space. They like to think they are a pillar of what this country stands for, but have they looked at the famous red-blue map that reflects distribution of political thought across the land?

In light of current events and the illumination they offer, I suggest that Bowdoin and its peers are more like madrassahs preaching their elite liberal and socialist theology than the shining towers of intellectual objectivity they want us to believe they are. And the entrenched, unaccountable faculty is mullahs dispensing correct-thought kool-aid to the innocent open minds of arriving students, who are too often in awe of such renowned scholars. For most, the inculcation takes hold before they know what hit them.

Bowdoin and the other indoctrinaire colleges will not achieve their advertised goals until such time as they are willing to appoint an administration from outside their circle of enlightenment that challenges directly the preconceived and institutionalized political and social theologies of its entrenched faculty. And the faculty, in the interest of self-preservation, will not allow that to happen, at least “not over their live body”.

How sad that students, many unknowingly, I’m sure, are immersed in such a fog of self-righteous academic splendor. Their education will not be complete, I am afraid, until such time as they rebel against the corporately approved knowledge base, and hold administration and faculty accountable for truly educating them, even if it means abandoning the entrenched politics that, if self-delusion suits you, aren’t there.

I wonder how many parents are truly aware of the prejudicial political climate that exists on campus, and how it will affect the son or daughter they confidently send away with fat checks to cover expenses. If I could, I would write an open letter to every one, explaining the intellectual tilt, and attach ample supporting documentation. I have no doubt that a very goodly number of them would respond quite favorably, asking that their darlings get three bowls full each and every day. But I also have no doubt that a meaningful number would be appalled, and would quickly create student body openings for other willing and innocent minds to fill.

As for me, I can have precious little effect on the state of affairs, other than to wring my hands and grind my teeth. But there is one concrete way open to me. My annual check to Bowdoin, from which I did not graduate, and which could best be described as a mere pittance, can be withheld. And that I shall surely do in the name of true academic freedom and politically balanced points of view. I cannot, in good conscience, support an institution that in its very fervor to be apolitical is so transparently just the opposite.

Keep up the good work. You are, figuratively and literally, true “freedom” fighters on the Bowdoin campus. Your mission is noble and profound. If you’ll forgive me a moment of “sage adult” arrogance, I contend that only years from now will you fully recognize just how important that mission is and was. Keep on questioning and challenging; if others don’t learn from it, you surely will! I salute your efforts.

=================================================

Pat Rockefeller, Bowdoin ‘04, was a principal in The Patriot’s operation.  He also wrote for the Bowdoin Orient, and a related column of his, which also ran in February 2002 is just below. It emphasized that intellectual diversity should be the focus at Bowdoin,  and it isn’t.  We’d like to know what Pat is doing now, and where.  If we make contact, we’ll give you an update.

===================================================

February 15, 2002

Efforts need an intellectual focus
PATRICK ROCKEFELLER

At the much-touted Diversity Panel Discussion on Wednesday night, the one conclusion everyone seemed to agree upon was that diversity is good.

What troubled me was that something seemed to be lacking from the conversation. The panel and audience all agreed that we needed more diversity. But to what end? When the question of our endgame-what goals we're hoping to achieve-came up, the panel was, for all intents and purposes, stumped.

And therein lies the problem.

Diversity, while "good," is not, in and of itself, an end. Racial, ethnic, sexual, gender, socioeconomic, (insert favorite type of diversity here) diversity is all well and good, but what does the College want to accomplish with it?

Answers-and I'm paraphrasing a bit here-ranged from "We want diversity so we can continue to build more diversity…" to talk of a "critical mass" of self-perpetuating, diverse students. To be honest, this made me think more of a Cold War-era nuclear arms race than a well thought out plan for the College's future.

To the panel's credit, it admitted to an uncertainty in its mission, but that admission doesn't let it off the hook. Bowdoin College has to decide what its goals are, and then set about to achieve those goals. Simply diversifying for the hell of it is not a goal.

Wil Smith, one of the panelists, mentioned that he was skeptical as to whether the school would continue to fund diversity-enhancing efforts if the endowment runs into hard times. One of the strongest ways for the College to ensure the continuation of that funding is to develop a clear and decisive image for the future, and to work toward that goal.

If I were on the Board of Trustees during hard economic times and someone came to me asking for money to enhance diversity, not explaining what he or she wanted to accomplish with it, I wouldn't fund it, either.

When a problem arises, "put more money into it" is too often the answer.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't finance some of the diversity-promoting programs we have. We have to decide first what we want to accomplish with that diversity.

So here is my plan.

When George Will was here last year, he said intellectual diversity is the only kind of diversity that matters. While I'm not sure I completely agree with that, he makes a good point. Bowdoin is an institute of higher learning. Therefore, our efforts to diversify should be directed towards enhancing our education.

With this as a goal, diversity becomes more about what students can bring to the proverbial table than the color of their skin. I fear we put too much emphasis on what people look like and not enough on what they think.

If beauty is truly on the inside, we need to make sure that our efforts to diversify take that into account. Otherwise, we may end up with a campus that looks like a rainbow, but where everyone thinks the same things. What fun is that? What would we learn?

I find well-informed debate to be one of the most educational activities I can engage in at Bowdoin. There are a lot of smart people with strong opinions, and if I can argue my side, I can also learn from theirs, forcing myself to question my own beliefs. At the end of a debate, I can reassess my opinions, hopefully having learned something.

For such intellectual debate to work, however, we need students with diverging views and opinions. It doesn't matter what color their skin is, or where they're from, or how much money their families make. I would rather learn more about what's in their heads and in their hearts.

So, get a bunch of students, blindfold them, and sit them around a table. Let them talk, and see where the conversation goes. If everyone agrees, Bowdoin cannot be diverse enough. If there is disagreement and passionate debate where people are both challenged and educated, model the future of Bowdoin on that.

===================================================

The above should keep you busy for a bit, or at the very least, inspire a long spring night’s sleep.  Either way, we expect a little gratitude, sincere or not.

PS: Isn’t it time for Bowdoin to adopt a ‘mascot of color?’ Where is student body outrage over the outdated symbol of old white men and their oppression of the masses?  Shouldn’t it be replaced with something like this????

Technorati Tags: Bowdoin College,The Patriot,diversity,intellectual diversity,NAS report

Bowdoin: in loco parentis; plum loco; paternalism; V-day; common-sense; and the children.

Sometimes everything just comes together.

Bowdoin College never ceases to amaze us with the diversity of its idiosyncrasies, idiocies, cognitive dissonances, and various other forms of cosmic silliness.  Not to mention its self-absorption.

Recently, as we munched on turkey on wheat, we leafed through the pages of the latest Bowdoin Orient, ‘the nation’s oldest continuously published college weekly.’

The “SECURITY REPORT: 2/28 to 3/27” caught our attention for what it reveals about the student body.

Herewith some examples:

• A window was broken and a toilet vandalized during a registered event at Ladd House.  (A bit of further research revealed that the toilet was indeed vandalized, with ‘accompanying contents on floor.’)
• A student placed an electric tea kettle on a hot stove burner at 24 College Street.  The kettle melted and activated the fire alarm.
• A rear hatch window on a student’s vehicle was accidentally shattered when the hatch was closed onto two beer kegs that didn’t quite fit into the back.
• Holes were kicked into a basement wall at Quimby House.  (Alcohol related, per official report.)
• Two intoxicated students set off a smoke alarm in Coles Tower by burning magazine paper with a lighter.  The students were cited an environmental health a safety violation and a hard alcohol violation. (sic, sic)
• A student backed his vehicle out of the Baxter House driveway and collided with a flashing crosswalk sign post.  The post was destroyed.
• There are too many other marijuana caused smoke alarm activations and alcohol violations to bore you with, but you get the drift.

Kids will be kids, you say.  True enough, but these are the elite ‘kids’ of our era, spending small fortunes to swallow the collective wisdom of the Bowdoin faculty.  This is the crème de la crème, giving more to the college than they get by their very presence on campus, and in Brunswick.  Just think…in a decade or two, they could be Senators, Representatives, or Cabinet Members.  Or even worse.

So much for their silliness, or if you will, plum loco behavior.  Let us give you a few examples of their other crises:

• A student reported the theft of a neon green North Face bag from the women’s locker room (they have separate, gender based spaces??) at Morrell Gymnasium.  The bag contained white spinning shoes, Under Armor spandex pants, North Face shorts, and a Ben & Jerry’s T-shirt. (Brand fixation, anyone?)
• Two students with flu symptoms were escorted to Parkview Medical Center.
• A student who cut her finger on a door in Reed House was taken to Parkview Medical Center.

No doubt the last two items were life threatening, and we suppose you yourself have needed escorted transport to the local hospital because you cut your finger or suffered from flu symptoms.  Who hasn’t?

But then you complain about the costs of our health care system?  Can you imagine the costs associated with these visits to the Emergency Room?

We hear ‘for the children’ often enough around here, mostly as a bludgeon to raise school budgets.  From the reports just cited, it sounds like our ‘young adults’ are unable to escape a ‘for the children’ profile.

College, at least in our experience, was first and foremost the thrill and growth experience of being independent.  That meant applying your own Band-Aids, doing your own wash, and taking aspirin if you got the flu.  Along with, we admit, some stupid stunts. 

Regardless, we are convinced that while we may not have been as intellectually advanced in our era as the Bowdoin students of today, we were a damn sight more mature in understanding reality.  And tending to ourselves.  Not to mention having gained more common sense.

Now let’s go full circle.  You’re all aware of the feminist movement of the last several decades, and its revulsion over our ‘paternalistic society.’  A signature aspect of the movement is an obsession with V-day and related rituals stemming from The Vagina Monologues.  Bowdoin has been prominent in celebrating this holy day, Under Armor spandex pants or not.

Now we learn that a Bowdoin Faculty member recently elevated to tenured status, Sarah Conly, has published a book called “Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism.”

Amazing stuff.  We have no doubt that any female member of the Bowdoin Faculty is a card-carrying feminist, which makes any proposal for returning to paternalism seem like a grand-standing move.  Especially when the book will cost you $95.

Couple it with the apparent lack of common sense amongst the Bowdoin student body, at least as portrayed in the Security Report, and the traditional ‘in loco parentis’ role of a college, especially an elite, self-absorbed, $60,000 a year college, and you have a highly amusing confluence of idiocy, inconsistency, and lunacy.

We can understand how Conly came to believe we need dictatorial help from others to protect us from ourselves. All she had to do was read the Bowdoin Orient on a regular basis. Based on student body sampling provided therein, she’d quickly conclude a whole lot of supposedly intelligent, nearby adults need attentive and benevolent  ‘fathering.’ (Seminars on growing up, choices and consequences, and related behavioral breakthroughs will have to wait until another day.)

So Conly proposes to protect students and the rest of us, and oh by the way, prevent us from learning life’s lessons on our own. All because anointed elite can do this for us; so what if we have to give up a little (or a lot) of freedom, independence, and autonomy to achieve her coercive utopia?  Noblesse oblige, as they say.

Has anyone else heard that Mike Bloomberg is planning on building a retirement compound here in Brunswick?

As we said when we began, sometimes everything just comes together.

And sometimes it doesn’t.  You make the call.

Technorati Tags: Bowdoin College,paternalism,autonomy

It is rerun season, now that we think of it.

So why shouldn’t we join the crowd and rerun ‘the best of Other Side?’  Sometimes when you write these things, you have no idea just how on point they could end up being as reality unfolds and tramples all over editorial whimsy.

Technorati Tags: Oldies but goodies,reruns,budget trolls

       

Ode to the Budget Trolls; a Variation on Christmas Bells

By Poppy Littleworth Oddfellow

    I HEARD the drones at budget time 
    Their old, familiar verses chime. 
        They stood to say 
        You all must pay 
    To prove you love the chil-der-en!

    And thought how, as the days had come,
    The belfries of all Brunswickdom
        Had rolled along
        The unbroken song
    Of spending more on chil-der-en!

    Till ringing, singing on its way,
    The town repeated night and day,
        A voice, a plea, 
        Oh please tax me 
    For brand new schools for chil-der-en!

    Then with a solemn, sudden boom, 
    A cannon thundered in the room, 
        In statements read 
        Faint voices said 
    This is not for the chil-der-en!

    It was as if an earthquake rent
    The hearth-stones of a continent,
        And made forlorn
        The schoolies born
    Of spending more on chil-der-en!

    And in despair I bowed my head;
    "There is a lie in town," I said; 
        With guile intact, 
        They hide the fact 
    This is for women and for men!"

    Town Council then gave schoolies cheer:
    "Spend what you want, we're standing clear."
        The schools you’ll build,
        The lilies gild,
    "Praise us! We love the chil-der-en!"

It may not be that good; but on the other hand, it could have been verse.

Other Side “Re-boot”

                 

Do you have any idea what it takes to shock this reporter?  After years of watching the passing lunacy of the local scene, we figured we were pretty much beyond going into shock over news about local governance, whether it be on the Municipal side or the Government Schools side.

Based on the report covered in our post earlier today, we’ve got to reconsider.  In recent days, we talked about moving from water drops to one gallon water balloons.  Now we feel like we’re being water-boarded.  In the collective ‘community’ sense, which is somehow supposed to make it less objectionable, we assume.

More pointedly, we find the lack of community concern over the habitual incompetence and spendthrift nature of our self-described ‘public servants’ to be perhaps the most astonishing aspect of our circumstances.

That aside, we had a notional plan in place for our next several posts.  The news from last night’s gathering, as relayed earlier today, compels us to step back and review them.  We expect that when we do, we’ll find them woefully inadequate to the moment and the circumstances.  So it could be several days before we return to full-throated bloviation, which is the secret to our robust readership figures.

As we re-evaluate our themes, our observations, and our reactions, we’ll amuse you with a standard journalistic diversion, that being ‘fill.’

As we were looking into how old our “new” high school is, we stumbled upon the Brunswick High School Dress Code.  Here it is in its entirety:

STUDENT DRESS

The Brunswick School Department believes that appropriate grooming and dress contribute to the quality of the educational environment.  To this end, students are required to wear to school or to school functions, clean and appropriate clothing that does not distract or interfere with the educational opportunity of the other students.  Clothing, hair, cosmetics, scented products, jewelry or appearance that may disrupt the normal operations of the school are not acceptable.

The following guidelines shall be deemed to be the minimum necessary for compliance with the student dress and grooming policy:

• Clothing that depicts or in any way refers to, advertises, or promotes illegal drugs, alcohol or tobacco products, that has sexual implications, that promotes violence or illegal acts, or that is derogatory toward any group or individual is not allowed.
• Shoes, sneakers, or sandals will be worn by all students while on school grounds.
• All clothing is to fit properly, be of appropriate length, and not be revealing or indecent.  Underwear should not be visible and clothing should cover the chest, midriff, and mid-thigh appropriately.
• Garments, chains, some chain-like necklaces and/or accessories that may be used as a weapon or perceived as gang member symbols will not be allowed.
• Styles of grooming and/or dress that block vision will not be allowed.
• Students attending classes such as, but not limited to, technology education, consumer and life studies, physical education, and laboratory classes, will comply with dress code regulations as they relate to the health and safety standards of the specific area of study or work.  Teachers will notify students of these rules.
• Students may be required to remove hats.

It is not the intention of these guidelines to usurp the authority of parents for determining what is appropriate dress and grooming for their children.  Since the home provides the funds, guidance, and upkeep for the students’ clothing and grooming, parents, rather than the school, are primarily responsible for the general appearance of students.  The school staff will work with parents in encouraging our young people, as they progress through the system, to assume this responsibility and to execute it sensibly.  The purpose of the home and school working together should be to help students accept and cooperate with the guidelines to provide the best possible learning environment.  These regulations may be waived at the discretion of the building administrator for special school occasions or events.

Adopted:  9/11/02

This Dress Code, such as it is, was adopted more than ten years ago.  Does anyone else think that since then, things have changed enough in teenage ‘fashion’ to call for a serious revision?   We’d also suggest that the entire opening paragraph of the Code is so ambiguous and marble-mouthed as to be incomprehensible and unenforceable.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

So good night you Princes and Princesses of Maine.

And sleep well.  If you hear anything going bump in the night, just cover your eyes and it will be OK.

              

Technorati Tags: Other Side,replan,shock,reboot

Shirley, forget the smelling salts; we’re going to need the AEDs, Stat!

Well; we could say you read about it here first, but gloating is petty.  But it’s also true, and from time to time, we like to do petty.

On Monday, we made a prophetic statement in this post:

Plans are made under the radar for a minimum of a $25-40 million bond issue referendum to put on the ballot in November, in an ultra-low turn out election that the schoolies can win handily.

On Tuesday, under the byline of Ben, Dover, Local Taxpayer, Side ran this passage:

Let’s begin with an assertion that Brunswick, or the Town of Perfect as our publisher likes to call it, is America’s Richest Little Town.

Since 2005, Perfect has built a new fire station, a new school, a new salt shed, and invested deeply in a new downtown station complex.  In the works are a new Police Station, a new Municipal Office Facility, more new schools, and a new School Bus Maintenance and Storage Facility.  Waiting in the wings for the right time to act is a new Central Fire Station, which will complete a 10 year whirlwind of replacing almost every town facility of both the School Department and Municipal Government.

Not bad for a small town in one of the poorest and oldest states in the nation, and one that has seen the closure of its iconic institution, the Brunswick Naval Air Station, in recent years, with consequent loss of population vitality and economic activity. 

As a side note, the town purchased, renovated, and then tore down a facility at a total cost of $3 million or more, all for naught.  Unless you consider bare ground a worthwhile investment.  This seems to be a habit here in town. And yet many wonder why the country is going bankrupt at breakneck speed, city by city, and soon, state by state.

Then yesterday, in this post, we said the following:

The article we are about to analyze accelerates mission creep to mission leap, replaces the ramp with a 10 foot step, and turns water drops into 1 gallon water balloons.  All at the hands of those who have no legitimate claim of objectivity on the subject.  And with no challenge or validation by the press.

In case you don’t know what an AED is, it’s an automated external defibrillator, pictured here open and ready for pads to be attached.

                     

You better make sure you know where one is before you read much further, because the Gomer Pyle Surprise, Surprise! quote has just been thrown onto the ash-heap of municipal common sense.  And your faithful publisher and staff are left to wonder what to do when reality trumps seemingly bizarre journalistic hyperbole, because that’s exactly what has happened.

Are you sitting down?  We’re just going to give you a glimpse of the news, because we have other obligations to tend to.  More will likely follow.

Here’s the headline:

'Sticker shock': $38M for Brunswick schools upgrade?

(You can read the whole story here.  And as you do, you can wonder who the hell is in charge of this circus, and console yourself by remembering that you live in the richest little town in America.)

It begins this way:

When he said "sticker shock," he meant it.

The principal architect for planned renovations at two schools recommended a $38.3 million plan at the School Board's special facilities meeting Wednesday night.

The figure for major renovations of Coffin Elementary School and Brunswick Junior High School is far more than the $21 million rough estimate made by another architecture firm earlier in the planning process.

That underlined little ditty brings to mind our comment in last night’s post:

This is the school architects’ version of “Bush did it,” or “it was like this when we got here,” or “we inherited this situation from the previous administration.”  In other words, if you’d have begun this effort with us, you’d have had the elevated but unknown number sooner.

Here’s the summary contained in the article:

Note that Keck, the PDT Architect, said the following:

"We don't think 'light touch' is viable," Keck said Wednesday night, responding to a question on whether the "light touch" option's plan to not have a full sprinkler plan would even be legal.

So you might as well dismiss the first column above, because Sarah Singer, Sally Sellit, and the rest of the schoolies at BCU will have none of it.

Shift your focus to the right hand column instead, and with a bit of addition, you can see a $50 million plan emerging.  But remember, ‘its for the children.’ And remember, the high school is nearing the midpoint of its useful life.

No one ever said living in Perfect would be inexpensive.  So we’re planning on making a print run of 1000 or so posters of the image below for those who wish to express solidarity with the schoolies and our ever accountable School Department, including the School Board themselves.

            

We’re estimating right now that the posters will sell for $50, but that’s based on the poster printing shop we used the last time, and we don’t plan on using them again.  So you’ll have to wait for numbers you can count on.

But you should be use to that by now.  And we’ll do our best to keep costs reasonable.  You can count on us; we’re not like the others.

“Imagine?”  “Invest?”  Wow; they better come up with more appropriate terms.  These don’t do justice to the level of $50 million.

Perhaps “hallucinate” and “break the bank” would work better.

And we were dumb enough to make an issue of letting toilets go unrepaired.  Live and not learn, as they say.

Technorati Tags: Brunswick,lunacy,bankruptcy,schools,for the children

Shirley, this cannot be; $21 million may not be enough for school “renovation?” Pass the smelling salts, quick!

As our protégé Ben, Dover, Local Taxpayer said in the prior post, we will be subjected to mission creep, ramping, and water dripping on our heads.

The article we are about to analyze accelerates mission creep to mission leap, replaces the ramp with a 10 foot step, and turns water drops into 1 gallon water balloons.  All at the hands of those who have no legitimate claim of objectivity on the subject.  And with no challenge or validation by the press.

As we read the article, we laughed and laughed and laughed, because the quotes in the article are almost a self-parody of classic, shop-worn, bumper sticker talking points used so successfully by School Department demagogues ever since time began.  We hear Maine Street storm drains were in danger of overflowing from the flash flood of tears shed by the schoolies of the BCU as they read it. 

On the other hand, who knows?  The sudden ‘storm surge’ could have been special effects courtesy of Bowdoin Svengalis and real estate sales agents priming the pumps, so to speak.

So let’s begin.  In what follows, the italicized text is the passage from the article.  The indented, non-italicized text is our response to those words.

BRUNSWICK — A plan to upgrade two schools could cost the town more than the $21 million originally estimated, but the total won't be known until the School Board's March 6 facilities meeting.

Well, surprise, surprise! Who’d have guessed? On the other hand, have you ever seen a government project that came in under or at initial estimates? Do you remember the Public Safety Facility plan of 10 years ago that started in the range of $6 million, but by the time it appeared on the ballot was at $13 million?

                       

Brunswick Junior High School Principal Walter Wallace knocks on one of the sixth grade classrooms' thin walls. "This is not very good for sound," he said."

“Look how I can punch my finger right through it. Do you really want your children in such cheesy conditions?”  We hope you don’t mind us pointing out that these walls were a design feature presented by the architects of the last construction cycle, and approved by the School Board and associated ‘new construction committees’ then.  Could you please tell us why this time, things will be different?

                        

Coffin Elementary School Principal Steve Ciembroniewicz says separating young children in mobile classroom units apart from the main part of school can create safety and scheduling issues.

What’s next? Expecting kids to walk to school? Who ever heard of such a thing?  And by the way, which architects came up with this solution, and which School Board and School Administration approved the approach?

"It wouldn't surprise me if the costs were more than the $21 million," Lyndon Keck, the principal architect working on plans for Brunswick Junior High School and Coffin Elementary School, said Tuesday.

So it wouldn’t surprise him?  Especially since it’s he and his firm that are preparing the estimates, and who are practiced professionals at taking advantage of taxpayer funded ‘crises?’ This is how these opportunists make their living; there is no counterbalance to what they come up with.

They exert mind control over the government school establishment in Maine, because no one dare challenge ‘qualified professionals.’  Especially if they’re pre-disposed to spending OPM on replacement of the assets they’ve let fall into ruin.  

And wouldn’t you just know it, the same firm is proposing a $17 million ‘renovation’ to Freeport’s High School.

Keck's firm, PDT Architects, is the second firm hired by the town for the project. The $21 million estimate was from another firm that performed the first phase of the upgrade plan.

This is the school architects’ version of “Bush did it,” or “it was like this when we got here,” or “we inherited this situation from the previous administration.”  In other words, if you’d have begun this effort with us, you’d have had the elevated but unknown number sooner.

Superintendent of Schools Paul Perzanoski said the March 6 meeting, at 6 p.m. at Coffin, will be an opportunity for School Board members and the public to see why it may be time to upgrade the two schools – or possibly build a new one if that costs less.

There you have it: the official planting of the seed that building new costs less than ‘renovating.’ The BCU will sprinkle the seed with copious amounts of water and verbal fertilizer to make sure it sprouts and grows.

Perzanoski said a projected increase in student population was one of the original reasons for pursuing the plan in the first place, prompted in part by the closing of Jordan Acres Elementary School in 2011.

Excuse us? What the hell does the closing of a school (due to derelict maintenance) have to do with student population increase? And now you’re telling us that your failure to maintain JA as a functional facility, and we suppose, the voluntary closure of Longfellow, are the driving forces behind the need to spend so much?

And could you please tell us the specifics of the “projected increase’ in student population? Was Planning Decisions, Inc involved in this projected increase?

"But the main reason was that the buildings were falling apart and needed to be upgraded," Perzanoski said. "Especially concerning was having classes in the (portable classrooms)."

Excuse me, but isn’t it the role of School Administration and the School Board to see that buildings aren’t ‘falling apart?’ If not, what are we paying you for? Or are raises for teachers, as we have proven over and over, the only priority you have?

Coffin has had five portable units for several years, and Perzanoski isn't the only one who thinks they should  go.

Funny, but with the huge decline in enrollment in recent years, ALL portable units should have been able to be mothballed. Unless, that is, you closed/ignored issues at other schools to keep classroom pressures at the breaking point, regardless of total enrollment.

Standing on the road between Coffin's entrance and three of the mobile classrooms, Principal Steve Ciembroniewicz explained on Monday the time constraints and safety concerns the current setup creates.

Thank you, Mr. Ciembroniewicz. You have a bright future here in Brunswick School Administration. And if you tire of that, you can always sign on with PDT Architects as an ‘education professional’ in a consulting role.

"Imagine the transition times, and you're bundling up ...," Ciembroniewicz said while motioning to the crosswalk, where a class of small children and their teacher just crossed. "This is a big deal. This has to change. We don't want little kiddos crossing all the time."

Kiddos?  Next thing you know, we’ll only have outdoor parking for teachers and staff, and they’ll have to endure exposure to raw weather to come to work.  We’re going to need sheltered ‘sally ports’ for school busses to drop off and pick up our students.

Beyond increasing the safety for Coffin students and getting rid of the mobile units, Keck said Coffin and the junior high, both more than 50 years old, have structural issues that could increase the cost of the upgrade plan.

School architects are very fond of talking about how schools are built for a 40 year useful life. How old is your house? Imagine how much of Brunswick would be left if everything over 40 years old had to be torn down? How much of the Beloved Shrine of Bowdoin would survive such commitment to ‘newness?’

Are we to conclude that the ‘new’ Brunswick High School is now approaching the middle age of its useful life? It opened in 1995, so it’s nearing 20 years of use.  We should probably start planning for its replacement now, right?

"These buildings are not terrific," Keck told the School Board at the last facilities meeting. "They were not terrific when they were built."

Just what is it, Mr. PDT, that makes a school building only good for 40 years?  And what makes it good for longer? Were the old schools designed by Professional Architects that were the PDTs of their day?  And approved by School Boards and Administrations of their time?  Remind us again, if you will, why your offerings this time around will not be similarly flawed?

The cost upgrades will be presented at the March 6 meeting in four cost options, depending on the scope of work.

We need to give BCU enough time to prepare their preemptive arguments for the upcoming budget deliberations and hearings.  The options presented should provide the perfect context for BCU to argue that it’s time to ‘bite the bullet’ and do what’s right for ‘our children.’

While the minimum amount of work would consist of basic repairs, like removing asbestos from beneath the floors and replacing broken toilet fixtures, another cost option would focus on adding more capacity to the schools, Keck said.

Asbestos beneath the floors? How many children and staff must die?

Broken toilet fixtures? Who the hell has been responsible for, and who have we been paying, to take care of our schools? We want to know, by name, those who have lost their jobs for letting such situations exist, and who the administration officials are that tolerate such incompetence?

If the people we pay to take care of the kids are doing as good a job as those we pay to take care of the schools, where are we?

Adding more capacity?  What the hell does that have to do with renovation? And why have we shut down two actively used schools?

Keck said that while basic repairs would be less costly, they wouldn't do much to increase the longevity of two buildings.

That BS we started this off with about ‘renovation’ was the first step in sticking it to you, but good.  Time to fork it over, you inattentive dolts.

"If you do a full renovation you can say ... it's more expensive," Keck said, "but ... it's a good investment and it will go on for another 40 years."

Look, I’ve got a really good deal for you. And my kids, who are in architectural school right now, will be here in 30-40 years to sell you the next major upgrade. We call it job security in our business.

Some of the work would entail updating the two buildings to modern code standards and adding insulation.

Of course; who can argue with that? And you know what, once we start doing that, we always discover that the building was in far worse condition than we knew or suspected.

Also, the walls between the classrooms at Coffin have quarter-inch plywood, which not only allows sound to travel into other classrooms, but also makes the building more combustible, Keck previously told the School Board.

You know how dangerous that damn wood is; it’s combustible. We’re lucky none of our houses or other buildings use wood products, otherwise, we’d all be vulnerable.  This design could not have been created by architects like us; we’d never do such a thing.

At the junior high on Monday, Principal Walter Wallace demonstrated some of his building's deficiencies.

And neither the Superintendent or the School Board coached me to come up with any of this as part of the campaign.

"These are partition walls. They fold, they open up," Wallace said, pointing at the thin exterior walls of a few classrooms. "This is not very good for sound."

Who’d have guessed that partition walls designed to open up and move would open up and move? Boy, did we get screwed!

Stopping by a classroom in another part of the sixth-grade hall, Wallace pointed down at the floor.

"You can see that it slopes down," Wallace said, explaining that several classroom floors have sunk from the hallway's floor level. "Now you can take a marble and it will roll all the way across the floor."

Once again, we can be grateful for the careful design and attentive maintenance of our facilities by our crack professionals over the years.

In case renovations prove too costly, Keck said he will also have cost estimates for new buildings.

The Grand Pronouncement: in case fixing what we have is too expensive, we can always save money by replacing everything. And it won’t make a difference in what my firm makes on this.

Although the School Board will have to decide which path to take, the final decision will be left to voters when a bond issue goes to referendum, probably in November.

Just about the time the voters go into hibernation, we’ll put a monster referendum on the ballot in an election year that guarantees minimum voter turnout.

Last fall, Town Manager Gary Brown estimated a 6-7 percent increase in property taxes if the town borrows $21 million for the school upgrade plan. That figure could increase depending on the cost options that emerge March 6.

Like all such estimates, they are intended to numb the senses.

"If there’s not support for (a bond), the buildings stay exactly the way they are and we try to keep them running," Perzanoski said.  He said he will likely examine the costs of taking that route at one of the next school budget meetings.

“We can always let the children and the teachers suffer, and go without operating toilets, if it will save a few bucks.”

Shirley?  Shirley, are you there? 

We need to talk to you desperately, now!  Because we just checked the Cable 3 TV site, and no matter what our officials said, we don’t see any public meeting on the web site.

Surely what we read above can’t be true!

Or can it?

Technorati Tags: schools,Brunswick,budgets,renovation

LT Ben, Reporting for Duty!

              

Publisher’s Intro:

We told you last month that along with B. S. Balderdash and W. T. Fugawy, we recently added LT Benjamin Dover to Other Side staff, and we’re pleased to say that this post is his first major effort for our humble publication.  Known to his friends as Ben, Dover is shown above in a photo we think best symbolizes his role with our publication.

In case you’ve forgotten, “LT” stands for Local Taxpayer.  In formal settings, his name is announced as “Ben, Dover, Local Taxpayer.”

Ben is a whimsical sort, full of good humor, and we thought showing you a few items from his office wall would help you get to know him better:

         

          

From this point on, the talking stick belongs to Dover:

Greetings, inquiring minds of Brunswick and beyond.  What an honor it is to address you on the most critical issues of our time.  Our publisher, P. C. Poppycock, has asked me to author a background piece for an upcoming post of his. 

So please bear with me as I do my best; while things may seem a bit disjointed, everything we pass along here is a part of the larger puzzle that is Brunswick and its governance, if you can call it that.

Let’s begin with an assertion that Brunswick, or the Town of Perfect as our publisher likes to call it, is America’s Richest Little Town.

Since 2005, Perfect has built a new fire station, a new school, a new salt shed, and invested deeply in a new downtown station complex.  In the works are a new Police Station, a new Municipal Office Facility, more new schools, and a new School Bus Maintenance and Storage Facility.  Waiting in the wings for the right time to act is a new Central Fire Station, which will complete a 10 year whirlwind of replacing almost every town facility of both the School Department and Municipal Government.

Not bad for a small town in one of the poorest and oldest states in the nation, and one that has seen the closure of its iconic institution, the Brunswick Naval Air Station, in recent years, with consequent loss of population vitality and economic activity. 

As a side note, the town purchased, renovated, and then tore down a facility at a total cost of $3 million or more, all for naught.  Unless you consider bare ground a worthwhile investment.  This seems to be a habit here in town. And yet many wonder why the country is going bankrupt at breakneck speed, city by city, and soon, state by state.

You might want to reread this post from nearly two years ago to provide additional context for where we are headed.

If you’ve never heard of the terms ‘mission creep,’ or ‘being ramped,’ or ‘water drop treatment,’ trust us.  You are being subjected to them all in what has transpired since the start of the current school year last fall, and what is unfolding now as the budget season goes into full swing.

Let’s set some terms of reference.  The conversation over the last year or so has addressed ‘renovating’ Brunswick Junior High School (BJHS) and Coffin Elementary School, which share a common campus on Columbia Avenue.

Let’s see what the word renovate means:

ren·o·vate

verb (used with object)

1. to restore to good condition; make new or as if new again; repair.

2. to reinvigorate; refresh; revive.

It seems appropriate to review various recent pronouncements on this subject.

This one is encouraging, especially as it relates to stewardship of community owned facilities devoted to ‘our children.’

School buildings aren't being kept in good condition, the department's director of facilities told the School Board Wednesday night.  (snip)  The total value of the department's facilities is $88 million, Facilities Director Paul Caron said. But the cost to fully repair all of the buildings has risen to $44.4 million, more than 50 percent of their total replacement value.  From: http://othersideofbrunswick.blogspot.com/2012/04/school-department-priorities-in-case.html

And then there’s this:

COFFIN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
BRUNSWICK JR. HIGH SCHOOL
COST OPTIONS
January 30, 2013

 
I. COFFIN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
• Option 1 – Additions only at Coffin Elementary School
• Option 2 – Repair and code issue upgrades
• Option 3 – Energy code conformance update
• Option 4 – Full renovation for 40 year Life Cycle

 
II. BRUNSWICK JR. HIGH SCHOOL
• Option 1 – Additions only at Jr. High School
• Option 2 – Repair and code issue upgrades
• Option 3 – Energy code conformance update
• Option 4 – Full renovation (except 1983 building)

 
III. NEW ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AT COFFIN ELEMENTARY SITE

 
IV. NEW ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AT JORDAN ACRES SITE

Perhaps some local ‘public servant’ can explain how these options stay within the confines of ‘renovation.’

As a bit of an afterthought, we found this item in the meeting notes of January 30, 2013 of some interest:

27.  PDT will be preparing estimates for the additions at both schools repair and code upgrades, energy code upgrades and a full-renovation for both projects.  PDT will also provide an estimate for a new elementary school at the Coffin Elementary Site, a new Middle School and a new Elementary School at the Jordan Acres site.

You’ll find the document here: http://www.brunswick.k12.me.us/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/january-MEETING-NOTES.pdf

Three new schools?  What’s the big deal? We’re the richest small town in America, and we can’t have a new Police Station and old schools, can we?

We shouldn’t end the discussion without a review of the political context for these deliberations.

From a historical point of view, I can’t help but remind you of Jim Ashe telling the Town Council that he had no plans to build a new school, but that he ‘just wanted to find out if the state would even consider financing such a project.’  Oh yeah; HBS, thy name is Jim Ashe along with the help of John Richardson, at that time, a member of top leadership in the State Legislature.

In addition, we now have Brunswick Community United, or as the publisher calls them, ‘the schoolies.’  Here’s where they stand on the concept of renovations:

We have not yet heard a specific time frame identified for this project – either for the decision-making period, or for the construction.  While we understand the Board is considering this a renovation project, rather than a new construction project, the current plans would represent a dramatic expansion of the number of current classrooms and the size of our schools.  This level of investment requires substantial community involvement.  By holding these workshops, the Board would demonstrate that that (sic) it committed (sic) to transparency in its decision-making and that it will continue to be effective stewards of the community’s funds.

Does that sound like ‘renovation’ to you?  And can you ignore the complete absence of effective stewardship?  Of course you can, if ‘it’s for the children!’

Also playing into the mix are the latest ambitions of local politicians.  In this example, Johnny “Protocols” Richardson shamelessly panders to the BCU schoolies:

Richardson, a former Democratic gubernatorial candidate who replaces former Chairwoman Joanne King on the council, said balancing the needs of public education funding with redevelopment efforts at Brunswick Landing will be his major focus.

"There's a lot of talk about corporate welfare for Kestrel, but you're not hearing enough about the need for local school funding."

"Brunswick is a local education town, and we pride ourselves on having a strong education system," Richardson said, "and we're in jeopardy of losing the benefit of our local public schools if we are moving too far in one direction."

From: http://othersideofbrunswick.blogspot.com/2013/01/hes-baaaackkkk.html

You can’t imagine how proud I am to have written my first full column here on Other Side.  I hope you don’t mind if I show again the image that I proudly offer as my trademark.

                     

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