http://www.rutlandherald.com/article/20130119/NEWS02/701199959
Public invited to interview superintendent candidates
By Christian Avard
Staff Writer | January 19,2013
Rutland Herald
SPRINGFIELD — The Springfield School Board may have a new superintendent by the end of the month and the public can take part in the interview process, according to school officials.
The Springfield School Board announced two Springfield School District administrators are being considered to replace outgoing Superintendent of Schools Frank Perotti. Assistant Superintendent Zach McLaughlin and Union Street Elementary School Principal Martha Potter will be interviewed in the coming weeks.
The School Board interviewed from within first because the candidates are known by the staff and community, they are familiar with the district’s strengths, and the transition of leadership will be more seamless, board members said. Although two internal candidates have applied for the position, the search process will be open to outside candidates.
“It’s just part of the normal search process to interview two internal candidates that are qualified,” School Board Chairman Scott Adnams said. “We had consultations from the Vermont School Board Association, a lot of people are looking internally. It seemed like the right thing to do.”
The School Board will introduce the candidates to the staff and community Jan. 30. The event will take place all day and candidates will discuss their qualifications to be Springfield’s superintendent.
All who attend will have the opportunity to provide feedback. Afterward the School Board will conduct final interviews and deliberate.
“Community members will get to be part of the interview process. We felt very strongly about having an evening session to the public and the board members have agreed to stay as late as we have to so we can finish the process,” Adnams said.
Perotti, the outgoing superintendent, was hired as Springfield’s superintendent in 2008 and is now in the final year of his contract.
The estimated salary for the new superintendent will be $120,000 plus benefits, according to School Board Vice Chairwoman Jeanice Garfield.
For more information, contact the Springfield School District at 885-5141.
take part in the interview process.
ReplyDelete1. so we can blaim the new person's mistakes on the voters and not the responsible hiring person's who are qualified and knowlegable and competent...
2. So you can hire an un qualified chosen puppet that will be manipulated by those currently in charge without it looking like they have already chosen their person but instead like it was YOUR briliant idea
Why doesn't this come as a surprise to me. What is actually amazing is that the district is still offering the current salary to two candidates that have zero experience. At this time of higher taxes and budgets not passing you would think that salary would commensurate with experience but here we go again with the boards complete incompetency. What part of failing school is it that the board does not understand?
ReplyDeleteZach has no clue whatsoever, and Martha even less! Because you have a degree that qualifies you for a position does not mean you know what is required of you. It seems like the districts legal problems would have taught them that they need a person with vast, proven experience NOT two wannabe's who have no clue of current requirements and or laws.
I guess it is time for the taxpayers to stand up and respond with their vote. Shoot down that school budget until it comes in under 200k to compensate for this lack of competence with the board and sheer utter laziness because they don't want to do a proper and national search for a qualified candidate.
Another point I want to make is the response about "other districts are looking internally" um yes but more than likely they are not a financially struggling district plagued with legal woes and lawsuits.
AND for the naysayers who want to make your comments about reacting with a no vote for the budget. This is the only way the taxpayers have to respond and to make a point. So save your speeches about how it affects the kids and is counter productive. So did the bus boycotts in the 60s it affected the citizens but it worked. So will voting down that budget until a tone is set that we are tired of this crap!
Anonymous1/19/13, 11:16 AM, you must work or someone in your family does for the district to make the comments that you have. Oh you might even be one of the teachers or administrators that Mr. McLaughlin is holding accountable for your lack of performance. Mr. McLaughlin has been running and cleaning up the messes within the district for the last few months. It’s very clear you do not know Mr. McLaughlin’s history or experience. Having watched his interactions on SAPA and while attending board meetings, he has always been professional and straight forward. Who knows, he might be a breath of fresh air for the district. I do not work for the district nor do any of my family members.
DeleteDo you want to know why there wasn't any outside applicants of any quality?
DeleteBECAUSE THE TOWN NEVER PASSES ITS SCHOOL BUDGET.
Why would anyone with the qualities needed by a successful superintendent ever want to work in Springfield, a town that over the past 30 years has voted against more school budgets than it has passed, when due to the lack of qualified people around the state Superintendent positions are in high demand.
Don't worry vote no this year...it will get better.
@4:41 and 1:13 It is commendable the allegiance you have for Mr. McLaughlin. First, no I do not work for the school system nor the town so I will nix that straight off. Second, I am acutely aware of a lot of the internal issues happening in the district. I think that one of the most detrimental issues is the Special Ed arena. There have been countless legal mistakes coming from that Dept for years that eventually will catch up with the district by legal means yet that problem has not been fixed by Mr. McLaughlin. This is a high demand job and the requirement needed is for a seasoned, proven individual with a solid past track record of school improvement.
DeleteI have a huge issue with paying someone who is considered in this field as being very green and the salary that the board announced. I am sorry, you start out with less and you tie salary increase to proven improvements or tiers in our district. In this day and age that is an industry standard in a failing district.
The crap about the town budget never passing is just that. CRAP! This is a salaried position that the budget doesn't directly affect and anyone who is good at their job as a super would explain that to you. For 10 years now the school has told the public that throwing money and increasing the budget would bring success within the system BUT that has been proven very wrong hasn't it. The school budget in 10 years has doubled if not tripled yet the student aptitude has dropped considerably. That combined with the lack of management and business skills has created the problem we currently see. You have an upper management or supervisory staff that has knowingly violated laws repeatedly and the board and the super have knowingly allowed it and cover it over as it was a miscalculation, it was a mistake, we misunderstood our requirements. That is a load of crap. You know what don't try to pull the bully card on me saying that I must be a bitter employee because I am not. I am an educated business person.
To further address 4:41 Why would someone want to come to Springfield? I have 120k dollars of reasons why. The same reason the locals want to do it. The lack of qualified people around the state is the EXACT reason a nationwide search should have been taken more seriously. And 1:13, your watching SAPA and how he interacts qualifies you to pass judgment on his qualifications? I have never doubted Mr. McLaughlin's credentials. I think he is way too green, way to local, and frankly the salary being paid is too much for the lack of experience. The contract should be directly tied to performance and IMPROVEMENT of the district.
Martha has been a superintendent, for quite a few years I think.
DeleteSo easy to sling mud and talk crap while you are safely anonymous. Post your name and then come to the interview with you venom and we can see what is what.
Deletewow. do we have a bully? are you going try to beat me up or just try to intimidate me? im not a little old lady! just a little dude.
DeleteMcLaughlin cleans up messes? If you base that off of his "interactions on SAPA" what you mean is he speaks well, and comes across as cleaning up messes. Good talkers do not necessary make good doers. He does nothing to help the schools.
DeleteLack of experience? Way to green? Way too Local? I understand this is your opinion and you have a right to that. However, you should consider everything you do not know about Zach McLaughlin before making, lets say assumptions. 1. Lack of experience? He has already been in the district for several years and has made more of an effort and has been more excited to improve the quality of this district than anyone else I have seen walk through here. 2. Too Green? What? that means the same thing as inexperienced...unless of course you were referring to his sense of Cosmos Green Pride, because around here, the more the better. and 3. to local? Have you even checked out this guy's profile on ssdvt.org?
Delete"I am a native Mainer who grew up with two high school educators for parents. My mom taught biology, and my dad was a special educator. My career has seen me working in schools in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Missouri, China, South Africa, and, now, Vermont. I feel that each school has given me a valuable insight into what good education can be.
BA in Politics, Saint Anselm College
MA in Teaching Arts, Washington University in Saint Louis
CAGS in Educational Leadership, Bridgewater State University"
He would not just lie about those things, especially with his resume on file. This guy has had adventures, especially for the dedication his career than many people could hope for.
Some People need to see that he is one of the good things to have happened to this town in the few years. Embrace it.
Mr. McLaughlin, what did you know and when did you know it?
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone really believe that the public will really have anything to do with picking the new sup? Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!! This is a common ploy used when a board is under scrutiny by the public and they are trying to diffuse the situation by pretending the public will actually have a say in the decision. Unless the public can prove that the chosen one is a convicted felon or pedophile they will absolutely nothing to say about who gets picked. The die will have already been cast before the public meeting. Welcome to Hades!
ReplyDeleteExactly! This is just a dog and pony show. Maybe they should hire that guy who has been sitting by the stop light by the plaza he needs a job. He might have experience!
DeleteWell then do something about it. Call or write the board members and let them know that you do not want the current candidates and that if they hire one of them you will campaign to defeat the school budget. If 20,30,40 100 people do this..you could change the outcome. Create the change you want. Sitting around complaining accomplishes nothing. Get involved and let your voice be heard. Solicit knowledgeable people for the school board. Get the signatures needed. I mean there are dozens of things to be involved but you have to step off the cliff and take the initiative
ReplyDeleteYou mean jump off the cliff like the rest of the sheep that fell for the lies that the school board told us? Or like lemmings that fell for the lies that Obama and his misfits told us?
DeleteAgreed @11:20 but we have to do something! Something is better than nothing!
ReplyDeleteI agree with the poster that Zach McLaughlin has been cleaning up the messes. I don't necessarily see the value of an "experienced" Superintendent who has left someplace else for reasons that never can be fully determined in an interview process. Whether the salary should be the same or not depends on whether they are going to have an Asst. Supt. If they are not going to have an Asst. Supt. then have no problem with the salary remaining the same, otherwise it should probably be lower to start.
ReplyDeleteSo I take it nobody knows if they are going to still have an Asst. Supt.
DeleteWasn't the current Superintendent experienced when he was hired.
ReplyDeleteTime for a breath of fresh air.....Zach McLauglin.
Hire him before he reads the Springfield Blog.
He was experienced but had no proven track record nor was past performance fully examined or explored. Not sure if you have seen the court reports that were published here or not but would have taken only an idiot to talk with the school board at the last school to get a good heads up on performance which the school board definitely DID NOT follow through with good due diligence on that. FYI Zack isn't cleaning anything up the school was forced to by the State and the Federal Government.
DeleteFYI - Zach is cleaning up messes that are not state or federal mandates. He has also been running the district for the last month and half, the current Superintendent is doing nothing, yet the School Board does still gives him a paycheck. Check the number of days the Superintendent has not come in or "works from home". You talk about not fulfilling a contract! He has not even showed up for contract negotiations which is part of his job!
DeleteWhere do you get this information? Is that you Mr. McLaughlin?
DeleteHomeschooling or private schools are vastly superior choices to Springfield Public Schools, which have been poorly led and pathetically performing for years now.
ReplyDeleteI whole heartedly agree with that. I wish I could afford to stay home as to teach my children instead if them going to these schools.
DeleteBe careful with blanket statements about any particular form of education. For example, there are charter schools, and then there are Michelle Rhee's charter schools. From a blogger:
ReplyDelete"... It was not question of a news organization smelling a story, or objectively gathering "facts". Michelle Rhee was already proven a liar, her "education miracle" during her six weeks in a Baltimore kindergarten as real and substantial as a tissue-paper chrysanthemum.... Rhee was seen walking into D.C. schools as a hard-nosed education reformer tackling the most difficult school system in America, not as a self-promoting serial liar with a PR agenda, no experience, and not much of anything else.... Early on she (and the mayor, and the teevee cameras) marched through the district's central supply depot so she could point at pallets of sorely-needed supplies just sitting there. Rhee was allowed to portray this as a culture of bureaucratic neglect... No school district loads its trucks with goodies and drives around letting teachers help themselves. Schools operate on budgets, and teachers requisition materials within those budgets.... Is that why there were supplies in a warehouse? No one [in the media] bothered to look. After all, this was education reform!... Rhee had a program: attack easy targets first, consolidate power and PR... Principals were the first to go, then teachers, then masses of teachers. The game was given away early (to those who hadn't been paying attention all along) when it was leaked that she planned to close dozens of schools, and Rhee admits that she kept that information secret... The reports of high wrong-to-right erasures on the tests of nearly all Achiever Schools prompts Rhee to hire a firm to investigate. It doesn't diagnose the test results, but it does give the district the Big Thumbs Up.To this revelation Rhee--who ordered, paid for, and, presumably, received the results--is shocked! Shocked! to learn the job was less than...adequate.To the larger revelation that the miracle-performing schools were all cheating, Rhee claims she can point to "dozens and dozens" of schools where the gains were real.... Unfortunately, she seems to've left her pointer at home....She should have been able to say something about what education means. She should have been able to, if not silence, at least contribute to the debate over high-stakes testing. She did none of that. She cheated, she promoted herself, and she landed on a pile of tax-free dollars."
If you don't put parents into the system, you have to put more money into the system. Of course, it would be cheaper just to rent slaves as tutors.
chuck my education consisted of reading Hustler and Penthouse underneath the Blanket and I didn't cheat !! I did it the "old fashioned" way and it workeds every time ! Not that I am trying to make a blanket statement on education.
DeleteAnyone interested in participating in interviewing candidates for the position of superintendent of schools should read the document titled: The Essential Work of Vermont School Boards.
ReplyDeleteSee:http://www.vtvsba.org/download/2012EssentialWork.pdf
The document describes the state regulations that define the qualifications superintendents must have, how superintendents should be selected, and how they must work with communities and school boards.
In essence, to be successful superintendents must have talents, training, experience and leadership skills that enable them to best serve an educational community, which is what a school district is. Having advanced degrees in Education does not mean a candidate has writing skills, speaking skills, administrative skills, ability to communicate enthusiasm for learning, and ability to work effectively with subordinants, skills that a superintendent must have. A superintendent must be able to define challenging educational goals, and rally support for those goals from his teaching staff, tax payers, the parents of the District's students, and the students being educated within the District.
All candidates should be required to submit a reading file of their written communications and college papers, so their ability to write clearly in the English language can be evaluated. If candidates are applying from within the Springfield District, all teaching staff within the District should have an opportunity to vote for or against a candidate by secret ballot. That way, the School Board will learn whether the candidates have the support of teachers within the District, people who know them on a professional level. If a candidate is applying from somewhere outside the District, very careful checking of the candidate's background and recommendations must be conducted.
A candidate's full college record should be open for inspection. What courses did the candidate take, and what were his grades? If a candidate filled his schedule with gut courses, took no math or science courses, never took writing courses, and only took education and psychology courses, reject the candidate. Please don't saddle Springfield with someone who is proficient in psycho-babble and all the educator's buzz words, but really doesn't know anything else. If a candidate refuses to open his college record for inspection, suggest he run for president, but don't hire him in Springfield!
I am convinced the Springfield School District has an over staffed central office. We must not miss this opportunity to combine some positions and reassign some duties. For instance, if school principals were tasked with selecting staff for vacancies within their schools, superintendents would be relieved of a task that could easily be accomplished by an able principal. A principal who is untrained to select and hire teaching staff should not be a principal.
I hope the School Board seriously considers combining the Curriculum Director's position, the Assistant Superintendent's position, and the District Superintendent's position into one job. I do not mean to insult anyone, but how difficult is it to decide if Algebra 1 and Geometry will be required for students to graduate from high school? If a candidate for Springfield School District Superintendent of Schools, which is a highly paid position, thinks he needs a curriculum director and an assistant superintendent, the School Board should select another candidate to fill the superintendent's position.
Will we see your name on the list of possible candidates? Please? With sugar on top?
DeleteDamn, that's pretty spot on. Shame someone like yourself that's articulate with first hand experience in academic career skills, isn't at least on the board.
DeleteUnfortunately we can only attract self serving twits. Those with special needs kids in the system or infatuated with special ed. Beyond time to restore excellence in education and let the retards get by the best they can.
To Chris: If my memory serves me correctly this is the first super to have an assistant and the position of curriculum director was put in place during the reign of the last super. Before her, all of these positions were considered duties of the super, which probably justified the salary in the contract. The super actually worked instead of attending meetings out of town and state most of the time or answering complaints and legal actions from parents in the district.
DeleteChris-Any chance you will run for school board? Your post was so on point I just want to say thank you! Finally someone who has common sense that is relevant to business in this matter! Well put.
ReplyDeleteThroughout their careers, teachers are required to take continued training, though not in the subjects they teach, but in education, if they want to remain certified teachers. This requirement quietly transfers millions of dollars from school districts' budgets to various Departments of Education in institutions of higher learning. A huge publically funded captive clientel ensures that Depts. of Education are the largest departments in the colleges and universities that have them. Certainly majors in education are taught to believe that their strength lies in their numbers and their political connections, and not especially in their knowledge of an academic subject and their ability to teach it. They also like the idea of a captive clientel...Pay your school taxes of lose your house!
ReplyDeleteIf one reviews the mind numbing curriculum required of those training to become educators, it is a wonder that any truly creative or gifted person perseveres to receive a degree. It appears to me to be 4 years of intellectual hazing, with the carry over benefit in the real world of a teaching job with reasonable pay and excellent benefits.
Among those who manage to endure the educational training gauntlet are persons who have no intention of facing classroom teaching challenges, but are focused on being educational administrators. A few in this group are very talented persons, and of these some work in the Springfield School District. But there are many others who see a job in school administration as a road to high pay, little accountability, and personal power. They have no passion for actually giving our children an excellent chance at becoming the very best educated people they can be. They have neither the talents, training or temperaments necessary to lead the Springfield School District into becoming the best school district in the State of Vermont. They do not even think in such terms, and shrink at the mention of such a challenge. Who cares if such do not apply for the superintendent's job in Springfield?
Springfield is rightfully proud of its Cosmos teams. Our coaches train their atheletes do their absolute best, to hold up their end, to work hard and learn from their coaches, and to intend not just to play a game, but to do their best to win. We need a superintendent of schools who will bring the Cosmos' competitive spirit to our teaching staff and students. We must stop being a community expecting and accepting excuses for failure. We must focus on challenging our students to excel, to utterly reject being an "also ran".
If we do not make dramatic changes in our attitudes and expectations, how can we expect anything different from what we have endured or achieved in the recent past? Our school district has enormous assets: excellent buildings, talented teachers and support staff, and many wonderful eager-to-learn students. We need to challenge ourselves as teachers, parents, students, and tax payers to set challenging goals, remembering that the key to academic excellence is not money spent, but academic effort made.
Why have we set a deadline for hiring a superintendent? If we don't find the person who fits our needs by June, someone who is capable and unafraid of the challenge, we can operate with an interim superintendent, even appointing our high school principal to the position for a year. Don't let the advancing calendar stampede our school district over a cliff.
Agreed. Teachers who didn't have mind-numbing training in college, are experiencing it now with a program that McLaughlin supports. It's expensive, and it's their answer to all, and it's making good teachers leave.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, he approved the pay cut of one of our great varsity coaches, who does not work for the district, but dedicates a lot of time and money to the kids in this community. Way to help the Cosmos spirit! The high school principal is worse. He and McLaughlin are best friends, two peas in a pod.
So as I see it, you must be one of the teachers who are disgruntled after being held answerable on how you do your job by both the current HS principal and Asst. Superintendent. You forgot to tell the public that until the current principal took over, there where teachers who haven’t been evaluated in 10 years or more! Something the current superintendent and former principals haven’t completed and were responsible for. The information you are discussing is from inside knowledge at the HS. I’m sorry you have to do lesson plans along with doing them right and held accountable as to how you teach and grade students, not continue as you have historically which lead us to being AYP for how many years? The teachers who are getting out are the ones who can’t handle the pressure of doing their job the right way! As far as the pay cut you allege, it comes under the teachers’ contract which Mr. McLaughlin has nothing to do with, he can’t change the contract. If you have a bitch about that, contact the Springfield Teachers Association, they negotiated the contract… As a teacher at the HS, I for one welcome the changes we are experiencing! We owe it to the taxpayers and students to give them the best we can each day and if the HS principal/Asst. Superintendent are mandating we are accountable for doing just that, so be it!
ReplyDeleteInside information 8:39? Hmmmm... Nope, not me. Yikes, you are a teacher at SHS and you are posting on here? That's embarrassing. Do you understand students can and could read this and you are using foul language and a caustic tone? Wow, I hope my child gets you for a semester...
DeleteCertainly criticism of expensive new teaching strategies is legitimate, and at its core raises an important question: what was wrong with everything educators were taught in their mind-numbing curriculum while in college? Are they now admitting they were mislead, their time in college was wasted, and they never learned how to teach effectively? Or are we witnessing the use of a strategy of ensuring job security by promoting endless change and gaining academic degrees by administering new programs?
ReplyDeleteWhile Vermont stands out as a leader in education nationally, all of us know that our educational system produces less than what we should expect. We know that throwing more money and new teaching strategies into our educational system will not achieve dramatic improvements, and perhaps none at all. Complacent educators tend to throw up their hands and say, "What can I do with the students I have? At least I have a job and benefits until I retire."
It is vital the public intercedes for the students and demands better results, demands that the Springfield School District return to basic teaching strategies that worked in the past, work today, and will work in the future: those used in one room schools.
When readers are finished laughing at such a preposterous idea, thoughtfully examine it. One room schools had one teacher, and many teachers' aids. The older students, who had mastered certain subjects, like reading and arithmetic, were expected to help teach younger students. The process promoted several valuable social concepts, such as: a school should be a community of scholars, working together; the able have a duty to help those less advanced; academic achievement empowers those who learn; and older, advanced students should be academic mentors for younger students, not tormentors. If a more advanced student has taken a less advanced student under his guidance and mentoring, it is unlikely he will permit his student to be bullied.
Teachers in one room schools not only taught academic subjects, they raised generations of people who knew how to help those behind themselves achieve what they had achieved. In sparsely populated areas, communities relied upon local people helping each other, not government programs dispensing benefits. We need to promote that spirit in the Springfield School District. It thrived in the machine tool industry in Springfield for generations, and produced the finest machinests and machine tool designers in the nation.
How difficult would it be to develop a formal student-to-student mentoring program in our schools? I suggest the Springfield School District adopt a student mentoring program that gives academic credit to the student teachers involved. Students love to demonstrate their skills in music, art, computer science, electronics, photography, and other subjects, and are especially pleased to impress other students. A formal mentoring program is needed for teaching math (at all its levels), sciences, English, foreign languages, history, and other subjects. Creating a formal program with defined topics, volunteer student teachers, schedules, assigned class room space, tracked by appropriate testing and records, would promote a new spirit in our schools. It would cost little money, and help develop a new generation of professional teachers who have confidence in a teaching method that produces positive results at little cost.
So your children had no good teachers in the past, Mr. C? The ones they had, who are still there, need to be reformed?
DeleteMy four children attended Springfield's schools, and all four received superb instruction. They could not have received a better education anywhere else. From kindergarden through high school, their teachers were talented and dedicated. They inspired my children to read widely, study diligently, to ask questions, and accept nothing because it was politically correct, inside or outside of a classroom.
DeleteSuch instruction produced talented and informed conversationalists, who especially enjoyed challenging their father to debates at dinner.
My eldest daughter Caitlin was a Vermont Scholar, and received an MS Degree with honors in computer science from UVM. She is the proprietor of Axis Web Design.
My youngest daughter Natalie attended college while working full time. She graduated from Johnson State with high honors, and teaches math in Barre.
My son Kagan graduated with honors from St. Johns College and is a self-employed real estate developer, specializing in turning deteriorated properties into commercial successes. He received an award from the State of Mississippi for doing the best restoration of an historic building in 2011. The New York Times and a business publication in Shanghai, China have featured his work and that of his wife in the economic rebirth of Water Valley, Miss.. He is only 31-years-old. My eldest son is deceased.
Through my children, I met several fantastic young people from Springfield, who also benefited enormously from Springfield's schools. They also are successful, happy adults, contributing much more than just taxes to their communities.
Though many of my children's teachers have retired, the Springfield School District has many able and dedicated teachers. What it appears to lack is enthusiastic and confident executive leadership, the people with administrative skills needed to inspire teachers and students to make their best efforts. Our administrators appear to spend most of their energies attempting to protect the District from civil suits. While such is important, we need more than that.
We need to protect the Springfield School District from the defeatism that marched into Springfield when the major machine tool shops closed. The arrival of the prison also challenged optimists in our community. All of us in Springfield need to resolve we are going to make the best use of our many educational assets, and that our District will again become the best in the state.
To do that, we need to see clearly that throwing money at problems rarely solves them. We need to recognize that often procrastination hides under a mantle titled "new programs". We need to empower our administrators and teachers to enforce discipline rules, and to make parents financially responsible for productive class time lost when their children disrupt classes.
It was not long ago that we knew proven methods, making use of our talents and assets, and working hard produces astounding results.
I don't think teachers need to be "reformed". I think they need to be empowered to teach, to set goals that are challenging, and to help students reach them.
Well said, Chris. Whew.
DeleteCC,
DeleteCould you please continue.
Possibly posting short bios for every one of your family members (both maternal and paternal please) going back.....oh I don't know.....to the advent of the Holy Roman Empire?
Of particular interest would be your family members glorious exploits, heroic conquests and global affirmations.
Give me five minutes, gotta grab the popcorn.
A "teacher at the HS" should take a moment to carefully edit his/her comment before posting it. "One of the teachers" is a singular subject, and requires, in this case, the singular verb "is disgruntled", not "are disgruntled".
ReplyDeleteA conflict between a subject and verb, especially in an opening sentence, reveals a weakness in education that should have been corrected before the writer left grammar school. This is an example of why reading files from candidates for employment in the Springfield School District should be required. If they can't write a grammatically correct sentence in their native language, how can we trust them to know anything else!
Picking apart sentence structure, spelling, and conjugation is the frequent fall back position of internet trolls that cannot answer the point of the post. Blogs are an informal environment and are not be treated like formal papers. You are greatly out of touch.
DeleteInternet trolls sign their posts "Anonymous", or use a ficticious name.
DeleteThe bottom line in written communications, especially those of professional educators, is to make certain one uses grammatically correct English and develops ideas logically. Conflists between subjects and verbs and incomplete sentences must be avoided. If students read this blog, what will they learn from such a writing sample? That grammar doesn't matter, or that their parents pay uneducated or careless teachers?
Whoever wrote the letter made some valid points. He also unwittingly revealed one of the chronic weaknesses in our school district. If one reviews the Springfield School District's website, or attends School Board meetings, one is sure to encounter printed examples of poor English, some hilarious. A hand-out was distributed last spring at a School Board meeting with the bold faced, capitalized heading, "BUGET ISSUES". A highly paid contractor working for the Springfield School District uses grammatically incorrect English and poor spelling on her website.
Those who write for the Springfield School District, and those who used to write memorandums (supposedly from the Superintendent) to employees within the District, sometimes did not even spell Frank's name correctly. In one he was signed "Frack Perotti", in another "Fack Perotti", and one even spelled Ph.D. incorrectly.
Perhaps many are not surprised or dismayed by incorrect English usage, but be certain, our District graduates will enter a world where spelling, grammar, and attention to details are important employment qualifications. They will be competing with well educated people, even foreigners (Indians), who are experts in English usage.
Chris, you should edit your posts prior to posting, it is conflicts, not conflists.
DeletePlease see your second paragraph.
ROFL! Point and match to Anon 1:49.
DeleteAbsolutely perfect point!!!!!!!
DeleteWhen I went to UVM in the early 60's, the President of UVM greeted incoming students with the statement, "None of us are perfect." A KUA graduate sitting next to me began to laugh. I asked what was funny? "None", he said, "Is a singular pronoun. He should have said, 'None of us is perfect.'"
The President of UVM certainly was describing me, however incorrect his grammar!
Chris.. your post at 1:14PM... the commas and periods go inside the quotation marks, c'mon, you're better than that!
ReplyDeleteMy punctuation usage is correct. Since I was citing an individual word, "Anonymous", and two misspellings of the Superintendent's first name, as examples, the commas rightly are outside the second quotation marks. The period you question is also properly placed. If I had quoted a complete sentence, the period would have gone inside the final quotation mark.
DeleteFind a copy of the runaway #1 British bestseller, "Eats, Shoots & Leaves", by Lynne Truss. It is subtitled, "The Zero Tolerance Approach To Punctuation". Perhaps you will learn where periods and commas go when used in conjunction with quotation marks. Have fun. It is a wonderfully instructive and entertaining book.
It is actually acceptable to have the punctuation inside or outside the quotation marks.
Delete