SCHENECTADY Four running for school board BY MICHAEL GOOT Gazette Reporter Reach Gazette reporter Michael Goot at 395-3105 or mgoot@dailygazette.net.
Four candidates are running for two available seats in the May 19 Schenectady City School District Board of Education election. Two of them are local activists who were on opposite ends of the proposal to move Howe school to Central Park Middle School. The deadline for submitting nominating petitions to the school district clerk was 5 p.m. on Wednesday. Current board member Linda Bellick is seeking re-election to a fourth term. She will be joined by Denise DellaVilla, most recently Howe PTO president, local attorney Diane Herrmann and Howe parent and Arthur’s Market co-owner Joyce Wachala. All are seeking three-year positions. Bellick said last week that she was running again because there was still work to be done. Bellick works as an outreach recruitment specialist for the state Department of Health. Herrmann, a lawyer who serves as executive director of the Schenectady County Bar Association, said she was running to bring more accountability, transparency and open communications to the school board. “I’m proud of our schools; they have so much potential, but we’re not going to fully unleash that potential unless we involve the entire community,” Herrmann said in a statement released on Wednesday. “Unfortunately, too many in the current leadership act as though the school district is an exclusive club, where decisions are made behind closed doors and new ideas have no place. That has got to change and change now.” Herrmann lives in Schenectady with her husband and three daughters. She has a law degree from the University of Buffalo Law School and specializes in family law and mediation. She is a member of the Schenectady County Youth Board, the New York State Bar Association House of Delegates and chairwoman of the Schenectady Municipal Housing Authority Commission. She has served on various school and district committees. ......................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar01401
Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com. The lineup for Schenectady school board
There are four candidates for two seats on the Schenectady school board, the school board that famously employed and made political use of a man now in jail on charges of terrorism. Two of the candidates, Joyce Wachala and Diane Herrmann, are outsiders, challenging the status quo. One, Denise Della Villa, is a PTO president who was recruited to run by the current board president, Jeff Janiszewski, that is, the man who principally made use of the accused terrorist and who begins every board meeting with a closed-door session in flagrant violation of the Open Meetings Law. And one, Linda Bellick, has been a member of that same board for nine years. The first outsider, Joyce Wachala, is owner with her husband of Arthur’s Market in the Stockade. She got involved because of the merger of Howe School with Central Park School, which she vehemently opposed. Her petitions to get on the ballot came within a whisker of being rejected, because Dick Yager, clerk of the board, invalidated 63 of the 155 signatures she collected, leaving her eight short of the 100 required. She found this out at her own initiative just a couple hours before the 5 p.m. deadline, on Wednesday, April 29, whereupon she rushed back out and collected about 16 more signatures, and with those was told she had just “squeaked by.” Presumably if she had not inquired, she would have been out of luck. Then yesterday she got a letter from Yager challenging her residency in the city, telling her there was no such address as she claimed and requiring her to provide documentation that she has lived in the school district for at least a year, as required, which came as a surprise, since the location of Arthur’s Market is hardly a secret in Schenectady, and she and her husband live above it. Two weeks ago the front tires on her vehicle and all four tires on her husband’s vehicle were punctured by a tool like an ice pick as they were parked behind the market, at the corner of Front and North Ferry streets. Naturally she doesn’t know if that had anything to do with her candidacy, but the similarity to the alleged activities of Steve Raucci, the accused school terrorist, is hard to ignore. One of his favorite retaliatory tactics, according to a grand jury indictment, was vandalism of vehicles, the other being the setting of explosives. The second outsider is Diane Herrmann, Family Court lawyer, chair of the Schenectady Municipal Housing Authority and executive director of the county Bar Association. She announced her candidacy saying, “Too many in the current leadership act as though the school district is an exclusive club … That has got to change and change now!” The problem of Steve Raucci, she told me, “is another example of no transparency.” She has not had her tires punctured that I’m aware of, nor were her petitions rejected. The next candidate is Denise Della Villa, president of the Howe PTO, who was approached to run by Janiszewski, the current board president, who I think of as the godfather of the Schenectady school district. I asked her what she made of the scandal of Raucci, the former head of buildings and grounds, now in jail, and she replied, “I don’t really follow that.” She said, “We need to get the word out there about all the positive things going on instead of all the negative things.” She told me she consulted with and was encouraged to run by the final candidate, Linda Bellick, who has served on the board since 2000, and as far as I can tell has been part of the team that made political use of Raucci, gave him a job title that allowed him to avoid a Civil Service test and created a $44,000 job for Janiszewski’s wife. She did not return my call, so I was not able to ask her if her tires have been punctured or her residency challenged, but I will assume neither of those things has happened. Dick Yager did confirm that no other candidate’s petitions were rejected for insufficient valid signatures, only Joyce Wachala’s, before she scrambled to get more at the last minute. As for what moved Yager to challenge her residency, well, the concern over where Joyce Wachala lived and how long she had lived there came to him from Superintendent Eric Ely. It came to Ely from Barbara Coffey, the principal of Howe School. And it came to Barbara Coffey via what she called in an e-mail to Ely “word of mouth,” though she reinforced that word with some research of her own, telling Ely, “I have a copy of Mrs. Wachala’s driver license indicating a Ballston Spa address,” and also a “National Grid bill with her Front Street address.” (The school district released the e-mails to me.) Yager then did some research of his own and determined, as he told Mrs. Wachala in his letter to her, “There is no parcel identified as 40 Front Street” at the assessor’s office, and furthermore, “A physical inspection reveals that no building bears the designation of 40 Front Street in Schenectady, NY.” Interesting, no? Who actually did the “physical inspection”? The school attorney, Shari Greenleaf, according to Yager. This is just to give you an idea of how things work in the Schenectady City School District. They’ve got the clerk of the board picking through a challenger’s petitions looking for illegible signatures to throw out, and they’ve got their attorney skulking around the Stockade trying to find an address, which was actually right under her nose, instead of boning up on the Open Meetings Law, which she ought to be doing. If they had taken the direct approach as I did and simply asked the Wachalas they would have been shown, as I was shown, the back door of Arthur’s Market where is written in black paint on a bare board above the door, “40 Front.” Admittedly that’s not visible from the street; you have to intrude into their driveway (where the tires were punctured) to see it, but the mailbox next to the door, with the label “40 Front St.,” can clearly be seen from the street. The Wachalas live upstairs, in Apartment 1. They have lived in Schenectady since moving from Ballston Spa early last year, they assure me. They had to scurry to City Hall yesterday and get a letter from the zoning officer, Steve Strichman, confirming that 40 Front St. is a real address. Actually, Yager must have assumed as much, since the letter he sent to Joyce Wachala advising her otherwise he addressed to her at that very address, “40 Front St., Apt. #1,” which I think is pretty cute. Anyway, there you have the four candidates. You get to pick two of them, if you live in Schenectady.
SCHENECTADY Violence, academics key issues in election Four candidates running for school board BY MICHAEL GOOT Gazette Reporter
Reducing violence and bullying, improving academic achievement and being more open about what is going on in the schools are among the goals of the four women running for the Schenectady City School District Board of Education. Voters on Tuesday will also decide on a $160 million budget. The spending plan reflects an increase of $6 million from this year’s $154 million budget. The budget would eliminate the positions of 17 teachers and 30 paraprofessionals, four secretaries, seven librarians and five administrators. Some of the positions are currently vacant. The proposal to eliminate the elementary librarians and replace them with literacy teachers has generated the most controversy. District offi - cials have defended the move, saying the new positions can be funded through stimulus money. If the budget is defeated twice and a contingency budget is adopted, the district cannot increase spending in most areas by more than 120 percent of the consumer price index or 4 percent of the current year budget, whichever is less. However, enrollment growth allows certain expenditures to exceed the 4 percent cap. In this case, the cap would be $165 million, according to district spokeswoman Karen Corona. The vote comes at the close of a tumultuous year for the school district. The longtime director of facilities, Steven Raucci, was arrested on charges alleging years of intimidation related to school district and school union activities. He has been indicted and remains in jail. Also, the district struggled to understand and stop a suicide cluster. Four teenage girls killed themselves and at least six others tried to take their own lives in the past seven months. Some parents criticized school leaders for not immediately telling them about the suicides — the district did not inform anyone until after the third girl died. And most recently, questions have been raised about the appointment five years ago of school board president Jeff Janiszewski’s wife to a position paying her more than $40,000 a year without being required to take a civil service exam. Incumbent school board member Linda Bellick and challengers Denise Della Villa, Diane Herrmann and Joyce Wachala are vying for the two three-year terms. LINDA BELLICK Bellick, 48, is seeking her fourth term and said she believes she still has a lot to contribute. She has worked for Head Start in the past and currently works for the state Department of Health in its cancer services program. “I have a really good sense of where a lot of our families come from and the challenges they face and the role education can play in helping them overcome those challenges,” she said. Bellick said among her top goals are to improve the school climate. The district has implemented violence prevention initiatives but it needs to do more. She said students need to know that an adult cares about them. She said the district must reduce absenteeism and needs to reach out to parents more by scheduling events at more convenient times. “If we don’t have that buy-in from the parents, we’re not going to get anywhere with the kids,” she said. Bellick said she would like to offer more tutoring opportunities for students who are on long-term suspension. She said she is passionate about the need to raise the graduation rate. The district must get students to understand the importance of an education and offer plenty of extracurricular activities and programs to reduce violent incidents, she said. Regarding the budget, Bellick said the district is not wasting money and needs more because of the challenges of its students. “We’re playing catch-up all the time.” On the suicide issue, Bellick said she believes the district is more vigilant and is partnering with community agencies to raise awareness of the problem. Bellick said she was “shocked” by criminal allegations against Raucci. She said she knew Raucci was diffi - cult to work with from time to time. He made people remove coffee pots and other electrical appliances from their rooms in the interest of saving energy. Bellick added that the board has very little to do with the day-to-day management of the school. It sets the policies and controls hiring and firing. Bellick said she has missed only one meeting in her nine-year tenure. She said she is independent and speaks her own mind. “I’m not anyone’s puppet. But at the same time, there are things that all of us as board members agree on. I don’t think that’s a bad thing,” she said. Bellick has a bachelor’s degree in elementary education from SUNY Plattsburgh. She and her husband have five adopted children. DENISE DELLA VILLA Denise Della Villa, 36, is seeking her first term after serving two years as Howe PTO president. She is running because the Schenectady schools have gotten a bad reputation. “All those reporters and press go after all the negative in schools. There’s not enough focus on the positive things. I think there’s a lot of good things that go on and people need to hear about them and people need to be proud of them,” she said. Della Villa said her top priority is making sure all students have access to quality programs. She also wants smaller class sizes with more one-on-one help. “You need to focus on each child’s individual needs.” Della Villa said the district should work with families to improve discipline. “It’s important to be an involved parent.” She said the district is trying to address the suicide issue with the information it has put on its Web site, such as a list of clinics and support groups and ways that parents can talk to their children. “Sometimes parents feel overwhelmed. They know they may need information but they don’t know where to get it from.” Della Villa said the district has to control spending. She did not want to comment on the Raucci situation. She said she wants the people to be proud of their schools. “My vision is to see a safe, happy, interactive environment for both students and educators alike,” she said. She also wants the children not to be focused on negativity but “focus on their school work, focus on their learning, have good self-esteem and be proud of themselves and proud of their achievements.” She said the controversy over the move of the Howe school program showed how passionate people are about their schools. Della Villa, a stay-at-home mother, is a widow with two sons. She has a bachelor’s degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology. She was born and raised in Schenectady. DIANE HERRMANN Diane Herrmann, 47, is a private practice attorney who said she is running because it is time for a change. Her top issues are transparency, open communication and accountability. Herrmann criticized the current board and administration for its handling of the suicide incidents, the decision to relocate Howe International Magnet School to Central Park and board president Janiszewski’s wife’s promotion to a behavior intervention specialist job without a civil service exam. Herrmann said the district should have publicly acknowledged the suicides earlier. “By not doing that, it gave the impression to the kids that the adults are just ignoring it.” The district is also not doing enough to address bullying, she said. The district’s anti-bullying curriculum, “Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports,” doesn’t work, she said: “It rewards good behavior. It doesn’t address the bullying and the kids that are troublemakers.” Herrmann said students need peer mediation earlier to learn to communicate with each other. She said she wants to restore people’s faith in the district. “We’re kind of a laughingstock. People talk about buying houses in Niskayuna because you don’t want to send your kids here.” She said the board needs to be more transparent, that meetings should be televised and available online and that parents should be welcome at school. Herrmann said the district needs to raise its graduation rate and address academic problems in the middle schools. She would also like to have more services like health care in the schools. Regarding the issue of Raucci, she said it was “appalling” that the board hired an investigator to study Raucci’s alleged workplace misconduct before waiting to see what happens with the criminal case. She criticized the choice because the investigator serves on the same professional committee as the school district’s attorney. Herrmann said her legal background gives her the ability to analyze situations from both sides. She also stressed the fact that she is independent and has no ties to any current board members. Herrmann has a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Temple University and a law degree from the University at Buffalo Law School. She is married and has three children. Herrmann serves on the Schenectady County Youth Board and was on the parent partnership team at Howe school from 2003 to 2008. JOYCE WACHALA Joyce Wachala, 39, is seeking her first term on the board. Wachala had opposed the decision to move the Howe school program to the Central Park Middle School building. She said that instead of fighting battles, she wanted to be on the board to bring about positive change. She believes the district has to take a closer look at its spending. “The money is not going to be coming in from the state. We have to figure out where we can most cost-effectively save money without losing programs or teachers.” Wachala said families pay a lot in taxes but are not getting a comparable value for their money. “It’s like going to a restaurant, a really nice restaurant and ordering prime rib and paying for prime rib, and you get Burger King.” Wachala is the co-owner of Arthur’s Market and said she can bring her business experience to the table. She said the district’s budgeted transportation expenses are too high at $7.9 million. She also thinks the district needs to re-examine whether its leases of Blodgett, Roosevelt and Keane elementary schools are worth the expense for a relatively small number of students. Regarding bullying and violence, she said the district needs to bring in professionals. She criticized the district for reducing spending on psychological services. These are needed to help the young people who are struggling with issues such as suicide, she said. Wachala said the district’s elementary schools are working well. However, she believes that parents leave the district or send their children to private schools like Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons because of problems at the middle school and high school level. And she said the district should consider splitting the high school back into two separate buildings because the large population is the source of some of the problems. Wachala said she didn’t have enough information to comment on the Raucci situation. “Mr. Raucci is being prosecuted. As far as what people did and did not know in the process, that will come out in the investigation, too.” Wachala said she also wants to stop what she called the “blatant secrecy” that goes on with the Board of Education so parents, teachers and the community are all in the loop. “We need to make sure everybody is communicating with everybody else because right now nobody is talking to each other.” Wachala is a graduate of SUNY Stony Brook with a bachelor’s degree in history and a minor in human development. She is married with three children ages 7, 5 and 3.
Schenectady school budget beaten, board shuffled Ely cites negative media coverage Wednesday, May 20, 2009 By Michael Goot (Contact) Gazette Reporter
SCHENECTADY — Voters shook up the establishment Tuesday by rejecting the Schenectady City School District’s $160 million budget, defeating a Board of Education incumbent and electing two political newcomers. The budget was defeated by a vote of 1,010 to 890. Attorney Diane Herrmann and Arthur’s Market co-owner Joyce Wachala received 1,712 and 1,156 votes, respectively, to win three-year seats. Denise Della Villa, former Howe PTO president, received 693 votes and incumbent Linda Bellick got 612. The turnout of 1,900 voters was higher than the 1,364 in 2008, when there were no contested races. There are about 30,000 registered voters in the city. Superintendent Eric Ely attributed the budget defeat to negative media coverage. “Every press story we’ve seen in the last two months has been pretty negative. I think people take that to the ballot and make their decision. Sometimes, the vote doesn’t match the reality.”........>>>>......>>>>..........http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2009/may/20/0519_elex/
Editorial: How it all blew up for Sch'dy school machine Thursday, May 21, 2009
If the Schenectady school district needed a lesson in open communication — and it did — voters in the district gave them one at the polls Tuesday. In fact they couldn’t have communicated more clearly, not only trouncing the only incumbent running, but voting down the budget, something they’ve always approved in the past. Take that! . . . and that! Has the board gotten the message? Maybe. Last night at least they went through the formalities of convening in public before retreating behind closed doors, though several members later used the public meeting to denounce media coverage of their doings or non-doings. But routine secret meetings that flout the state Open Meetings Law are only a symptom of a larger, long-standing problem that has been brought to light over the last few months. That problem is too much power in the hands of too few, and one in particular, President Jeff Janiszewski — which has contributed to an overall culture of secrecy and deviousness about matters large and small. The concentrated power and secrecy weren’t totally a secret with the public. Many people had some awareness that the district was being run like a political machine, but didn’t know exactly how. Perhaps they didn’t care as long as it ran. And it certainly wasn’t a secret among school employees, who were afraid of exposing it out of fear for their jobs — or, as everyone has learned in recent months, their physical safety. Which brings us to Steve Raucci, the accused bomb planter whose arrest back in February blew the lid off everything. The simple question, How could such a person be doing such things without school officials knowing it? was a thread that, once pulled, led others to unravel. Raucci, it appears, not only planted bombs but bullied and harassed employees. As CSEA unit president and buildings and grounds supervisor, he required his underlings to make calls and stuff envelopes for Janiszewski’s candidates at election time. District officials manipulated the Civil Service system to give Raucci his supervisory job without having to take a competitive test, and did the same for Janiszewski’s wife when they elevated her to a new job. Were these manipulations approved at one of those illegal secret meetings held at the beginning of each scheduled board meeting?............>>>>.........>>>>...........http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2009/may/21/0521_edit1/
Carl Strock THE VIEW FROM HERE Sch’dy vote: no confidence in school board Carl Strock can be reached at 395-3085 or by e-mail at carlstrock@dailygazette.com.
Well, that was quite the result of Schenectady’s school election: four candidates competing for two seats on the Board of Education and the only current member among them, Linda Bellick, coming in dead last, with little more than a third the votes of Diane Herrmann, an outsider who had criticized the existing board as an exclusive club. If that wasn’t a clear enough message from the voters, the other winner was another outsider, Joyce Wachala, who has lived in Schenectady barely more than a year and who was also critical of the board’s secrecy and promised to combat it. She got nearly double the votes of Bellick. In third place, the other loser was Denise Della Villa, a PTO president who acknowledged having paid little attention to possibly the biggest scandal in the school district’s history, the employment of a man who turned out to be running a reign of terror as both a manager and a union president, according to a criminal indictment, and who is in jail without bail awaiting trial. And if that still wasn’t enough, the voters turned down the board’s proposed budget for the coming year, maybe because of a detailed understanding of it, maybe just as a way of expressing no confidence. No surprise, then, that the president of the board and the man widely regarded as the power behind everything that happens in the school district, Jeff Janiszewski, absented himself from last night’s meeting. The election was a pretty clear kick in the pants for him and his way of doing business. He had of course supported Linda Bellick in the election, to judge by the lawn sign in front of his house. His friend Michael Campon, CSEA’s “labor relations specialist” for Schenectady, had displayed a sign for Della Villa. And another friend and former board colleague, Warren Snyder, had displayed signs for both Bellick and Della Villa. So it was not a good day for him and his group. Was there remorse or repentance on the part of Bellick or any other board members at last night’s meeting? Were they sorry they had provided the alleged terrorist, Steve Raucci, with a job title that allowed him to avoid a Civil Service exam? Did they regret having benefited from Raucci’s help in bullying school custodians into doing campaign work for them? ....................>>>>............>>>>..................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar01100
Re May 20 article, “School budget beaten, board shuffled”: So let me get this right. A school board incumbent was defeated and received the fewest votes. The budget was defeated. This was because of the media and not due to the actions, or lack thereof, by the board or the administration? I will now sleep better knowing my outrageously high school taxes are being put to good use.
What a lame excuse for the defeat of the Schenectady school budget [May 20 Gazette]. The superintendent (Eric Ely) and members of the board of eduction cite negative press coverage as the prime reason for the loss of public support. Let’s list the real, salient factors: Howe Magnet School relocation to Central Park School. Appointment of [President Jeff] Janiszewski’s wife to a $40,000 job with no civil service exam [May 17 Gazette]. The whole set of Raucci’s actions in intimidation of employees and his terroristic setting of bombs now under criminal indictment. Violations of Open Meetings Law. Janiszewski’s arrogant attitude and actions. The district’s reaction to tragic student suicides. The Gazette reported what happened. The voters reacted. Let’s clean the administrative houses and get back on track for the good of students at all levels of the educational process
Truth needs to be told about Schenectady school administration
Being a concerned taxpayer in the city of Schenectady has definitely become a full-time job. Between our reassessment woes and our schools’ administration and board problems, a person could actually think negatively, but perish the thought. I guess that I should not be bothered by a school system that is cloaked in secrecy insofar as major problems that have happened in the past. Cleverly disguised job descriptions to circumvent the civil service process enabled good-paying patronage jobs to be created for certain individuals. One such recipient, a so-called department head, faces multiple felony counts for his alleged strong-armed deeds. He could be recruited by the Sopranos if this were fi ction, unfortunately it’s not. Teen suicides, until recently, were kept under wraps. Multiple sexual harassment charges have been filed against the school system. A school budget was voted down, only to reappear scaled up. And the kicker is that if the people vote it down again, we will be facing an even bigger tax increase. One could suspect this was done by design, again a negative thought. As the Gazette editors aptly pointed out (May 30 editorial), “only in Schenectady.” All this happened under the watchful eyes of our superintendent and the current school board president and board members, who according to the May 21 Carl Strock column, rubber-stamp a consent agenda with more hidden items than a carefully worded credit card contract. It’s time to clean house. We have a good start with two newly elected school board members, and as other positions become available, we can hope that other independent-minded citizens will step up to be counted, and the voters will again respond. Superintendent [Eric] Ely and his underlings should, if not voluntarily, be asked by the board to hand in their resignations immediately if not sooner. Thank you to the Gazette beat writers editors, and Carl Strock for pointing out the truth in what has been going on in the upper echelon of the Schenectady school system. Contrary to what some believe, we can stand the truth. Those who pay the bills have an absolute right to know.
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