Terry Cowgill

You Shoulda Went to Law School

Kudos to my colleague Rick Green of The Hartford Courant, who took first prize in the 2007 National Awards for Education Reporting from the National Education Writers Association. Rick won the award for a column he wrote last year on a substitute teacher in Norwich facing criminal charges because porno pop-up windows inadvertently started appearing on a computer one day in her classroom.

Because of Rick’s fine work (and that of others), the teacher’s conviction was overturned. We like Rick at the LJ because he is one of the only Courant writers (along with Cornwall resident Rinker Buck) who ventures out to the NWC to actually see what’s going on. For his trouble, Rick gets a plaque and $150, which just might be enough to fill his car’s tank come Christmas time.

Yikes, Winsor’s Back!

Just got back from interviewing Malcolm McKenzie, the new head of Hotchkiss School. He’s a very impressive (yet down-to-earth) “global educator.” We’ll have a profile on Malcolm in the LJ either this coming Thursday or next.

Speaking of independent schools (lame transition?), I couldn’t help notice that an old controversy from the 80s and 90s here in Lakeville resurfaced in yesterday’s Boston Globe.

It seems that Winsor Copeland, one of the teachers implicated in a child sex scandal at Indian Mountain School, has resurfaced in a U.S. setting where he could have contact with children. [the photo at top left is not of Copeland but of a model]

Copeland is now a “volunteer” fundraiser at his middle school alma mater, Pine Cobble School in Williamstown, Mass. But Globe columnist Kevin Cullen paints a picture of a school that is not being candid about Copeland’s role there. It doesn’t pass the smell test. Is he spend his time licking envelopes, or is Copeland, as a Pine Cobble newsletter suggests, doing something more? From Cullen’s column:

Continue reading Yikes, Winsor’s Back!…

The Rovian Effect

Update 4:30 p.m. Monday: Choate Headmaster Edward Shanahan has now told the school Rove has pulled out. Guess Ed’s Courant op-ed didn’t change many minds.
Update 8:30 a.m. Sunday: Choate Headmaster Edward Shanahan makes a case for Rove in this morning’s Courant.

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I’m always amused when I hear people (mostly Democrats) moan and complain about what an awful mean person Karl Rove is and how he’s one of the main reasons that decent working people everywhere were talked out of voting their own economic self-interests and into putting greedy Republicans in office.

Since Rove left the White House last year, he has continued to make his presence felt. Now he has been invited to speak at Choate Rosemary Hall, the toney, old-money prep school downstate in Wallingford, Conn.

Evidently, a large number of Choate’s 836 students has risen up in protest that the school’s board of trustees has invited Rove to be this year’s commencement speaker. Students have used words like “heinous” and “evil” to describe the man widely thought to be “Bush’s Brain.”

They cite his advocacy for the Iraq war and his role in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame as examples of his perfidy. Some students have suggested Stephen Colbert as a possible replacement. That tells you all you need to know about the state of popular iconography on the 118-year-old campus — and indeed in much of the nation.

Say what you want about Rove, but he is a serious person (and one of the premier political minds of our generation). Colbert is not. He is a gifted satirist with a rapier wit, but he is not Karl Rove (or Karl Marx, for that matter).

Continue reading The Rovian Effect…

LJ 01.17.08

The paper is chock-full of news this week. I won’t give a lengthy synopsis of the stories because I want to discuss one of them in a little detail. But click here to see the stories section-by-section and here to listen to the podcast of my appearance this morning on Marshall & Mike.

One of the stories I wrote this week concerned the reaction of a group of teachers at Housatonic Valley Regional High School to some comments made by Region One Board of Education Chairman Judge Manning, who said at a board meeting last year that it might be a conflict of interest for academic department heads to evaluate teachers since both are members of the same labor union.

I was frankly stunned by the words of the seven department chairs who wrote the letter. They did make some very good points, such as the fact that the evaluation process was approved by the board “at the urging of the previous principal” and “that the sitting department chairs at that time did not support the change.” I’m glad they made that clear.

They also said they know of no problems with the current system and that the only feedback they have received on it has been positive. Then they launched into a firm defense of how they take the responsibility of evaluation seriously and how none of them has ever let the fact that they “belong to the same bargaining unit” get in the way of doing a professional job.

“To suggest otherwise is to unfairly impugn our integrity,” they concluded.

Say what?

Continue reading LJ 01.17.08…

Wheat From The Braff

Update 5 p.m. Saturday: Here is a link to the complete text of today’s Waterbury Republican article on Braff. This blogger has copied and pasted the entire story into his own blog. Don’t know whether what he did is legal or considered “fair use.”

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What an interesting case this is. A student newspaper editor at a major Connecticut university could lose his job for speaking out against that institution.

[Aside: Unfortunately the Waterbury Republican has put half of the above linked article behind a pay wall. Plus, today’s front-page print edition update article doesn’t seem be to anywhere on the Rep-Am.com website and there’s nothing I could find in any other publications, so you’ll have to take my word on some of it.]

Here is the Cliff Notes version: Jason Braff, editor of the Quinnipiac Chronicle, is on the hot seat for going public with his disagreement with university administrators. But those same administrators don’t even have the guts to tell Braff they don’t like his criticisms. They insist that in granting an interview with the Republican (published Oct. 30) that Braff merely violated the university’s policy of not allowing students to speak to the media without prior approval from Quinnipiac’s PR people.

In that interview, Braff branded the school’s policy of not allowing the Chronicle to post articles on its website before the the print edition comes out as “ridiculous.” Pretty strong stuff, eh? So administrators, who have suggested Braff reconsider whether he should continue in his role, have scheduled a meeting with the student editor for after Thanksgiving.

Continue reading Wheat From The Braff…

Monday’s Thoughts

For all those who have fretted repeatedly about our loss of civil liberties during the GWOT, how about a little perspective? THIS is losing your civil liberties in the fight against terror. Even lawyers in three-piece suits have been demonstrating in the streets and getting arrested. Quite a sight …

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I am sad to report that a school voucher program in Utah that I have blogged about before has failed in a referendum after having passed in the state legislature. It was an innovative program that would have actually increased the per pupil state aid for public schools even when students choice out to a private school.

But teachers unions opposed it nonetheless. Any threat to the power of the NEA and its locals prompts dire warnings about uncertified teachers in the classrooms and a lack of “accountability” in private schools. From what I can tell, Pete duPont and Michael Barone got it right in today’s WSJ and RCP, respectively.

Hillary: ‘Send Babies to College’

Update noon Tuesday: According to First Read, “[HIllary’s] $5,000 “baby bonds” proposal may have given fodder to Republicans. “The baby bonds proposal is one of the few mistakes Hillary Clinton has made in her campaign,” said University of Virginia Professor Larry Sabato in  the New York Times. ‘Should Clinton become the Democratic nominee, she may have handed a powerful issue to the Republican candidate.” 

Update 7 a.m. Saturday: As usual, the NY Post has a hilarious take on this matter, including its estimated cost of $20 billion annually based on $5,000 times 4 million (the number of births per year).

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Well, not really … but did she actually say this? Give every baby born in America a $5,000 account that will grow and can be used later to pay for college?

As is often the case with such big-spending proposals, it appears she did not say how she would pay for it. Raise taxes on “the rich?” Restore tax rates to pre-Bush levels? I guess that would mean I will see an increase.

After all, I’m probably regarded by the IRS as rich since I live in Lakeville and own a home that’s increased substantially in value since I bought it five years ago. Heck, I can afford it. I don’t need to make that $100 annual gift to the Salisbury Ambulance Service. My son doesn’t need new soccer cleats. My daughter doesn’t really need dance lessons.

And I don’t need to squirrel money away for their higher education. I can fork more of my income over to the federal government so that someone else can save for college. It’s so simple. Why didn’t Hillary think of it before?

I have been watching with great interest Hillary’s remarkable transformation from arch lib to moderate. My central question has always been whether she is striking a pose or whether her evolution is genuine and would be reflected in the way she would govern as president.

Hillary has a tendency to hyperventilate before African American audiences. This latest pander bear proposal does not inspire great confidence that she’s truly evolved.

Region One BOE Will Address NEASC

Region One BOE Chairman Judge Manning called me on Friday to say the board will hold a special meeting this Thursday, Sept. 27, at 4 p.m. in the high school library to discuss the recommendations of the New England Association of Colleges & Schools on HVRHS.

We’ll have a story appearing Thursday, but since many of you don’t get a chance to read us until later in the day, you might very well miss a meeting you are perhaps interested in. I will be there, as will Michael Flint of CATV6. Below is the text of the article as it will appear in Thursday’s print edition:

[P.S. To download a copy of the report, click here.]

By TERRY COWGILL

FALLS VILLAGE — The Region One Board of Education will hold a special meeting this afternoon at 4 p.m. to discuss the recent re-accreditation report of Housatonic Valley Regional High School by the New England Association of Schools & Colleges.

In an interview, Board Chairman and Sharon representative Judge Manning said the board agreed Sept. 19 to hold the meeting to address the recommendations in the 61-page NEASC report released last month. At its regular Sept. 10 meeting, the board did not comment on a five-minute presentation by Principal Gretchen Foster on the recommendations.

“To be honest, we weren’t prepared to [comment],” said Manning, adding that board members had already sat through a meeting of the Long Range Plan Feasibility Committee that began that day at 3:30 p.m. “It was a long evening.”

Continue reading Region One BOE Will Address NEASC…

A Cheatin’ Start

Update 6 p.m. Wednesday: In other prep school news, The George School has just received the largest gift in the history of secondary education ($128 million) from the daughter of Warren Buffett’s business school professor at Columbia.

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Had a brilliant idea right after lunch. It’s a gorgeous afternoon and I have finished my weekly deadlines in the newsroom, so why not take my laptop out onto the deck and do some blogging? Now I’ve got a computer and phone out here on the picnic table and it’s heaven on earth (even the infamous Northwest Corner gnats have taken the day off).

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I received a little extra motivation to blog (as if I needed any more?) after reading this unusual story forwarded to me by my old buddy Tony from high school.

Dozens of students have been implicated in a cheating scandal at Hanover High School, the uber-competitive public secondary school just down the road from Dartmouth College. With final exams approaching last spring, on two nights at least nine students sneaked in to the high school under cover of darkness and used stolen keys to pilfer advance copies of the tests. Scores of others were involved, either as lookouts or as recipients of information gleaned from the ill-gotten booty.

Not entirely unusual, you say? But here’s the kicker: instead of treating the matter in-house, school officials referred the criminal offenses (breaking and entering and theft) to the police. Of course, this has rankled the feathers of parents who shudder at the thought of their 17-year-olds carrying criminal records around for the rest of their lives. Still others are suggesting the hypercompetitive atmosphere at Hanover is more to blame than the students themselves. As Marshall’s mother would say, “Baloney Sauce!”

Continue reading A Cheatin’ Start…

LJ 09.13.07

Sorry this weekly update is late. I have been sidetracked by various distractions.

As I told Marshall & Mike this morning, there’s a good mix of stories in this week’s paper. Our newest writer, Ryan Snyder, has a terrific feature on Bud and Patricia Kenny, who passed through our area on a mule-drawn wagon from Hot Springs, Arkansas, while on their honeymoon. A very thorough and interesting story that left only one question uanswered: Where do they go to the bathroom?

A young motorcyclist died in Kent, in North Canaan it won’t be time to make the doughnuts for awhile (see image above left), a new restaurant has opened at Geer Village and Steve Dunn is a local boy made good. Those last three stories are by Karen Bartomioli.

Two of my stories made page A1: an explainer on write-in candidacies of the kind all Salisbury Republican office seekers will have to mount this fall. In that piece, there is also a little history of Connecticut’s ridiculous minority representation law. I’d like to get my hands on an account of the chatter in the General Assembly when lawmakers debated the first law of that sort in 1877.

I also penned a story on Housatonic Valley Regional High School Principal Gretchen Foster’s brief remarks to the Region One Board of Education on the NEASC report. For the most part, I thought Foster’s comments were appropriate, albeit brief (how often do I complain about brevity at a BOE meeting? ) But why didn’t the board ask any questions about it?

I can only conclude board members made a conscious decision not to make any comments. Two of the board members I contacted for last week’s story on the report declined to comment at length because they wanted to wait until Foster made her presentation. Fair enough.

But the presentation was made and no one wanted to ask Foster about the contents of the report? I was stunned. As our editorial on this issue points out, even a report that has lots of suggestions for improvement can be turned into a positive blueprint for the future.

The board has a fiduciary responsibility to not only offer words of encouragement to faculty and administration, but to raise questions and insist on answers when appropriate. The Region One Board did not succeed on that count at Monday’s meeting.