Parent's Group to Pelham Schools: "We Want More Transparency"

A group of district parents hunkered down at the Pelham Middle School library demanding better communication from district officials during Monday’s school board meeting.

A new citizen’s group called Friends of Pelham Schools attended the meeting and handed the school board a list of demands. More than 40 parents representing the new group and various Parent Teacher Associations attended the meeting.

“What we want is more transparency,” Christine Weidner, one of the group’s founders. “These are times. There are a lot of budget issues we need to address. The district is top heavy and a lot of the budget is getting sucked into the administration. We want to spread it back into the schools.”

The demands included:

• A list of the complete budget

• All administrative contracts, including salaries of all assistants and secretaries that draw from the school budget.

• A list of all administrative budgets created with the last seven years.

• List of all teaching positions cut within the last seven years.

• That all board committee meetings be opened to the public.

Jennifer Slattery, the parent of a first-grader at Hutchinson Elementary School, believes district officials have made a lot of policy decisions without garnering enough input from parents.

The school board doesn’t open its committee meetings to the public, because less than a majority of the school board attends the meetings at any one time. The board maintains that this is their right under the state open meetings law.

Slattery believes the school board needs to changes its policy.

“It’s hard to find out about the decisions that are made before they are approved,” Slattery said.

Robert Eicher, the school board president, said the district will consult with its attorney to figure out the best course action that should be taken in regard to opening board committee meetings.

Eicher said the meetings are hard to organize because of how informal they are. He said the meeting times aren’t set in stone and agendas aren’t as organized as regular board meetings.

“I have no personal objections to making the meetings open, but there are a lot of things that we need to consider first,” Eicher said.

School Board agree to add another teaching intern to Siwanoy Elementary School

The school board announced Monday that it is working with Iona College to bring in another teaching intern to Siwanoy Elementary School.

The move is being made to address concerns from parents that class sizes in the elementary school were to large. The first grade class has average size of 23 students, while second and fourth grade averages 24 students per class.

Eicher said the district will have a better idea of when the intern can begin teaching in the next week, or so.