Sam Obar 180

The 2010-2011 school year got off to a roaring start on Wednesday with a number of new changes at Walpole High School that are aimed to bring the school into alignment with accreditation recommendations, give teachers more collaboration time, and increase student achievement levels, among other goals. The changes come as the school goes through its first major leadership shakeup in years. The school has a new principal, Stephen Imbusch, and a new assistant principal, William Hahn, both of whom, along with existing assistant principal Ed Connor, are setting an ambitious agenda for improving the school.

Among the new initiatives spearheaded by Mr. Imbusch and the new leadership team are Professional Learning Communities, otherwise known as PLCs. PLCs are intended to expand and enhance collaboration between teachers, as studies have shown that teachers who collaborate and work together to share their teaching practices upgrades student achievement in the long run. Students this year will be allowed to report to school 35 minutes later every other Wednesday, at 7:55 rather than the normal school start time of 7:20, so that teachers can spend that half hour in PLCs. There is added benefit too, for having students arrive at school later, according to Mr. Imbusch. With an increasing number of studies showing that students who have had plenty of sleep are performing better in school, Mr. Imbusch told students this week that he hopes the later start time on PLC days will enable students to be better-rested and therefore more prepared for school.

But teachers aren’t the only ones who will be taking time off from the school day to communicate more with one another. Students this year will be attending weekly advisory groups, as recommended by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. The concept of advisory is to allow students and staff to have an opportunity during the school day to discuss what is going on in their classes, lives, and in the world. [See 2009 Rebellion article about advisories here.] The advisories will be run by staff members from nearly every part of the building. In addition to teachers, non-teachers like secretaries and janitors and others employed at the high school are expected to be running the groups when they start up at the end of the month. Students will be assigned to one advisory group for the entire year – meaning that they will be meeting with one specific teacher and one specific group of students every Wednesday for about a half hour in the middle of the school day. Advisories have already been in place at many other schools, to success and rave reviews.

The addition of PLCs and advisories to the high school represents an interesting transformation in the history of contemporary education. The PLCs and advisories allow students to actually spend far less time actually learning in a physical classroom. Under PLCs and advisories, students will lose anywhere from about a half-hour to an hour of classroom learning time every week. But education leaders hope that the benefits of PLCs and advisories will translate into greater success for students, and compensate for the lost classroom time.

Other changes are also taking place at Walpole High as well. With the creation of advisories, homerooms have been eliminated and students now report directly to their first period class upon entering the school in the morning. And, in what has apparently now become a tradition for all new Walpole High School principals, Mr. Imbusch has made his own mark on the bells that alerts students class is over or about to begin. The bell sound, last changed under the Bernstein administration several years ago, has been modified to a softer and shorter tune under Mr. Imbusch - not such a popular change among students. Another not-so-popular change has been made in the school’s attendance policy. School administrators realized last year that by allowing students to have a maximum of twelve unexcused absences per year, some seniors were stocking up on unexcused absences and then using them all at once towards the end of the school year. Under the new policy implemented by Mr. Imbusch this year, students are permitted a maximum of three unexcused absences per term, totaling twelve per year for all four terms.

Most of the new changes so far are already getting positive reviews by the school community, but with the school year only just now beginning, Mr. Imbusch is likely to make more changes as the year progresses. It remains unclear how much of an impact his initiatives will have on the lives of students and staff and on the overall education quality at the school, but it is clear that Walpole High is more than ready to try out creative and new ideas with its first major administrative turnover since 2006.

Here is an interesting fact for Sam Obar 180 readers to ruminate about:

The Administrative Contact for ScottBrown.com, Senator Scott Brown’s official campaign website, is E.M. Collins Landscape, Inc., based in Walpole. Hmmmm?

I returned yesterday from an incredible expedition in the South, just in time for the start of school tomorrow. My family and I took a seven-state, eight-day road trip through Tennessee (primarily), Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, and Virginia. I visited Memphis, Nashville, and plenty of small towns and other cities in between.

The theme of the trip, for me at least, turned out to be “Al Gore.” A relative of mine, Alice Forrester, who we stayed with in Nashville, was previously married to Chip Forrester, who is now the Chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party. Chip was a top aide to Al Gore when he was a Senator from Tennessee. As a result, Alice and Chip were good friends with Senator, and later Vice President, Gore, and continued to be involved with his activities up to Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign. When I was with Alice in Nashville, I stayed in the same house that Al Gore himself had visited numerous times. Alice regaled me with stories about what Al Gore was like in his private and social life. I used the same shower in Alice’s house that Al Gore himself had used many years back, I touched the same telephone he had used, and I basically sat in the same house he had visited many times when Chip was his Tennessee Chief of Staff.

I am a big fan of Al Gore. He was elected to become our 43rd president, but had the presidency stolen from him in the controversial 2000 election. His post-2000 activities, especially around global warming, are a bit more controversial for me, but I do believe he should have been seated as our president, and I would vote for him in a heartbeat.

I visited (Vice) President Gore’s hometown of Carthage, TN, and stood on the steps of the Smith County Courthouse where he announced both of his presidential campaigns in 1988 and 2000. I also visited his current home, in Belle Meade, an upscale suburb of Nashville. Although I couldn’t get onto his property, I got a good view of his house, his pool, his yard, and his solar panels. There was no security whatsoever, and the gate to the driveway, in fact, was partly open. I don’t think (Vice) President Gore himself was home though.

Besides the visits to Al Gore-related locations, I got the opportunity to visit the home of Andrew Jackson, known as the Hermitage, and the home of James K. Polk, widely considered to be the best president in our country’s history because he actually fulfilled every campaign promise he made.

I also had some interesting conversations with some Southerners about the Confederate flag, its connotations in the South, and the Rebel mascot up here in Walpole. While in Nashville, we passed by a large group of Confederate flags standing next to the major Nashville thoroughfare, Route 40. The flags are on private property, so they can be posted as free speech, but our host, Alice, explained that the man who puts them up regularly gets criticism for them and there is a constant uproar over them. It seems that the problems we’re having here in Walpole with our own Confederate flag is very similar to some problems Nashville is having.

All the same, I had a remarkable experience visiting the South, and I didn’t appear to miss much here in Walpole. It seems that the library groundbreaking was wet and rainy (it was sunny and hot in Tennessee that day). Town Moderator Jon Rockwood has appointed new Finance Committee members, and is facing even more vacancies than he planned for, with two resignations. I think Keith Ferguson’s coverage of it this week in The Walpole Times, pointing out two Rockwood campaign contributors who were appointed, while also allowing Mr. Rockwood to respond, was fair. I won’t pound the issue to death on this blog.

I am excited about the start of school and especially the election season that is heating up. I also can’t wait to see what happens at Fall Town Meeting.

Update 8/19/10: I just wanted to add a link to a Facebook page run by a local citizens group, Walpole Citizens for School Funding, that is seeking to lobby our state leaders for expanded funding for our school system, including the restoration of the prison mitigation money that Governor Deval Patrick stole from us.

It has been a slow news week, and a slow news month in fact, so there’s not much to blog about. A good indication of the fact that it is a slow news week is that the most active thread at the Walpole Words forum right now is the one entitled “Stone Field,” and anonymous local residents are arguing over how best to handle the geese situation on Stone Field. I’ve never seen such passionate discourse over such a minor issue.

There will be many more issues for all of us to discuss once we enter the final sprint towards the November election, and Fall Town Meeting even before that.

By the time the first shovel hits the ground at the groundbreaking for the new Walpole Public Library on August 24, I will be many miles away, somewhere in Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, or Georgia. I wish I could be in town to attend.

Moving the library from its current home to its eventual location at the corner of Stone and School Streets will be a tremendous loss to the neighborhood where I live, on Lewis Avenue, near the library. I will be sorry to see it go.

All the same, I hope that the groundbreaking attracts a large crowd. Good luck to the Library Trustees as they move forward with the construction of this new building.

The groundbreaking is Tuesday, August 24, 2010 at 10 AM at the corner of Stone and School Street.

About a month ago, and about a month after the town election, I discovered a collection of ballots, all filled out and from Precinct 4, from the June 5 town election. They were scattered on the ground in the vicinity of a dumpster behind the Walpole Fire Station. It wasn’t clear how many ballots there were. I wish I had taken a closer look.

I collected two of them, and promptly informed Town Clerk Ron Fucile, who coincidentally happened to be at the nearby Farmer’s Market. He glanced at them briefly, and told me that they weren’t useful anymore. To tell the truth, I don’t believe he really took a good look at them, and didn’t realize they were clearly filled out.

I was under the impression that it was illegal for ballots to be disposed of before a certain point after the election. I wasn’t able to find any evidence that any laws were broken either locally or statewide regarding this incident. So it doesn’t seem that there was anything illegal about the ballots being disposed of so soon after the election.

Regardless, I thought ballots were intended to be secure materials. It is disturbing to find them tossed into a dumpster behind the fire station only about a month after the election. Paper ballots should NOT be thrown into a dumpster. They should be RECYCLED. They should not be tossed into a dumpster behind the fire station, but rather should be carefully disposed of as secure election materials. Further, I only found a few - it makes one wonder whether these ballots had been separated from the others and for what reason.

I believe that the Town of Walpole should enact a bylaw, if one doesn’t already exist, specifically outlining the time frame during which municipal ballots are retained and where they are disposed of. One month after the election is too short a time frame, in my opinion. Perhaps the state already has policies regarding the retention of ballots after an election for municipalities to follow.

I will be keeping the ballots I was able to collect for my own personal collection as souvenirs of the election. It should not have been that easy for me to obtain these ballots.

New lights were being constructed at Turco Field today. Take a look:

Picture by Samuel Obar