Posted on 30 June 2011.
Officer Wil James
POTTSTOWN PA – Lower Pottsgrove Police Officer Wil James, who also serves as school resource office at Pottsgrove High School, will be one of six featured panelists tonight (Thursday, June 30, 2011) during a televised round-table discussion on bullying and cyber-bullying to be broadcast at 6 p.m. on BCTV, the Berks Community Television online news service.
The program will be aired live, here, and it also will be archived for future on-demand viewing.
Posted in Education, Lower Pottsgrove, Police, Pottsgrove Schools, Social1 Comment
Posted on 30 June 2011.
POTTSTOWN PA – A series of three videos posted to YouTube earlier this month by a Pottsgrove High School student, which purport to show a substitute teacher allowing members of a chemistry class there to toss cereal and hit a small ball with a soda bottle, will be investigated by Pottsgrove School District administrators, its superintendent said Monday night (June 27, 2011)
“We’ll certainly look into it,” Superintendent Dr. Bradley Landis said. “We’ll talk to some of the students, and definitely follow up” he said.
Landis said he was unfamiliar with the videos that were the subject of a Sanatoga Post story published last Saturday (June 25). It described the content, posted June 10 at the YouTube account of a female student who called herself “The Twisted Ultimatum,” and included her accompanying comments: “This is what happens when we have a sub at pottsgrove high school.”
The Post story gained high readership during the past four days, including that of several school board members. Landis’ comments were in response to questions posed by The Post following Monday’s board meeting.
Related:
Related (to the Pottsgrove Board of School Directors’ June 27 meeting):
Posted in Education, Pottsgrove Schools3 Comments
Posted on 30 June 2011.
MAYBE YOU EXPECTED SOMETHING DIFFERENT? – The start of repairs last week to the deteriorating retaining wall at Pottsgrove Middle School, North Hanover Street, Pottstown PA, isn’t a sexy subject, but it is proving to be expensive. The district is paying at least $381,000 to fix the wall (top left) and some supporting pilasters (top right) that have been damaged by water seepage during the past 10 years. Business Administrator David Nester on Monday (June 27, 2011) told the Board of School Directors its contractor had already made “significant progress” by removing the wall’s brick veneer and protective railing. Its concrete foundation is “structurally in tact and stable,” Nester said, although rust from the previously unsealed railing and other damage (below) was evident. Some structural steel components may need to be replaced, he added. Bricks and mortar for the replacement veneer (bottom) are already on site.
Related:
Related (to the Pottsgrove Board of School Directors’ June 27 meeting):
Posted in Education, Pottsgrove Schools6 Comments
Posted on 30 June 2011.
POTTSTOWN PA – Good ideas get copied.
The idea for this year’s Pottsgrove School District Community Budget Task Force was copied by Superintendent Dr. Bradley Landis from a similar entity during the previous year in the West Chester Area School District. Now, albeit in slightly different forms, the model is being copied again … in the Spring-Ford Area and Phoenixville Area school districts.
Spring-Ford Board of School Directors‘ President Joseph Ciresi on Monday (June 27, 2011) issued what he called a challenge to his district’s residents, employees and board members to “cut our budget by 10 percent” for the 2012-2013 school year “without cutting staff and without cutting programs,” The Limerick Patch online news service reported Tuesday (June 28).
Ciresi said “there had to be an outlet for people to place their ideas for innovative savings plans that would save staff and program cuts,” The Patch wrote, and he seemed to indicate an intent to establish some sort of feedback-and-recommendations group akin to the task force.
Farther east, the Phoenixville Area Board of School Directors voted unanimously last Thursday (June 24) to create what it called a “Community Budget Advisory Committee” to help its members “tackle difficult financial decisions and get a head start on the 2012-13 budget,” according to The (Pottstown PA) Mercury newspaper.
The “non-voting community-comprised task force” would help Phoenixville “discover cost savings, revenue and reductions in its upcoming budget,” according to its board President Paul Slaninka, The Mercury reported. The 15- to 18-member committee, which is expected to start work in August, would include administrators, senior citizens, business people, educators, parents and more, he added.
Sounds familiar.
Related (to the Pottsgrove School District 2011-2012 budget):
Photo from Google Images
Posted in Education, Pottsgrove Schools3 Comments
Posted on 29 June 2011.
POTTSTOWN PA – Seven – count ‘em, seven – different budget choices.
That’s what the Pottsgrove School District Board of School Directors had in front of it Monday night (June 27, 2011), served up in neatly packaged form and explained by Business Administrator David Nester, before it decided in a 5-4 vote to adopt a $57.32 million final spending plan. During the 2011-2012 school year, it raises property taxes by 1.8 percent.
Truth be told, the budget’s total value by that time was no longer in question. Board members had indicated that, with previously announced salary freezes, staff attrition, and Community Budget Task Force recommendations, they had completed all the fiscal cutting and squeezing they wanted to attempt. The number, $57,324,510 to be precise, was the number.
Instead, the board’s toughest decisions revolved around two variables: whether or not it should bet on Pottsgrove receiving an additional $374,000 next year in basic education funding from the state, and how much (if any) money it was willing to spend of district savings to offset a deficit.
In the end directors placed a moderate bet, and tapped savings for far less than they could have.
Nester presented these scenarios:
“They’re really not viable options,” Nester said of both, “and next year we’d have to make pretty drastic cuts.” Directors took a pass.
The district is financially sound, directors uniformly agreed, and seemingly in better fiscal shape than its neighbors, they said. The board’s divisions focused on whether now was the time to use some of the money saved over several years to ease taxpayers’ burdens.
The 1.8 percent tax hike matches a proposal made earlier this month by director Philip Keogh, which died in a 4-4 board tie with one member absent. It also is identical to the tax increase cap, known as the Act 1 index, imposed on Pottsgrove by the state for the coming year.
Certified public accountant Nester made it clear he hoped the board would choose either of the 2.8-percent proposals. The majority made it clear they thought the taxpayers couldn’t stand the strain.
Nobody wanted that flavor.
Related (to the Pottsgrove School District 2011-2012 budget):
Related (to the Pottsgrove Board of School Directors’ June 27 meeting):
Photo from Google Images
Posted in Education, Pottsgrove Schools3 Comments
Posted on 29 June 2011.
Can you spare a pint?
POTTSTOWN PA – The emergency need for blood products always seems greatest around the holidays. That’s why, following the Independence Day respite, eight blood collection drives begin next Wednesday (July 6, 2011) and continue through July 17 in Lower Pottsgrove, Pottstown, North Coventry, Parker Ford, Phoenixville and Douglassville PA, conducted by the Miller-Keystone Blood Center.
Drives are scheduled for:
Appointments are required and may be made by calling the blood bank at 610-926-6060.
Photo from Clipart.com
Posted in Health, Holiday, Lower Pottsgrove1 Comment
Posted on 29 June 2011.
SANATOGA PA -Pick-ups of garbage, recycled items, and leaf waste in Lower Pottsgrove (PA) Township won’t be regular or as normally scheduled during the Independence Day holiday weekend, township employee Jenifer Corley reported Tuesday (June 28, 2011) by e-mail.
Collections for all three have been moved for next week only to Tuesday (July 5), and will NOT be conducted Monday.
Trash barrels, recycling bins and appropriate leaf bags should be at curbside by 6 a.m. on Tuesday for pick up by crews of Lower Pottsgrove’s waste collection contractor, J.P. Mascaro and Sons of Norristown PA, Corley said.
The municipal building, 2199 Buchert Rd., and its administrative offices will be closed Monday, too. It reopens for business Tuesday at 8 a.m.
Photo from Google Images
Posted in Business, Holiday, Lower Pottsgrove1 Comment
Posted on 28 June 2011.
The State Capital in Harrisburg.
HARRISBURG PA — State House and Senate leaders say it seems unlikely any of several school voucher proposals introduced this year will make it across the finish line before legislative business ends Thursday (June 30, 2011), The Pennsylvania Independent online news service reported Tuesday (June 28).
With only three days remaining before lawmakers are expected break for the summer, the voucher bills ran out of time. Their failure to make progress in either body indicated no deal between Gov. Tom Corbett and the Legislature was made, The Independent said.
However, an expansion of the Educational Improvement Tax Credit (EITC) that provides scholarships to low-income students and is funded through corporate contributions, still could pass and be sent to the governor for consideration, according to House representatives.
Related (to education tuition vouchers):
Posted on 28 June 2011.
POTTSTOWN PA – A divided Pottsgrove Board of School Directors, whose members spoke in passionate tones about balancing property owners’ need for pocketbook relief against the district’s financial survival in coming years, on Monday (June 27, 2011) approved a 2011-2012 final budget that
Officially, directors adopted a $57.32 million budget that is accompanied by a real estate tax of 34.999 mills. Effectively, that costs owners $35 for every $1,000 of assessed value on their properties within the district. For Pottsgrove’s average home owner, whose residence is said to be valued at $120,000, taxes next year will rise $74, to a total of about $4,200.
The board’s 5-4 roll call vote came after more than an hour of debate, and the introduction of seven different budget options that ranged from no tax increase whatsoever to one of 2.8 percent. The spending plan was finalized only four days before the state’s June 30 deadline. Voting in favor were directors Jodi Adams, April Kontostathis, David Faulkner, Fred Remelius and Philip Keogh; opposed were Michael Neiffer, Scott Fulmer, Nancy Landes, and Patti Grimm.
The majority’s willingness to dip into the district fund balance to cover the deficit, rather than raise taxes higher, concerned not only opponents but Business Administrator David Nester. “Nobody’s talking to each other in Harrisburg over the state budget,” he noted, and speculated the lack of discussion meant a potential deal to spread more basic education funding to school districts – that $374,000 on which Pottsgrove is counting – might fall though.
If the money fails to arrive, the expected deficit will balloon to about $466,000. It would still be paid for from savings, but the district’s fund balance would drop from about 7 percent to 6.23 percent.
“We have to do what’s right for our kids, yes, but we’ve got to do what’s right for taxpayers too,” Kontostathis said in arguing for the 1.8 percent rate. Despite dire predictions of decreased state funding and the imposition of taxing restrictions in the future, “we cannot continue to budget and tax Pottsgrove taxpayers for what might happen five years from now,” Remelius added.
“We’re only jeopardizing our kids sooner rather than later” by spending the fund balance,” Landes countered. “We have a responsibility to students in this district to do what we can for them without chopping programs.” Neiffer agreed: “I’m not prepared to abandon our kids like this, now or later.”
It was board President Neiffer who, earlier Monday, called Nester and asked him to prepare additional budget options that included no-tax-increase scenarios. “I wanted to make sure that we got everything on the table,” he said. If board members seemed willing to spend savings to cover a deficit – a first for Pottsgrove in several years – “then we should determine just how much of a deficit we’re willing to sacrifice,” Neiffer mused.
Ultimately the zero-tax options, which proposed deficits of $725,000 and $1.1 million respectively, were passed over. Neither was “viable,” Nester noted with some relief; “they would have meant some pretty drastic cuts” in the following budget year and beyond, he said.
By comparison, final budgets recently approved by
according to various reports in The (Pottstown PA) Mercury and Reading (PA) Eagle newspapers.
Although he voted and actively participated in Monday’s discussion, director David Faulkner was not physically present during the board’s meeting in the district offices on Kauffman Road, Pottstown PA. Instead, he attended via speaker phone from a hotel room where he and his family were vacationing.
Related (to the Pottsgrove School District 2011-2012 budget):
Related (to the Pottsgrove Board of School Directors’ June 27 meeting):
Posted in Education, Pottsgrove Schools8 Comments
Posted on 28 June 2011.
POTTSTOWN PA – All things considered, Barry Seymour acknowledged last week, he’d rather talk about Interstate 95 through Philadelphia than U.S. Route 422 across its western suburbs.
Montgomery County Planning Commission Assistant Director Leo Bagley, foreground, and DVRPC Executive Director Barry Seymour, during last week's presentation
“I-95 is easily the most congested highway in our area,” Seymour, executive director of the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC), said Wednesday (June 22, 2011) in a presentation about 422 made to greater Pottstown public officials. I-95 needs the most improvement, he noted, and would cost the most to fix, but likely would have the greatest positive impact on area traffic conditions once solved.
Creating a local tolling system to fund repairs for I-95, however, in the way the DVRPC has suggested imposing tolls on 422, won’t happen any time soon, if ever. “Establishing tolls on an interstate is a very different process,” Seymour said with a subtle smile, as Pennsylvania learned last year when it proposed tolls on I-80, a move rejected by the federal Department of Transportation.
More improvements could be made to Routes 309 and 202, even though a substantial amount of work has already been completed on those roads. The Schuylkill Expressway, also an interstate highway facing the same tolling difficulties, is blocked on one side by a rail line and developments and on the other by the Schuylkill River. It lacks the room to be expanded.
That leaves 422, Montgomery County Planning Commission Assistant Director Leo Bagley chimed in. It’s a twice-daily car-choked, limited-access highway where problems will only worse with each passing year, he said. “We can identify a package of improvements that will make things there substantially better,” and without tolls “there are not a lot of other choices” for 422, he added.
“Tolling is the last resort,” confirmed Chester County planner Natasha Manbeck, from a seat at the back of the Borough Hall room where the Pottstown Metropolitan Regional Planning Commission was meeting.
The prospect of charging motorists more than $2.50 for a one-way trip over 422 from King of Prussia to Amity upsets some area residents and elected representatives alike, Seymour agreed. “It’s not easy to get from free to paying for something,” he admitted, “but you’ll be paying for certain improvement.”
“Otherwise, the problem’s not going to go away,” Bagley said, “and there’s no other money to fix it.”
Related (to the Pottstown Metropolitan Regional Planning Committee meeting of June 22)):
Related (to U.S. Route 422 Corridor planning):
Posted in Pottstown, Transportation13 Comments
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