Williston Observer

May 26, 2011

By Adam White

Observer staff

The Williston Development Review Board voted on Tuesday to grant a six-month extension for developers of the Atwood/Hood affordable housing project off North Williston Road to submit final plans for approval. The Board approved the extension by a vote of 4-1, with chair Scott Rieley – the lone naysayer – questioning whether the additional time was warranted.

“We are here to uphold the code, not to be party to your business plan or changes in your business plan,” Rieley said. “My concern … is what constitutes new information, versus a business decision on your part. They are not the same thing.”

The extension granted on Tuesday was the third given to the project during its approval process. Senior planner Matt Boulanger said that the developers had been granted an initial six-month extension as allowed by the town bylaws and a second under the advisement of the town’s land-use attorney, based on the project being “tied up in litigation.”

Making the third extension contingent on DRB approval was necessary, Boulanger said, in the interest of “fundamental fairness” in a situation that has surpassed established guidelines.

“We are somewhat out on a procedural limb here,” Boulanger said. “What do you do when the bylaw – and state law – stop telling you what to do?”

Town planner Ken Beliveau expressed wariness before the meeting of granting the project yet another extension, saying that it could “create a precedent” that might prove problematic in the future. Had the extension not been granted, the developers would have been required to submit their final plans – in compliance with all existing conditions of approval – to the town next week, or begin the entire approval process over again in the pre-application stage.

As it is, the extension is effectively keeping alive a zoning bylaw that was amended in June 2009. The project was approved under regulations that permitted two dwelling units per acre, to be calculated using the total acreage of the property involved. The new bylaw allows for three units per acre, but excludes wetlands and steep slopes from the acreage calculation. Boulanger said that there are approximately three acres of wetlands involved in the Atwood/Hood development.

Several neighboring property owners voiced opposition to the project at Tuesday’s DRB meeting. Briant Hamrell questioned why developers were struggling to manage the affordable housing component when their attorney, Randy Amis, was a former executive director for the Champlain Housing Trust. Igor Arsovski argued that the necessity for another extension was really “based on the business environment … a climate that can go up and down at any time.”

Through first year, reconfiguration remains complex issue

May 26, 2011

By Adam White

Observer staff

The reconfiguration of the Williston school system has proved, through its first year of implementation, to be:

A. Necessary

B. Challenging

C. Divisive

D. Successful

Based on responses from administrators, faculty and parents, the correct answer would have to be: E. All of the above.

While the reconfiguration has seemingly addressed concerns about equity and consistency that were first voiced by parents four years ago, it has also led to upheaval including the resignation of popular teachers and other issues at the Allen Brook and Williston Central schools.

“I’d say the overall feeling is that the reconfiguration was hard work that offered some benefits … but also came with some amount of loss,” said Rick McCraw, WCS’s teacher co-chair of the Program Council involved in the reconfigurations’ planning and implementation.

Roots of change

The reconfiguration’s roots can be traced back to an outcry from parents about equity within the multi-age setup of Williston’s house structure. Those parents unified and put pressure on the School Board to make a change.

“Parents were the impetus for reconfiguration,” said Jacqueline Parks, WCS principal. “For many years, the four-year age span teams (have) been debated within the parent community.”

The blueprint for the reconfiguration was designed with the input of several entities: each school’s Program Council, the school district’s administrative team and a special Conceptual Frameworks Committee set up specifically to explore re-shaping the system, both internally and with external input.

“Part of this process was rooted in a careful examination of the survey that went out to the community … prior to any discussion of reconfiguration,” said Margaret Munt, Allen Brook’s teacher co-chair of the Program Council.

Another goal of the reconfiguration was to address the issue of modular classrooms at ABS, which warranted immediate attention due to a 2009 ruling by the town’s Development Review Board requiring what Williston School Board Chair Holly Rouelle called “expensive modifications.”

“The current configuration allowed us to remove the mobile classrooms,” Rouelle said. “From a cost standpoint, the board chose to save the money needed to renovate the mobile classrooms to use for education purposes closer to teachers and students.”

Shock to the system

The reconfiguration involved far more than just a shuffling of the school system’s proverbial deck. The existing team structure facilitated bonds between faculty members that could not survive the changes.

“Reconfiguration meant the faculty had to split apart teams, many of whom had been working together for 15 years or more,” Munt said. “This was in many cases sad, painful, and a lot of extra work. The work aspect was both physical; having to split materials, take apart spaces, and make new classrooms (in most cases), and relational; to build new teaming structures and relationships with new people.”

McCraw said that steps were taken prior to the implementation in order to make the resulting transitions less jarring.

“Every single team from Grade 1 on experienced some degree of staffing change … but the administration worked hard to ameliorate that change,” McCraw said. “They provided extra summer planning time for teams that were new or faced major change, and that was helpful.”

Nonetheless, the reconfiguration produced some casualties among the faculty. Nick Brooks, an 11-year teaching veteran of WCS’s Voyager team who was slated to return to the school following a one-year leave of absence, instead resigned from his position last month. In a subsequent letter to parents, Brooks cited “differences with the current leadership and vision for the school” and later called the reconfiguration “a symptom of bigger problems” at WCS.

“If I had to summarize those problems, they come from an inconsistent sense of purpose within the administration and leadership,” Brooks said. “There is this shifting of pieces, instead of standing behind a consistent idea of what’s right for the kids and best for the school.

“The reconfiguration was not the final straw for me – but it was certainly a big part of it,” Brooks continued. “It is an indication of a bigger decision-making model that I just don’t agree with.”

Another teacher, Maria Daley, also resigned after 10 years at WCS. Pamela Cowan, a parent of one former and one current student within the Williston system, said that the loss of the two teachers left her “very concerned about the quality” of her younger daughter’s education, due to what she perceived as an “erosion” of fundamental communication.

“Because I doubt these two teachers would be willing to return, I want a full accounting of the situation because I don’t want all the good ones to disappear, leaving only those who go along with poorly constructed game plans,” Cowan said. “When two intelligent and reasonable people leave under controversy, you know that communication didn’t happen and that is never good for any organization and is the responsibility of its leadership, who should be held accountable.”

Parks said that while the resignations were not unexpected, communication was not to blame.

“The thought that some staff might choose to leave as a result of reconfiguration was recognized during the facilitated process as a possible outcome,” Parks said. “However, the School Board carefully chose a process that worked toward consensus, and valued input along the way. There were teacher representatives on the committee and opportunities for teachers to weigh in along the way.”

Also in his letter, Brooks challenged WCS’s “continuous improvement model for operation,” stating that it “does not place equal emphasis on all students and fails to recognize … some of the other important areas of student development.” This argument – mirrored in widespread opposition across the educational landscape to performance-based policies in the No Child Left Behind mold – is larger than just a reconfiguration issue, according to Parks.

“We have very diverse opinions in the community in all areas of education,” Parks said. “Finding common ground across and within the parent and teacher communities has been a challenge. However, everyone has had to give a little and move forward.”

Shapes of things to come

One of the single, most tangible benefits of the reconfiguration may share a direct link to the controversy of quantifying academic progress.

Parents raised an equally resonant voice when it came to Williston’s disappointing performance on the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) exams, particularly in areas like science. With those scores, students may have unknowingly ticketed their school’s setup for the wrecking ball anyway.

“A serendipitous, though unanticipated, advantage of reorganization is that (it) might have been required because of our performance on the NECAP standardized assessment,” McCraw said. “It is likely that this year’s reorganization would fill that requirement.”

Otherwise, it is difficult to assess the outright success of reconfiguration. McCraw admits that planners “did not set performance goals in connection to reconfiguration,” and that “other school initiatives, such as instructional improvements and more systematic support for struggling learners, would have much greater effects.”

Munt sees the answer as complex, much like the process itself and the issues that provoked it.

“Reconfiguration has been successful in terms of what it set out to do, but the price has been that many positive working relationships between professionals, para professionals, children and families were disrupted as a result,” Munt said. “There is no specific process to evaluate the reconfiguration per se, instead our energy and focus, as a school, is to evaluate our programs and continually refine them in the effort to improve the student’s learning.”

 

Circ Highway undergoes redesign

May 26, 2011

By Steven Frank

Observer staff

After more than a half-century of going around in circles, the Circumferential Highway’s original design will never be constructed.

Gov. Peter Shumlin held a press conference on May 20 at the Interstate 89 northbound rest area in Williston to announce that the Circ plan will be scrapped and redesigned.

Shumlin didn’t indicate specifically what the redesign might include, stating that “nothing is off the table.”

Chittenden County Metropolitan Planning Organization Executive Director Michele Boomhower, who also spoke at the press conference, said past alternatives such as upgrades to the portion of Vermont 2A that runs between Williston and Essex Junction are still one of many possibilities.

On Tuesday, she told the Observer that no options have been discussed since the press conference and that she doesn’t expect any advancement in activity until after the CCMPO Board of Directors meet on June 15.

“We will be proactively working on this over the next few months and will have some ideas prepared for the next legislative session in January,” Boomhower added.

The CCMPO will work with the Federal Highway Administration to develop those solutions, according to Shumlin. Their hope is that a redesign, which will likely include a series of road improvement projects, will satisfy the Environmental Protection Agency’s concern. The EPA deemed the original Circ, which would have been a 16 1/2-mile loop between Williston and Colchester, to be too damaging to wetlands and streams.

Only a small segment of the Circ exists – in Essex between 2A and Vermont 117.

“We spent $97 million over 53 years and only have four miles to show for it,” Shumlin said at the press conference.

He also expressed confidence in restoring the public’s faith in the project, stating that it will be accomplished by looking at solutions for the 21st century and leaving the past behind.

“The original plan is never going to be built,” he said. “The amended plan will be built and that’s what matters.”

EPA New England, which is based in Boston, Mass., issued the following as part of its statement after Shumlin’s announcement: “The Governor’s prudent decision now allows the State to focus its efforts on developing an environmentally sound solution to the regional transportation needs within Chittenden County. EPA New England has offered its support to the State with this effort

May 19, 2011

BASEBALL

Thursday: at North Country, 4:30 p.m.

Friday: MILTON, 4:30 p.m.

Monday: at Burlington, 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday: BFA-St. Albans, 4:30 p.m.

SOFTBALL

Thursday: at North Country, 4:30 p.m.

Friday: MILTON, 4:30 p.m.

Monday: at Burlington, 4:30 p.m.

Tuesday: BFA-St. Albans, 4:30 p.m.

GOLF

Thursday: at Newport Invitational, 3:30 p.m.

Friday: AT ROCKY RIDGE, 3:30 p.m.

Tuesday: at Middlebury, 3:30 p.m.

BOYS LACROSSE

Saturday: ESSEX, 11 A.M.

Wednesday: MOUNT MANSFIELD UNION, 4 p.m.

GIRLS LACROSSE

Saturday: at Burlington, 11 a.m.

Monday: at Middlebury, 4:30 p.m.

Wednesday: MOUNT MANSFIELD UNION, 4:30 p.m.

BOYS TENNIS

Monday: at Mount Mansfield Union, 3:30 p.m.

Wednesday: at Colchester, 3:30 p.m.

GIRLS TENNIS

Monday: MOUNT MANSFIELD UNION, 3:30 p.m.

Wednesday: COLCHESTER, 3:30 p.m.

TRACK AND FIELD

Friday: Freshman meet at Essex, 3 p.m.

Tuesday: SOUTH BURLINGTON AND ESSEX, 3:25 p.m.

HOME EVENTS IN CAPS

Schedules and times subject to change

 

May 19, 2011

RAMPAGING CVU BOYS’ LAX TEAM EYES TEST WITH ESSEX

Having amassed 66 goals in its last three games, the 12-0 Champlain Valley Union Runnin’ Redhawks boys lacrosse team had a second session with Middlebury scheduled for the home patch Wednesday (Observer press time) before hosting an important second meeting of the season with 8-2 Essex on Saturday (11 a.m.).

In its first contest with the defending Division I champion Hornets on April 21, CVU prevailed, 10-8, with a pair of late scores.

Lately, the Redhawks have been wearing out opposing goaltenders. On May 11, CVU went to Barre and rolled up a 20-9 win over Spaulding. A trip to St. Albans on May 14 resulted in a 20-18 victory over BFA, and a jaunt to Middlebury on Monday provided a 16-3 triumph over the Tigers.

That game was switched to the road due to rain and soggy conditions on the CVU field.

At Spaulding, Robbie Dobrowski (five goals) and Lawrence Dee (four goals, five assists) led the point parade.

The shootout at BFA saw veteran Taylor Gingras step up at the high noon confrontation with six goals and a pair of helpers. Dee scored twice and assisted on eight other tallies. Dobrowski, Nate Wells and Justin Beaudry each fired home three goals.

Will Fay, filling in for Eric Palmer in the CVU net, had 15 stops. CVU had 43 shots on the BFA cage.

Gingras had another goal-popping day at Middlebury, notching four scores to go with two assists. Dobrowski and Jake Marston had three goals. Dee and Wells got two scores apiece with Dee adding five assists.

CVU had a 23-6 advantage in shots on goal.

SCHEDULE THICKENS FOR CVU SOFTBALL TEAM

With a few days to savor Saturday’s victory over visiting Vergennes, the Champlain Valley Union softball team will be very busy beginning Thursday with a visit to North Country in Newport.

The Redhawks will be home to Milton on Friday before undertaking four games in four days next week.

This past Tuesday’s visit to Spaulding in Barre was postponed until Wednesday and the regular season wraps up next Thursday at Colchester.

After falling 15-5 to St. Johnsbury Academy on May 12, the 2-8 Redhawks got a solid pitching performance on Saturday from Cayla McCarthy, who fanned 13 batters in going the route.

McCarthy, using an effective variety of speeds, had batters waving at her eye-popping change up that kept the Commodores off stride.

“I have been working hard on that pitch,” a smiling McCarthy said after the game.

She also whiffed nine in a relief effort in the St. Johnsbury contest.

Leah Soule had a double and single with 2 RBIs to pace the Redhawks.

Down 2-0 after a half inning, CVU bounced right back in the bottom of the first to tie the game.

Shortstop Susan Parmalee led of with the first of her two singles, stole second and took third on a wild pitch. Vergennes pitcher Taylor Paquette got two strikeouts, but sophomore Alannah Roy unloaded a double to the fence in left center to plate Parmalee. Roy then scored on Soule’s single.

In the St. Johnsbury game, CVU’s Rachel Distler pounded out a pair of doubles and drove in three.

CVU GIRLS’ LAX TEAM ENDS LOSING STRING

Their five-game losing streak over, the Champlain Valley Union girls lacrosse team returns to action on Saturday against Burlington with a 3-6 record in tow.

The Redhawks did some late season polishing for their campaign with an 11-10 overtime road win over Middlebury on Tuesday. Amanda Kinneston scored her fourth goal of the day with just 46 seconds remaining in overtime.

CVU also got a pair of tallies from Michaela Kiley. Goalie Mikaela Gobeille had 12 saves.

CVU TENNIS RESULTS

Boys

CVU (6-4) 4, South Burlington 3, May 14

Monday match vs Colchester postponed to Friday, at Colchester

Girls

South Burlington 5, CVU (7-3) 2, May 14

Monday match at Colchester postponed to Saturday.

— Mal Boright