NORWICH – School board members from throughout Delaware, Chenango, Madison and Otsego counties gathered Thursday at the BOCES facility for the annual fall dinner to celebrate the efforts made by school boards to ensure children today receive the education they all deserve.
The event, hosted by the Chenango County School Board Association (CCSBA), is held each fall for school board members and fellow educators. Following a tour of the new advancements being made at BOCES and a dinner prepared by BOCES students, CCSBA President Brian Brennan got the evening started with a vote to elect officers. After a unanimous vote, officers are staying as follows, Brennan as president, Kathy Coates as vice president and John Godfrey as secretary and treasurer.
As a tradition for their fall function, the School Board Member of the Year award, presented by Superintendent Alan Pole, was announced. Linda Zaczek was honored for her years of service on both the Gilbertsville-Mt.Upton and DCMO BOCES school boards. She is a vice-president at NBT bank and has volunteered in a long list of community events and organizations. “I am privileged to have had the opportunity to work closely with Linda for 18 years,” said Pole. He also said it is people like Zaczek who make the community a better place to live.
Zaczek spoke briefly after accepting the nomination and plaque and spoke of team work and leadership. “For boards to be successful, there needs to be good leaders in each district,” said Zaczek.
Taking a proactive approach to lessen the number of children leaving school without a diploma, a panel of four local and regional representatives took the spotlight to discuss where the concerns are and what measures can be taken to address them.
The panel – including Lorie Ostrander, a teacher at BOCES and a doctoral candidate conducting her thesis on the related links between high school “leavers” as she called them and school violence, Chenango County Judge Howard Sullivan, state education department representative James DeLorenzo and Otselic Valley Superintendent Larry Thomas – took turns enlightening the audience on the links between dropout rates and violence today. Moderating the panel for the hour-long open forum was Ted Nichols, the dean of Morrisville State’s Norwich campus.
Ostrander explained state-wide dropout rates have increased to 67 percent in recent years, and taking an approach early on is a better way to prevent children leaving. Ostrander has done extensive research into the topic, interviewed students, parents and educators to try to grasp what it is that makes many students leave school before completing their studies. According to Ostrander, students in many cases do not leave for academic reasons. “Students relate they do not feel safe in school.” Saying also that students feel unsafe emotionally as well as physically. After lengthy discussion as to the concerns regarding safety, Ostrander concluded saying intervention and communication from teachers to custodians in school buildings is key.
Sullivan chimed in on the topic as well, stating in his line of work many of the juvenile delinquents – meaning anyone committing a crime under the age of 16 – are high school dropouts. He explained he feels the best program offered by the court is the treatment court, and many of the people involved in it end up with their GEDs.
DeLorenzo, who has worked extensively with students with disabilities, provided audience members with data calculations. “Disability students are at a high risk,” he said. “They tend to be more vulnerable to bullying.”
Social isolation was a key term used to refer to students who feel they are “different” and do not fit into the school environment.
Thomas also had statistics for the audience saying 75 percent of the people in today’s prison system are high school dropouts; these same individuals are at a greater risk to continue to encounter legal problems, make less money in the work force and live shorter lives than the people who received a high school diploma.
The floor was open to the audience for questions following the discussion. Holding a respect for education is one concern an audience members pointed out. Antha Robbins, an area eight director for the New York State School Board Association, explained she feels throughout the past decade or more the respect held for education itself was diminishing. She said students seem not to realize the importance of getting an education like they used to. Others from the audience ranged from being a parent of a students who dropped out to being a drop out themselves, and they agreed that students are more likely to leave school if they are being bullied, and when that happens, the stigma stays with them for life.