Paul working for you.

Saturday, January 17, 2015


Ash-West OKs $400K for Briggs study


An article by Nick Brown, dated February 12, 2009, states the Ashburnham-Westminster regional school committee signed an intermunicipal agreement Tuesday authorizing the Town of Ashburnham to borrow $400,000.00 for the John R. Briggs elementary school feasibility study. This is right about the same time Templeton voted $550,000.00 for a feasibility study for a new elementary school.


Since that time, a new Briggs elementary school has open in Ashburnham and Templeton has just settled on a site, hopefully! Templeton has since started a biomass (wood chip) boiler that was rushed thru to Town meeting so it would be ready by the beginning of the school year and here we are without even a contract in writing for wood chips. Does anyone in Templeton really trust having the Narragansett School district involved in this? Do the taxpayers have any reason or evidence to feel confidence that the school superintendent should be anywhere near this project, from a pure performance standpoint.


One of the things from the last BOS meeting, which I attended, was the number mentioned in reference to MSBA, $161,000.00, the amount that was stated the town has received from MSBA in the form of reimbursements. On the MSBA website, under projects for Narragansett Regional, it states the feasibility study with total project budget of $550,000.00 with a reimbursement rate of 59.84% with MSBA amount paid to date: $246,143.00 with an estimated MSBA payment amount remaining: $82,977.00 to equal anticipated MSBA investment amount of $329,120.00.


$329,120.00 is 59.84% of $550,000.00 and this is why I request a detailed accounting of these funds to include what was spent, what it was spent on and what if any amount is left. This was requested on December 29, 2014 and to date, no figures.  Clearly there is something amiss somewhere with these figures.


One thing that came from the Briggs study was a building of 85,415 square feet, estimated to be built in 18 months at a cost of $287.07 per sq. ft. Total cost estimated at $24,519,849.00.


Jeff Bennett



4 comments:

  1. Some may find this interesting:

    The surrender to modern education: brainwashing By Jon Rappoport



    The surrender to modern education: brainwashing

    By Jon Rappoport
    January 17, 2015
    www.nomorefakenews.com

    "There is a movement to make children into social animals, but not just that. The objective is to make them good social animals, and better than good---the best and most wonderful, special, special, special social animals...and in the process, to cherish them, to profess great love for them---when love is ALREADY a given. When you pile sloppy sentiment on top of what is already naturally there, you're selling a child a grotesque counterfeit, and he knows it. He either invents his own false sentiments, in order to have a role in the farce, or he rebels at a deep level. Either way, he's confused. He doesn't understand these insane overreaching adults." (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

    It may be hard for today's parents to believe, but millions of children in America came through the public education system in the 1940s and 50s, and learned the basics---without a shred of cheery happy rainbow goo-goo decorations and slogans on the walls of classrooms.


    Learning as seduction did not exist. Learning as "get the child interested" didn't exist.

    It wasn't important or necessary to "uplift the child."

    Audio-visual aids were entirely absent.

    Nor were teachers concerned with producing little humanitarians. There was no instruction in "getting along" or "relationships." Or "cooperation."

    No values of any kind were taught. They were learned at home and on the playground, without the presence of teachers.

    Children who misbehaved to the point of disrupting the classroom were sent away. Warned, suspended, expelled. Otherwise, behaviorism didn't exist.

    Social agendas? Political agendas? Medical agendas? Psychological agendas? Sex education? Group projects? Expressing feelings? Sharing? Never heard of it.

    Teachers taught their subjects. Students learned. That was the beginning and end of school.

    Reading, writing, math. No grading on a curve.

    There was very little nasty competition. Students wanted to achieve (or they didn't). They knew how well they were doing by learning the material, and by test grades.

    The text books were old-fashioned. Many were used, second-hand. Publishers hadn't yet invented the scam of peddling new books with "new formulations and methods" every few years.

    A text book covered a subject in obvious small increments. New concept introduced; many student exercises, designed to illustrate the concept in action. Then, next new concept, with exercises. And so on.

    The teacher would explain each new concept, and show how it worked on the blackboard. The whole class would do some of the relevant exercises from the book.

    The remaining exercises would be done as homework. The next day: turn in the homework for grading. Take a quiz on yesterday's lesson. Go on to a new lesson.

    The teachers managed to supervise this process without complaining that it wasn't creative, without having a nervous breakdown.

    Creativity and imagination for the students? This was launched through gaining the rock-solid ability to read a book. A student would read a novel on his own and travel to another world.

    Education was simple, straightforward. Yes, it was hard work, and yes, there were deficiencies, particularly in the study of history, and in the absence of instruction in logic, but all in all it worked.

    It was understood, in every classroom, that sufficient numbers of drills, exercises, and tests were necessary for learning to take place. There was no way around it.

    "We need more money" wasn't an excuse or a compliant or a justification for failure to teach.
    If a student got Fs, he repeated the grade, or went to summer school to catch up. No one was graduated on the basis of mere attendance.
    .

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  2. "Self-esteem" didn't exist. Children weren't "special." They certainly weren't "world citizens."

    Again, no one taught values. That would have been considered meddling. Brainwashing.

    By the 1940s, the agenda of the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations had certainly taken hold. There was no instruction in the Constitution. There was no instruction in individual citizenship in a Republic. All that had been wiped out. Courses in art and music were pathetic shadows of the real thing.

    Nevertheless, learning took place. Students achieved. They gained confidence. They weren't viewed as little mind-control objects. Socialization wasn't a goal.

    In my public school, a student could choose to study Latin, beginning in the 7th grade. No one blinked or thought it was strange. It was understood that if you really wanted to understand English, you took Latin.

    Then, in the 1960s, a shift occurred. It was planned. Schools (and willing parents) took on the job of teaching children to be good people. That was the prime mission. Learning was a secondary goal. After all, "saving the world" required more good people.

    There was just one problem. Children didn't want to become good people. They wanted to be what they were. They wanted to learn, play, explore, imagine. Children didn't have a natural social agenda. They hadn't sprung from the womb with a full-blown ideology. "Greatest good for the greatest number" wasn't their constant companion.

    That devious program (who decides what the greatest good is?) belonged to educators and parents and bureaucrats and foundations and technocrats and Globalists.

    Parents were the worst offenders, because they were the closest to their children. They had the greatest impact. If they weren't really about giving their children freedom and responsibility and power, if they were really interested in creating little living models...they wreaked havoc.

    Let's face it, it's a dumbshow. Populated by moral tricksters. Opportunists. "How can we intervene and show children how to get along, how to be kind and generous and tolerant and blind to differences between people? How can we educate them to want a better world? How can we blunt their natural curiosity and substitute a perception of vague endless equality? How can we make them into mind-controlled angels? How can we manufacture planetary citizens? Surely, this what children want to be. They just don't know it. So we'll bring it out in them."

    The word "educate" comes from the Latin. Duco: I lead. E or ex: Out of, from. To lead from. To educe, "bring out something latent."

    Pretending to educe a fabricated and synthetic quality of "goodness" from children by teaching it and imposing it is a recipe for disaster. It might save the planet, but then the planet would become the Home of the Androids.

    Make good little androids, suffer the consequences.

    War, at every level.

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    Replies
    1. We now live in a world where parents are punished for letting their kids walk home alone. Give me a break. Who is going to walk them home when they go into the world ?? Give them the skills to be self sufficient, so they are not afraid to live. Bev..

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    2. people your perception of present educational system can not afford the past ruins , The old ways do not apply to the instruction or quality now due , , The only question is when you see the outcome of needs do they in fact harness and help save that child future life as a productive citizen , and human being , YES if school only comes to reject always it will hinder and there is Consequence to this position
      How true it is that we do not suffer the labels of past or drop out rates or thrown lives out door because we didn't address those human being at there time of need , away away away away because t that was the old days How
      and that day no one really escape the consequences as they would not do today those who are children first , who misbehaved to the point of disrupting the classroom who as you say sent away. Warned, suspended, expelled. may most likely had issue which cause reaction its works that way these problem come out this way you know ? .
      Social agendas? Political agendas? Medical agendas? Psychological agendas? Sex education? Group projects? Expressing feelings? Sharing? are all part of life some never grow out of this , you know .
      some live lies all there lives never express the truth or even are allowed to be forgiven
      school should always address the heart issue place forward we make better people that way .
      school after all in people biz , but i still see NRHS as falling way short of this

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