School Meeting News
December 2001

Cheerleaders • E-mail
The Freeport miss-Leader    (Part 2)

By Stewart Lilker.

On the second bill of the
December 19, 2001 School Board meeting were the JV Cheerleaders and e-mail.

Justly proud of her JV cheerleaders accomplishments, coach Stacy Guasto shared her feelings with the Board. The JV cheerleaders, young girls who are excellent athletes, had recently finished second in the regional in Flemington, NJ. Guasto explained to the Board the value of the cheerleading camp at Hofstra University. Your reporter, who had met some of these girls at his business, asked the Board to "consider subsidizing the girls." This issue was misreported by Gers of the Leader, who wasn’t visible at the meeting.

Sometime after your reporter told the Board, "I feel that the money spent [on a PR firm], can be better spent in educational programs, curriculum, and other things that the district spends money on now," Kuncham told the Board that it currently costs less than fifty thousand dollars for the present PR firm. The Leader’s inexperienced and invisible Gers got part of this right, but concluded with fabricated unnamed officials remarks, which weren’t made at the meeting and began with a libelous characterization of this reporters remarks.

The invisible Gers misreporting about the this reporters final remarks about Board member Raab’s parking his SUV on the grass, seemed clearly to be written by somebody else, a waste of ink, and a libelous distortion of the events.

Freeport resident Donald Obers took time from his busy schedule to address the Board. He said, "I request the board consider some system of e-mail or voice mail that would improve communication and cooperation between parents, especially working parents and teachers and administrators. It is extremely difficult and frustrating to communicate simple things with teachers and administrators. This past week. I wanted to talk to a teacher about my son missing some school. It took four phone calls over a three day period just to get in touch with the teacher. I wanted to have a dialogue.

Board President Muscara told Obers, "This has been discussed and we have been talking about it. It is something that is going to happen, as soon as we can make it happen."

Obers responded, "Is there anything that can speed it up? Maybe we could set up a taskforce so that this could work for everybody. I think it is extremely critical to the kind of partnership that is always talked about, but I don’t see real efforts between the parties to really improve it. Thank you."

New Board member Joe Cattano said, "I do believe we need some system. The world has changed. We have two working parents in a household where they need to be able to contact teachers. We need to be able to accept the reality of the computer world and to go to an e mail system. I think we are going to make it happen.

Assistant Superintendent Kuncham then explained that the first phase of and e-mail system would be completed by the middle of January. He said, "This phase would enable teachers to communicate among themselves."

After the meeting, Board member Cattano said, "I can’t believe in this day and age there is a teacher without a computer. Something will be done about this."