Education board members discuss middle school athletic director

SALISBURY — The Board of Education approved an updated bullying policy and school climate plan and gave a provisional endorsement to the idea of creating the position of middle school athletic director during the regular monthly board meeting Monday, Jan. 23. Vice Chairman Jennifer Weigel said the changes to the bullying policy were mostly minor, and she suggested making the school climate plan an administrative matter rather than a policy, to provide flexibility for Salisbury Central School Principal Chris Butwill (who wrote most of the plan).Chairman Brian Bartram, reporting on last week’s All Boards Committee meeting, said that while no action was taken on the question of creating a part-time position of middle school athletic director, the idea was gaining some traction among the various boards. (The ABC is a committee of the Region One Board of Education and is comprised of the chairmen of the school boards from the six member towns — Cornwall, Falls Village, Kent, North Canaan, Salisbury and Sharon — plus the Region One chairman.)Region One Superintendent Patricia Chamberlain said she had been thinking in terms of a 20-hour-per-week position, at an hourly pay rate of between $18 and $19 per hour. She also said the position would be more of a coordinator’s job, and would not run out of the high school athletic director’s office, but from the Region One office.Using Chamberlain’s hypothetical example, Salisbury’s share of the cost for the middle school athletic director’s salary would be about $2,500 — a number that was acceptable to the board.Butwill, asked for his opinion, said it would be helpful to him to have someone in a centralized position to handle scheduling, hiring referees and coaches and checking certifications.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less