Glenford

As voters head to the polls for school elections today, parents in the Onteora Central School District are still upset over the district's abrupt about-face on a plan to move the elementary music program from the school day to the early morning hours before school begins.

After months of sustained protests, and with an already controversial school board election looming, district administrators recently decided to back away from the plan. Many parents say the changes would have significantly undermined the school's music program.

The proposal to move music to the early mornings was based on a concern over the loss of instructional time during the school day, superintendent Phyllis McGill said. She said parents expressed a desire for both meaningful instruction with challenging content, and music. The plan was “certainly a hot issue for the parents in the shared decision-making meeting, but they understood what we were trying to do and how hard it is to do,” McGill said.  Read more

Above: A Google map of New York State post offices that will have reduced hours under the new plan. Click on a red dot to get information about a post office's current hours and their planned reduced daily hours. Use the controls on the left to zoom in or out, or click and drag the map with your mouse. For a larger view, click here. Data from the United States Postal Service.   Read more

In the Catskills this year, Memorial Day is going to be epic.

For the first time in history, four of the six west-of-Hudson New York City reservoirs will be open to boating and paddling for the masses. A new bike event will bring the spirit of the Tour de France to the Pepacton. There will be festivals, parades, street fairs, and general partying all over the region.

And we're going to keep track of it all in our soon-to-be-published Catskills Memorial Day Guide.

Advertise in the Memorial Day guide by May 15. To advertise, check out our rate sheet and get in touch with me at sales@watershedpost.com or at 845-481-0155.

To get your event listed in the guide for free, click here to enter your event into our calendar system. (You need to register for an account with us first.)

Our goal is to list every single parade, barbecue, and get-together in the Catskills. Help us make it happen.

  Read more

At their regular meeting tonight, the Onteora Board of Education is scheduled to vote on a new contract for superintendent Phyllis McGill.

The new contract would cut her salary from $160,000 a year to $150,000 a year, and extend the end date on her contract another two years, from June 30, 2014 to June 30, 2016.

The move to change McGill's contract with the school comes just two weeks before a heated May 15 school board election. Emotions in the Onteora community have been running high, in the wake of a controversial decision by the board to reconfigure the district's three elementary schools, starting this fall.

Some parents have questioned the timing of the vote. On the school board's Facebook page, Becky Kelzenberg Konjas asked why the board was voting to extend McGill's contract before the reconfiguration is put into place:  Read more