PINE PLAINS — Pine Plains Central School District Board of Education (BOE) trustees were caught off-guard by a proposal late into the 2011-12 budget process from Trustee Todd Bowen, who asked the board to consider eliminating one of two Stissing Mountain Middle/High School principals and the building’s dean of students.The issue arose following a budget presentation made by Superintendent Linda Kaumeyer at the Wednesday, April 6, Board of Education (BOE) meeting. The budget Kaumeyer presented totals nearly $28 million, up a little more than $1 million (a 4 percent budget-to-budget increase) from the year before. The estimated tax levy percent increase is 4.61 percent (for a more detailed recap of the budget presentation, turn to Page A5).The board discussed the long-term ramifications of a tax cap bill (which, if passed, would not affect the 2011-12 budget but would start the following year) and how the district might best prepare for the upcoming years. When Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finances Michael Goldbeck presented the board with a list of areas where further reductions could be made, if the board wanted to do so, Bowen said he had his own ideas. Bowen said that with the district’s low student enrollment, he didn’t see how both a middle school and high school principal could be justified to guide a shared building.“With the cost of two principals, including salaries and benefits,” he said, “I just don’t see the need for two principals in one building. And we also have a dean of students. Years ago the dean of students was the principal. I don’t see the need for that position, either. “There are areas that can be cut,” Bowen added. “With only 1,110 students [total in the district], I believe we can make cuts there, and I think those positions should be eliminated.”The BOE is supposed to adopt the budget at its April 19 meeting. The state allows it an additional day, until April 20, for final adoption. Bowen’s suggestion comes very late into the budget process in Pine Plains, which began in earnest with budget workshop meetings in January. It also came at the tail end of last week’s meeting, right before the session was to wrap up.Superintendent Linda Kaumeyer said there was “quite detailed discussion” about the need for two Stissing Mountain principals several years ago, while the district was looking for a new high school principal. The responsibilities of the two principals, including the health and safety of the student body, factored into the decision to keep the two positions.“With over 600 students,” school board President Bruce Kimball said, “there’s no way that one principal can handle all the things that need to be done. We would at least need to have a principal and an assistant principal. And it turns out that with the difference in salaries and services, it’s just not worth it.”Bowen pointed out that the district has operated fine without two principals in that building, but Kimball rebutted that structuring the building with one principal was last done decades ago. Kimball, a math teacher in the district during that time, said that he knew specifically of one teacher who didn’t get evaluated in eight years. Teacher evaluations are conducted several times a year now.“There were a lot of things not happening in ‘the good ol’ days,’” Kimball said.As for the dean of students position, Kaumeyer again said the position had been looked at carefully a number of times in the past few years. Prior to the 2010-11 school year, the dean’s responsibilities were handled part-time by two teachers in the building.Under that configuration, “it became evident that the management of the building and discipline of students was not to your satisfaction,” Kaumeyer told the board.This year, retired teacher Dennis Malloy stepped in as a full-time dean of students. Kaumeyer said he receives no employee benefits and his annual salary is only $30,000.“It’s a cost-effective way to handle health and safety issues in the district,” board Trustee Helene McQuade said to Bowen. “We were having problems in the past. In other districts, they have far more layers of administration that we do.” Board Trustee John Shea said that he would rather see the dean of students position eliminated than the board have to make any cuts to programming that directly affects students.Discussion eventually became more of an argument between the two sides, and Kimball pointed out that the conversation was going in circles. He went around the table, asking each member if they wanted to accept the budget as presented or look for further cuts.Kimball himself said, “At this point in time, I’m perfectly comfortable and I think it’s in the best interest of the district to adopt the budget as is.”Trustee JoAnn Wolfe said that before she came to any decision about eliminating a position, she wanted to see more information about the impact it might have on programming and on the students.“You have to know the facts and what the impacts will be on operations,” she said, without taking a firm stance on either side.“You don’t just decide this at a moment’s notice,” McQuade said about the proposal. “We really don’t have time as far as I’m concerned to seriously consider what you’re suggesting.”When it came time for Bowen to speak, he accused the board of not taking “every penny” spent by the district seriously, an accusation that the board vehemently denied. Another argument ensued and Shea walked out of the meeting.“Every dollar counts,” Bowen insisted.“But it’s also what you get for your dollar,” Kimball replied, additionally questioning why Bowen had waited until two weeks before the budget needed to be passed to bring up these concerns.“I take offense at being blind-sided with this,” he said.“Every time there’s a budget, there’s never anything said about [making cuts to] administration,” Bowen persisted. “If the taxpayer has to tighten their budget, so does this school district.”McQuade pointed out that looking at possible scenarios involving tax caps for upcoming years, Pine Plains may find itself needing to make $1.2 million in cuts the following year. Earlier, Goldbeck had shown the board that regardless of what cuts were made this year, it would not lessen the number of serious cuts needed the following year. “It will only make it that much worse next year if we cut this year,” McQuade said. “There are a lot of sacred cows we’re going to have to look at.”The board decided that it would schedule a special Board of Education meeting the following Wednesday, April 13 (after this paper’s press deadline). Kaumeyer said that she would bring information at the board’s request to that meeting about the cost-savings involved with cutting the two positions as well as any impacts that would result from it.
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Dick Hermans in the Oblong Bookstore on Millerton\u2019s Main Street in 1985.
Provided
For Hermans, the award has prompted some reflection about why he has spent so much of his life involved in community projects.
“I was thinking about it this morning: Why do I do what I do?” he said. “And I think no matter what I’ve done, whether it’s been school board or rail trail, I’m trying to be useful to the communities I’m associated with.”
Hermans is perhaps best known as the longtime co-founder and steward of Oblong Books in Millerton, a business that began almost by accident. He and his first wife, Holly Nelson, were living in Millerton and looking for something to do during the winter. They had been painting houses, including the Grange Hall in Millerton, a job Hermans got through his aunt, who belonged to the Grange.
At the time, Hermans was also working in insurance for his father, doing collections.
“It was fine except I was doing collections, and it really kind of left me cold,” he said.
He and Nelson began thinking about what they might do together. Nelson was an avid reader, while Hermans had studied journalism and had worked in a record store. They noticed a chain of book and record stores operating elsewhere in the Hudson Valley and decided to follow that model.
And so Oblong was born.
Dick Hermans in the Oblong Bookstore on Millerton’s Main Street in 1985.Provided
“We really learned it by the seat of our pants,” Hermans said.
The business would eventually become a beloved and integral part of Millerton’s commercial life. But although Hermans may have learned the book business as he went, his affinity for retail — and for the connections that happen across a counter — had begun much earlier.
As a child, his second-grade teacher operated a little cardboard pencil shop in the classroom, and Hermans still remembers the satisfaction of selling a pencil for a nickel.
“I really liked selling somebody a pencil for a nickel,” he recalled. “I can remember that experience, and it was so pleasant.”
Later, while living in Arizona, he helped establish a food co-op and worked at the counter.
“I kind of knew that I liked doing that kind of thing,” he said. “It’s a nice way to be pleasant with people, but without making too much commitment to them.”
His relationship with Millerton also predates Oblong. His grandparents lived in the village, and he first came to Millerton as a baby. Over the years, he has watched the town change through several generations.
He remembers a Millerton with a much broader array of businesses, when stores such as Delson’s, the Main Street department store that stood for nearly 40 years in what is now Millerton’s Antiques Center, seemed to carry almost everything a resident might need.
“You could find everything from a set of dishes to a shotgun,” he recalled.
The rise of shopping malls changed that kind of downtown retail, he said, but Millerton has remained a lively commercial village.
“For us, it’s been a great place to have business,” Hermans said. “It’s a busy village.”
For Hermans, running a store was never simply about selling books and records. It was a way of being part of a place.
Music has remained another constant. Hermans continues to sell music at Oblong and hosts the radio program “New Harmony” on WKZE. The business of selling music has changed dramatically over the years, particularly with the rise of streaming, but Hermans has adapted.
He was initially reluctant to bring vinyl records back into the store because of their expense. But about four or five years ago, he began stocking LPs again, and they have become the main form of music the store sells.
He finds that many of the customers buying them are reconnecting with music they loved years ago.
“I do best with classic albums that people may have had when they were young,” he said. “And now that they’re retired, they want to hear it again.”
Hermans still reviews between 700 and 1,200 new music releases each week through the store’s distributor, Alliance Entertainment, carefully deciding what belongs on Oblong’s shelves.
That same commitment to place has led Hermans into a wide range of community projects. His work with the Harlem Valley Rail Trail is among the efforts he mentions when reflecting on his years of civic involvement. He has also served on the school board and has been involved with the Millerton Business Alliance and the Irondale Schoolhouse. He is now involved with The New Pine Plains Herald, which he sees as complementary to the work of The Millerton News and The Lakeville Journal.
“I really think that the important thing about this award is that people understand what a newspaper does to connect them to their community,” he said. “And if that means anything to their lives, they gotta support it.”
Hermans knew Mary Lou and Robert Estabrook and remembers them as people who were deeply conscious of their responsibilities to the community.
“They were really nice folks,” he said. “They were very conscious of what their role in the community was.”
There is, in fact, still plenty on his plate. Hermans admits he needs to scale back because he has taken on more than his current abilities can comfortably accommodate.
“To be given this award is very special,” he added. “But I don’t feel like I’m done.”
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Adamah Farm crew members planning out the day’s tasks on a late September day.
Janna Siller
Over my 15 years of growing vegetables in Falls Village, I’ve exerted my will over all kinds of conditions, from drought to humidity to crows with a taste for cantaloupe. That’s what farming is all about. You zip around the field, hopping on and off tractors, moving hoses and chasing weeds, all in an effort to arrange conditions in favor of your crops. It is the crops’ job to gulp up sunlight and move water through their stems, to transform solar energy into your next pesto or ratatouille or butternut squash soup. It is the job of the farmer to irrigate just enough but not too much, to slice dandelion leaves without damaging delicate cabbage roots, to pander and pamper and stay in tune with what plants need to thrive.
The easy part of farming is trusting plants’ resilience. I have seen bright green shoots barrel ahead out of a plant torn to shreds by hail. I’ve watched wilty, heat-stressed seedlings turn rigid overnight and greet the next morning with vigor. The hard part is letting go of what you can’t control. As our crops lapped up Friday’s gentle sunshine and I considered the weekend forecast, I imagined roots holding tight to wet earth and branches supporting each other in sideways, pelting rain. I made sure all of our storage crops were already harvested and tucked away. I battened down the sides of our greenhouses and wished the remaining field crops good luck.
The nor’easter didn’t materialize too dramatically in our corner of New England. A few broken branches and debris blown about, nothing like the July Fourth storm that sent half a tree crashing onto the deer fence and left crates of fresh veggies in coolers without power.
Fall storage crop harvests amid soil building cover crops at Adamah Farm in Falls Village. Janna Siller
Farming is an exercise in acceptance. To do it well and return year after year, you have to balance hubris and humility. The prize can often be a certain equanimity, a training in the art of moving into the next day even when the last one scrambled all your plans.
Epic change is not always about the unexpected. It also comes like clockwork on the seasonal calendar. As I type, the last of summer’s watermelons wait naively on the vine for a few hot days to finish ripening. Broccoli are holding their leaves wide as they did in June and July, only to find that the hours of sunlight decrease with each earlier sunset. Plants can’t pick up and go south or call the manager to order a bonus round of sunshine. Their growth slows and they get a resigned look to the hue of their leaves, so different from the frenzied growth of summer.
The release of fall is not tragic or gloomy. It is not an ending because so many fall tasks are about setting up for the new beginnings in spring.
We turn the vines that yielded thousands of pounds of fruit into the soil, where healthy microbes feast on their rotting stems. Then we plant cover crops — a mix of cereal grains like rye and oats and legumes like peas, vetch and clover. Cover crops hold the soil and its nutrients in place over winter, feeding the soil food web and adding organic matter that next season’s crops will need to grow.
We sort sprinklers and repair hoses. We inventory tarps. We take notes about which plants did well where and how we might try a new approach for this or that. We stack crates of cured garlic and onions and winter squash in a cool, dark room.
We save seeds from tomatoes and beans and lettuce, carefully labeling each variety for next season’s long, sunny days.
Janna Siller is the farm director at Adamah, a community farm in Falls Village offering CSA shares, educational programs and a food access program.
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