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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Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.
“I was a library kid. I walked to the library after school,” she said.
For Sher, the library is as much about the people as it about the books.
“Part of the job I love so much is that running the library is such a community,” she said.
She treasures the relationships she has built, whether recommending books, celebrating accomplishments or helping patrons through difficult times.
“I am thankful that our community is so supportive of the library, unlike what is happening in some other places where librarians are villainized,” Sher said.
Sher takes pride in the Hunt Library’s reputation for being “open and welcoming to everyone. People come in and see things and get pulled into things they weren’t expecting. Our library is seen as a positive force.”
Sher came to Falls Village after being awarded a fellowship at Adamah Farm, then a program of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. She worked at pickling, in the greenhouse and later in the development office. She also worked as a nanny.
At the same time, “I was in the library all the time,” she recalled. “I’m a voracious reader. The library is where I met a lot of my first friends in Falls Village.”
She became assistant librarian at Hunt and worked in that position for almost a decade before becoming the executive director four years ago.
Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.L. Tomaino
Sher met her husband, Adam, while working at Adamah. They had their wedding there in 2012. He now emcees many events which she co-organizes with the Falls Village Recreation Commission.
Sher and her family live near the library.
“It’s an easy commute,” she said with a smile. “My kids run back and forth. I can go home to walk the dog if I need to.”
“My kids have grown up here.” Her oldest son, Eli, “loves volunteering. He helps with Augustfest and often helps set up chairs for ArtWall gatherings.” Her younger son, Noah, is often at events and was eager to taste cookies at last year’s holiday cookie swap.
When she is not at the library, Sher likes to hike with her family. Bella, their Portuguese water dog, often accompanies them.
Sher enjoys seeking out people to offer events at the library.
“I do a lot of different community programming. It is one of my favorite parts of the job.”
Augustfest, featuring food, music and an auction, is the library’s biggest fundraiser.
“This summer we had a record 152 attendees, which was pretty incredible.”
Yonah Sadeh, a filmmaker from Falls Village, inaugurated the VideoWall this year, Sher explained.
“I’ve known Yonah since he was two. It’s wonderful to work with him as an adult.”
The VideoWall complements the library’s ArtWall, which showcases a new artist each month. Sher praised the ArtWall committee for its work and highlighted December’s popular “12x12 Show,” featuring works by local artists, each measuring 12 by 12 inches and priced at $150.
Sher added that some of the artists who exhibit at the ArtWall offer workshops to students at Kellogg School, next door to the library. In September, artist Danielle Mailer worked with the children. Vincent Inconiglios taught a class last November.
Being next to the school, said Sher, is a great advantage.
“Kids are coming after school, to see friends, work on projects, find a great book. Kids that love the library end up using the library as grownups.”
This past year, in partnership with Adamah, the library and school created a garden, with excess produce made available at The Center on Main.
This year is Sher’s second year participating in the Troutbeck Symposium in Amenia with James King, director of the library at Salisbury School. The Troutbeck Symposium is “a gathering of a year of student historical inquiry across the region” in which students “uncover stories that have been overlooked, forgotten, or never recorded.”
Last year, Sher and King began a project with a group of students researching Irish immigrants in Falls Village, exploring ancestry and creating small magazines about their findings.
They continued this year, visiting St. Patrick’s Catholic Cemetery on Dublin Road, cleaning seven gravestones and even righting one with the help of stonemason and gravestone restoration expert Karl Munson. Paul Kozeazny, a representative of the Catholic archdiocese, helped secure access to the site.
A film documenting their activities will be shown at the symposium in spring 2027.
A full schedule of programs and events, ranging from tech help to ceramic mug-making, can be found on the library’s website.
Despite spending her days surrounded by books, and a busy schedule of programming, Sher still loves to settle in with a book at home.
For more information on library programs and events, visit huntlibrary.org
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Touré was born in northern Mali in 1981. His father, the renowned guitarist Ali Farka Touré, came from a family of soldiers and wanted his son to join the army. The younger Touré studied drums and the calabash and practiced guitar in secret. He earned his father’s blessing to pursue music shortly before Ali died in 2006, and they played two tracks together on Vieux’s debut album.
Touré is known for his deft, polyrhythmic playing, and his songs grow out of riffs that repeat and layer to hypnotic effect. He draws on rock, blues, Latin music and various African traditions. This distinctive blend builds on his father’s work adapting the sonic traditions of Mali’s arid north to the guitar.
Vieux’s album “Mon Pays” (“My Country,” 2013) honored Mali’s culture after Tuareg separatists and extremist groups seized the north in 2012. “Samba” (2017) was recorded before about 50 listeners in Woodstock, New York. In 2022 came “Les Racines” (“The Roots”), a return to his father’s desert blues, and “Ali,” on which he and the trio Khruangbin reworked eight of the elder Touré’s songs.
Touré leads the Ali Farka Touré Foundation, which focuses on cultural and educational work in Mali. Around the anniversary of Ali’s death, it holds a festival in Bamako, Mali’s capital. Bamako has been under blockade for much of the past year, besieged by JNIM, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Against this backdrop, Touré continues to carry the music of Mali to audiences abroad.
At the Nov. 5 concert, Touré’s desert blues will share the bill with Gnawa, the music LanGus plays, which developed in Morocco among West Africans who were brought north across the desert as enslaved people. Gnawa is religious music traditionally performed at all-night healing ceremonies called lila, intended to carry participants into trance.
Samir LanGusProvided
LanGus was born and raised outside Agadir, Morocco, and began learning Gnawa from its masters at age 8. He plays the sintir, a three-stringed bass lute made of wood and camel skin. The player strikes a low string with the thumb to create a deep, resonant pulse. Iron castanets clatter over the sintir’s bass line, and vocalists trade call-and-response refrains.
LanGus infuses the tradition with jazz and improvisation. In New York, he founded the ensemble Innov Gnawa. His first solo album, “Gnawa Love,” came out in February.
Touré and LanGus’s Nov. 5 concert is one of the last public events at Race Brook Lodge, which is for sale and ended full-service operations at the end of 2025. The lodge’s final scheduled event, on Nov. 6, is an evening of Rumi’s poetry with translator and vocalist Haleh Liza Gafori, cellist Isabel Castellvi and ceremonial bard James Bird.
For tickets, visit rblodge.com.
James FitzGerald is a student at Yale Law School, where he focuses on ecological restoration and international environmental cooperation. He splits his time between Lakeville and New Haven.
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