Residents share thoughts on Region One with rep

FALLS VILLAGE — A crowd of some 25 people, mostly residents of Falls Village, assembled at Town Hall to talk with Region One Board of Education member Gale Toensing in an unusual meeting Thursday, Jan. 6.

Toensing, the Falls Village representative on the regional school board, has been outspoken in her criticism of board Chairman Judge Manning and of Region One administrators Patricia Chamberlain and Diane Goncalves, and was instrumental in getting the board to hire an outside attorney, Jeffrey C. Pingpank, to investigate the resignations of Housatonic Valley Regional High School Principal Gretchen Foster and Assistant Principal Mary Ann Buchanan last August.

Toensing started the meeting off by saying, “I hope this will result in you telling me what needs to be done to heal the divisions� at the high school.

Amy Wynn said, “It’s not our job to develop an action plan� to implement the six recommendations of the Pingpank report.

“It is the board’s job to address it. The action plan has to come from within for people to buy it.�

Wynn also reiterated something she said at the last Region One board meeting, that any action taken to put in place the recommendation “has to be done in a safe environment� where participants can speak freely, without fear of retribution.

She suggested a “neutral counselor� could help expedite the process.

Wynn was not particularly kind to the board, saying “it has to function differently.

“I am appalled at those meetings.�

Former Housatonic Valley Regional High School Principal Jack Mahoney said he hoped the board would direct the school district’s Central Office personnel “to stay home as much as possible. There should be minimal involvement in the life of the high school.�

Andrea Downs, chairman of the Falls Village Board of Education, said she was concerned about the behavior of the adults having a negative effect on the district’s children.

Of the Region One Board members, she said,  “People are going to have to put their egos on the back burner. People are going to have to let some stuff go in order to move forward — or it’s not going to happen.â€�

Woods Sinclair, a former teacher and department chair at Housatonic, said he would like to see the faculty “examine their own divisions and look at what the high school means to them. When I was there it was a way of life.�

And Chuck Lewis from the Board of Selectmen said he had always been concerned about what he considers a conflict of interest — with Manning as chair of the regional board, which oversees the superintendent, who in turn oversees Manning’s wife, Karen, who is principal at Sharon Center School.

“At this point,� said Lewis, “it’s clear to me he [Manning] should not be the person shepherding the process of an action plan. I think he should recuse himself entirely from the process and have somebody else take over.�

Wynn spoke up again, this time to suggest term limits for Region One board officers.

First Selectman Pat Mechare wound up the meeting with a couple of observations. She said she had reviewed Goncalves’ contract and found it to be poorly written and incomplete, lacking, in particular, a termination date.

She also said she was “puzzled� about Region One contracts, especially those for administrators.

“It bothers me that the adminstrators’ contracts come up and get extended. I don’t see much evaluation.�

Toensing said she shared Mechare’s frustration. “We go into executive session — and then we don’t see the contracts.�