WEBUTUCK — During the Board of Education (BOE) meeting on Monday, March 12, High School Principal Ken Sauer talked about the importance of offering many after-school options, as a tool to lower the dropout rate.Webutuck recently instituted an Intramurals Sports program and has been finding alternatives to sports for students who need additional support. Sauer stressed the importance of reaching out to those students who are showing signs of having trouble in school.“We’ve had good success with this personal approach and we’re looking to extend that next year,” he said.Sauer also explained that juniors will soon be going to Dutchess Community College to take their placement tests.“We did this in the fall with the seniors and this time around we are trying to get a jump on it by testing the kids at the end of their junior year. This way they go in to their senior year with that information and more options to explore,” he said.He also touched on the success of the recent career fair put on by the guidance office.“All the kids in the high school went through, we had it set up in the gym, and they got to talk to representatives from various fields including a photographer, a radio station worker and a representative from the health-care field,” he said.Students will also be taking part in a college fair in May.“We have almost 100 colleges scheduled to be on site, so that should be really great,” he said.Sauer then went deeper into what “dropout prevention” means and how it is being addressed.“It’s helping those kids that aren’t finding success in school. It’s about getting them to think about their options after high school, including things like the Armed Forces and vocational options,” he said.Sauer hopes to see an 80 percent graduation rate this year.The Board of Education asked Sauer to specify why the graduation rate fluctuates from year to year; estimates throughout this year have also fluctuated.“We won’t know the actual numbers until a few weeks before graduation actually takes place. We have our estimates, but there’s no way of being sure until the end of the semester,” he said.Sauer then spoke about the difficulties in working with parents.“Since I’ve been working here I’ve taken a lot of calls from parents. They want to know why you want to see their kid on a Saturday. I don’t have that information anymore than the guidance office does. I put it on the teachers, and that’s really where it needs to be,” he said.Sauer detailed what is expected of teachers.“I went so far as to say (to the teachers) that if they have kids that are on the failure list, you can’t not be in contact with parents and feel you’re convinced that your professional obligations have been met. We need to be making sure that they are contacting parents,” he said.Sauer also stressed that a certain number of parents don’t follow through on the meetings.“Parents claim they’ll be here and we do all the work, get all the paperwork ready, and then come Saturday morning they just don’t show,” he said.Sauer confirmed that while face-to-face interactions with the students and parents seem productive the intent often leaves the building when the student does.“Every student seems to appreciate the conversation, the face-to-face, one-on-one conversation. They seem receptive. Then the bell rings and those commitments seem to fade. It’s hard to make it stick once they go home,” he said.BOE member Judy Moran was curious about how calls to parents are followed through on.“Is there a way to monitor that calls are being made?” she asked.Sauer reassured the board that he had emailed the teachers on this issue.“I let them know that they need to be prepared to show me that they’re trying. I’m gonna ask for dates and times to prove the calls are being made,” Sauer replied.School board President Dale Culver weighed in.“I sincerely believe that the student who gets the intervention early in the year will be less likely to get frustrated and shut down,” he said.Culver then asked if there were any plans to start addressing these issues with students early in the year.Sauer informed the board that all of the students’ test scores from previous years are available for teachers as well as assessments based off of earlier testing.“Do our teachers know who is struggling? Yes. Do they necessarily do all that they could with that data? Probably not,” he said.Culver also expressed the importance of getting students the help in specific areas that they constantly show deficiencies in, as well as fostering areas they consistently do well in.Sauer responded that the test data and following up appropriately with the information provided will help in those areas.Culver also expressed the importance of simply talking to the students.“If you’re not knowing that they have a need then it doesn’t matter what resources we have. If you’re not asking, not contacting parents, then our target resources won’t help,” he said.After the meeting Sauer mentioned the difficulty in speaking on this topic.“I‘m not trying to beat up on my staff. This is a difficult issue and we need to follow up with the students who are doing poorly as well as the ones who are succeeding. The calls to parents have to be made and the follow through needs to be kept up on,” he said.The board thanked Sauer for his presentation with no further comments.
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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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