PINE PLAINS — After a lengthy discussion regarding the need for both a middle school and high school principal, as well as a dean of students, the Pine Plains Central School District’s Board of Education voted to keep its current administrative layout and unanimously adopted a 2011-12 budget for voter approval next month.A special meeting had been scheduled at the end of the board’s April 6 meeting, after Trustee Todd Bowen suggested having two principals in the district’s Stissing Mountain Middle/High School, as well as a dean of students, was unnecessary. At that meeting several board members criticized the late timing of the proposal, but agreed to hear the logistics of what those reductions might mean to the district before making a final decision.For further discussion, a special meeting was called for Wednesday, April 13, and in the week leading up to the meeting district administrators prepared a lengthy presentation, which included a history of the school’s administrative structure dating back to the 1980s, cost estimates of the administrative positions in question and a list of principals’ responsibilities. That presentation was made by Superintendent Linda Kaumeyer.Since the late 1980s, Pine Plains has used a variety of administrative configurations including disciplinary assistants, principals, assistant principals, department chairs and administrative assistants. The costs (converted into 2011 dollars by Kaumeyer for the presentation) followed little pattern from year to year, from a low of about $121,000 during the 1987-88 school year to roughly $271,000 in the 2005-06 school year. Currently the administrative layout for Stissing Mountain Middle/High School (two principals, two department chairs for health and physical education and one dean of students) costs the district $261,625.60.One of the prominent configurations back in the 1970s and ’80s, school board President Bruce Kimball recalled (he retired from teaching in the district after more than 30 years) was having one principal for the middle school and high school, and seven department chairs that were responsible for the “vast majority” of observation and evaluation of teachers. Those chairs, who were full-time teachers in the building, were paid a stipend as chairs and were relieved of one class duty, which was covered by another teacher for an additional stipend.When the department chairs were eliminated because it was discovered that they weren’t legally allowed to evaluate teachers, Kimball said that a middle school principal was added.“Rightfully so, I believe, because one individual could not cover all the responsibilities that seven people were doing,” he said.As Kaumeyer explained, if the board were to eliminate a principal’s position, high school Principal Tara Horst would have to be let go under education law’s “last in first out” layoff procedure. Horst’s annual salary is approximately $99,000.The dean of students position was only recently created; disciplinary matters were previously handled by two teachers. Pine Plains was able to employ retired teacher Dennis Malloy as dean of students. Malloy is paid on a per diem basis, with a $30,000 maximum salary and no benefits.Kaumeyer went through a detailed list of a principal’s duties in the district, ranging from instructional responsibilities to issues involving building and student management. A majority of the discussion was spent on the teacher evaluation process, which Kimball called “the most important responsibility of a principal, because that’s what affects your kids in the classroom.”Under several subheadings, Kaumeyer also illustrated how the legally-mandated responsibilities of principals have increased since the ’80s and are scheduled to increase again in the near future.For example, under evaluations, the superintendent pointed to the APPR (Annual Professional Performance Review) processes mandated by the state starting in the 2000-01 school year, as well as a new system that is currently under development.To illustrate the amount of time evaluations can take, Kaumeyer pointed to an estimate from the state, regarding the forthcoming new evaluation system, that estimates the proper evaluation of each teacher taking 29 hours per year. If there are 63 staff members and only one administrator, that administrator would spend 36 of the 52 work weeks in a school year (at 50 hours a week) completing evaluations. Even if those estimated hours are exaggerated, cutting the hours in half would still account for an enormous workload, Trustee Helene McQuade pointed out.Also provided to the board were comparisons between the administrative layout in surrounding school districts, which were not listed by name. Although some of the six districts were less comparable to Pine Plains because of higher student populations, only one district did not have both a high school and middle school principal and that district had several hundred fewer students.When Kaumeyer’s presentation was finished (it took nearly an hour), the board retired to its main meeting room. Bowen, in his first year as a board member, said that the information provided that night was new to him.“I can only base my opinion on what I know,” he said. “If I don’t have all the information …”As the issue of principals and dean of students was the only concern voiced by board members at the April 6 meeting, Kimball entertained a vote to adopt the 2011-12 budget at $27,943,145, which is just under a 4 percent budget-to-budget increase. Under those figures, the tax levy would increase an estimated 4.61 percent.The board voted unanimously to adopt the budget without cutting any administrative positions. Under the board’s current schedule, there will be a public hearing on the budget at the May 4 board meeting. District taxpayers will vote on the budget and several other propositions, including the purchase of school buses, on May 17.
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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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