HARLEM VALLEY — Responding to their school district’s state-issued “report cards,” local superintendents attempted to put the results in perspective.First, all three superintendents pointed out that the 2009-10 report cards are the first to use a new system of standards for the math and English tests.Test results were broken up into four levels, Level 1 being the lowest and Level 4 the highest. Levels 3 and 4 are considered passing. This year, the ranges for each level on the math and English tests were adjusted so that students would have to earn higher test scores to be classified as Level 3 or 4.Millbrook Superintendent Lloyd Jaeger pointed out that the reason for the change was that the previous definition of levels did not accurately indicate the future success of students on New York State Regents exams in these subjects. The levels on the science tests were not changed as they seemed to be more accurate.“There were more 3s that actually were 2s that needed improvement. The logic behind the shift was to raise expectations,” said Jaeger.The change is evident in the report card assessment results. The percentage of students testing at Levels 3 and 4 in math and English dropped considerably for the North East (Webutuck), Pine Plains and Millbrook school districts.The changed standards also had an impact on statewide results. An extreme example of this is the statewide seventh-grade English results. In 2008-09, 80 percent of students were at Levels 3 or 4, while in 2009-10, only 50 percent were at that level.The science results were consistent with previous years, with all of the local district schools scoring higher than the state average.At Webutuck, Superintendent Steven Schoonmaker included a breakdown of the scores in the district’s weekly newsletter. His report compared the mean scores during the last two years rather than the percentage of students in Levels 3 and 4, which he said he feels is a more accurate way of comparing results.“I don’t want anyone to think that either I or we are satisfied with the results,” Schoonmaker said. Webutuck tested below the state average in eight of 16 categories. “But I think [comparing the mean scores] doesn’t show as big of a gap statistically.”Pine Plains tested below the state results in eight of 16 categories, but Superintendent Linda Kaumeyer said she felt that it was a positive report card, pointing out that the district had achieved accountability in all categories (Webutuck did as well) and that comparing districts was often an “apples to oranges” situation.“Often the media like to compare district to district,” she said, “and I understand that it’s information the public wants to know. But in order to get a true picture, this is just one piece of the puzzle.”Millbrook scored higher, sometimes by substantial margins, than the state average in all categories except for seventh-grade math.Schoonmaker was blunt with his opinion of the report cards.“District report cards are not particularly helpful,” he said. “They generate what I like to call political data, which is designed to justify the expenditure of money rather than improve student performance. What really is valuable is not the report card but the item analysis we can take from the individual tests.” Jaeger of Millbrook agreed and said that departmental meetings have been held to discuss not only the overall grade results, but also those of individual students.Both Pine Plains and Webutuck conduct their own testing at different points throughout the year, and both superintendents said that the data on the report cards do not come as a surprise to the district.“If anything, the report cards are less helpful [than Webutuck’s own testing] because you get it once at the end of the year,” Schoonmaker said. “At that point, the grade is already over. But what we’ve done is bench-marked assessments to drive our own academic intervention services.”The shared goal, Kaumeyer stressed, was the education of students.“The bottom line is we’re constantly working hard to assist students to raise the bar as high as they can,” Kaumeyer said. “The New York State District Report Card creates a measure by which educators and the public can compare district to district because everyone’s taking the same test. But it’s really just a snapshot of that point in time.”Kaumeyer said that rather than comparing, for example, the scores of eighth-grade math in 2009-10 to the scores from eighth-grade math in 2008-09, it is more accurate to compare the scores of a particular class of students as they rise through the grade levels.“It’s a concept of measuring growth over time,” she said.Schoonmaker disagreed, saying the seventh- and eighth-grade tests are different. Jaeger observed that all of the area school districts are small and that the performance, high or low, or just a few students can skew results.School districts are given a much more detailed breakdown of each of the tests before a simplified version is released on the state education department’s website for public consumption. “From there, we can see what subjects are strong or weak and even break it down to individual students, classes or instructors, in terms of identifying the best,” Jaeger said. “We’re interested in identifying successful teachers so ones who are struggling can replicate that success.”The New York State District Report Cards can be viewed, in their entirety, at www.p12.nysed.gov/irs/reportcard.
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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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