❧❧❧ Whatever you can do or dream, you can BEGIN IT. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Goethe ❧❧❧
❧❧❧ You were born whole, not broken. Sandra Hammel ❧❧❧
Precinct 2701 (Prudence Island Fire Station) — Option 1: 51; Option 2: 6
Precincts 2702 and 2703 (Portsmouth Multi Purpose Senior Center) — Option 1: 373; Option 2: 270
Precincts 2704 and 2705 (Common Fence Point Community Hall) — Option 1: 352; Option 2: 197
Precincts 2706, 2707 and 2708 (Portsmouth Town Hall) — Option 1: 604; Option 2: 514
Precincts 2709, 2710 and 2712 (Aquidneck Island Christian Academy) — Option 1: 818; Option 2: 703
This is the letter that arrived in the mail, the day before the vote. It has falsely stated opinions in it. Who wouldn't have voted "no" to funding the schools, if you believed this letter to be true? Click the letter image to enlarge.
Commentary: Divided We Fall
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On the facebook page to Save the Arts and Sports in Portsmouth, RI, a person wrote that we need new leadership in the volunteer group who tried to save the arts and sports programs in our town's public schools.
I wrote this in response on that page:
I think it is not time for new leadership. The leadership was outstanding and I am grateful for it. It is simple to put down leadership. It is not simple to lead. When anyone criticizes leadership or says we need to have new leadership, I wonder why that very person isn't the one to be the next leader. Possible reasons are that it is time-consuming, thankless and very difficult.
Even good leadership needs people who are interested. Caring about the community's responsibility to provide funding for education is a touchy subject because for many people it will always come down to how one feels about teachers getting paid via the local tax dollars. And those who didn't vote who have children in the schools - have children in schools now that are offering a half year of what has always been offered the whole year long. There is a great divide and if those who have children in the schools, and those like myself who don't and are in our sixties, but still care about the education of "our" community's students, don't vote when voting is our way to say what our priorities are, then those who are motivated get their way. It takes more than leaders, it takes the rest of us to get involved.
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Portsmouth, Rhode Island, Portsmouth Public Schools and Portsmouth family on BBC America
Councilor Karen Gleason says schools must get back to basics
It is not enough to care and stay home.
The Portsmouth School Department proposed budget would mean an increase of $0.29 per $1,000 of house appraised value, an effective increase of 2.54%, and the increase on an average $350,000 house of $100.
There was a fight going on June 23, 2010 at Town Hall last night - Portsmouth, Rhode Island Town Council Budget Hearing 7:00 p.m. - 11:00 p.m.
There is only one reason not to attend the Portsmouth RI Town Council Budget Meeting July 14, 2010, 7:00 p.m. at the Portsmouth Middle School
if you are available
and you want Portsmouth Public Schools to be what they need to be for 2010-2011.
That reason is that you don’t care enough.
The 5-2 voting tradition on Portsmouth School budget by the town council is based on getting rid of the union at any cost.When we wake up and see what we lost because we weren’t available to show up – many will be stunned.Those members who vote to level fund (keep it where it was last year) the school budget say they care about the education of our community’s students.But that is not believable by watching them.
While the vote was 4-3 at the June 23 meeting, it is only a vote that is provisional.It will change back to 5-2 - scoring a savings of $100 increase (on a house appraised at $350,000) over the upcoming tax year at best for those who want taxes to remain the same as this past year. Even if we get the increase of 21 cents per thousand provisionally voted for June 23, it doesn’t allow the School Department to receive what is needed to keep competitive sports at PMS and PHS, music, art.And this is after the School Department already cut needed special education teachers.The Portsmouth Taxpayers Association members are attending these meetings.The handful of us that stayed through to the end at 11:00 p.m at last night’s Town Council meeting can’t change the direction we are headed without more taxpayers showing up who truly care about the schools’ offerings.It is not enough to care and stay home.
The vote June 23 was to move the tax rate per thousand dollars from last year’s $11.26 to $11.47 in regards to the school budget.That isn’t enough, but better than what will most likely get voted, if any indication of past voting and comments will tell how the council members’ votes will fall in the end.The Portsmouth Taxpayers Association is in control of the current Town Council, so expect the school department’s budget to get what the Taxpayers Association wants.
We only will have control of what the council votes if we pressure them to vote a reasonable budget. (And for future budget years, if we vote for reasonable candidates in the upcoming election). Paying teachers according to what the Portsmouth Taxpayers Association members and their representatives feel the teachers deserve is what is driving the contention. The desire is to break the union – it came out repeatedly. And the children are the ones who lose out while adults play in a political playground with the community’s future.
What do you expect from the Portsmouth Public Schools?And at what cost will you be willing to give up what we have come to expect from the schools?
Students who want to go to college will be filling out applications to be accepted. It will be difficult, if not impossible, to apply for music or sport's scholarships at colleges if we don't have sports teams for scouts to come and watch the potential sports students or music and arts classes for potential college majors.
Not only do people look at tax rate when moving into a community, but a huge impact on worth of homes is the community public schools. But this fact gets lost in the effort to keep taxes at a level funding.
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According to the Town Charter, a "Budget Referendum," can be done with the required number of citizens signing a petition to do so. And the question to be voted on is written by the petitioners and verified as a valid question by the Town Clerk.
Stay tuned for a possible "Budget Referendum" to fund our community's students learning opportunities.
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$1.2 million increase was asked for by the Portsmouth School Department for 2010-2011 year - it was voted down by a 5-2 vote by the Portsmouth Town Council with the vote to "level fund" the school department. It would have increased the taxes $.29 per thousand dollars of appraised house values in town.
When I went to high school gasoline varied in price between 17 and 28 cents a gallon.Just saying….
COLUMBIA CITY VS. WAWASEE BOYS HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL
When I was in high school - graduated 1967 - my dad was the high school basketball coach in this very gymnasium. He was the very first coach of what was then a brand new school building and a newly consolidated county-wide high school....then called Columbia City Joint High School - as it joined many high schools in one. In Indiana, "Hoosier hysteria" is what we call basketball.
Dad with the CCJHS basketball team behind him when I was in high school
Yesteryear 1988 Melville Elementary School Ms. Hammel, Music Teacher Providing an evening music workshop to parents with their children to let the parents experience being a music student along side their children
This Year I attended a meeting tonight, June 9, 2010, to bring attention to the cut in the Portsmouth Public Schools budget by 1.2 million dollars for the upcoming 2010-2011 school year. This will be a disastrous cut for our community, for our children and education. And the other reason for the meeting was to organize so that we can make an impact on the Portsmouth (Rhode Island) Town Council hearing to be held next Tuesday, June 15, at 7:00 p.m in the Portsmouth Town Hall chamber.
The state of Rhode Island is cutting educational aid funding to communities and if we don't pick up the slack, the children's education will be greatly diminished. This is nothing new. I have seen this happen starting when I was in college and the administration decided to eliminate the thriving music department. Then at the contractual March 1st deadline to send out "pick slips" (termination of employment) in my second year of teaching, I received my pink slip. And this, then, began a career-long effort to keep music in our schools.
June 2, 2010 Budget workshop at which the Town Council voted to tentatively cut $1.2 Million from the Portsmouth Public School proposed budget. Councilor Karen Gleason speaks to Superintendent of Schools Susan Lusi when she is asked to speak about the budget.
SCREAM NOW OR SCREAM LATER NOW, WILL BE THE EASIER SCREAM If parents don't "scream" every time this "slash and burn the education" is in the cards, the whole education system will fail. And when we have practices of firing entire teaching staffs as was the case in one Rhode Island town this year, because of low performances of the students, I would like to ask what we expect to happen when we can't get a grip of civility and find funding for the students of today?
Town Council Members of Portsmouth, Rhode Island
Town Council email addresses: pmcintyre@portsmouthri.com, hlittle@portsmouthri.com, kgleason@portsmouthri.com, khamilton@portsmouthri.com, jplumb@portsmouthri.com, dcanario@portsmouthri.com, jseveney@portsmouthri.com
Contractually all pink slips had to go out in March, so legally cutting more teachers isn't going to work. And the state mandates that the students get the arts, so what they will get is a "spit in the eye" of music, art and physical education most likely. It is hard to water down music in a schedule, for example, that has traditionally only taught music to elementary students once a week for less than an hour. You try teaching something or learning something that you have for 45 minutes or less a week. And the other cut likely is sports. As Ms. Leveque said at the meeting at the Portsmouth Middle School June 9th, it isn't like we can cut second grade.
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Melville Peter Deffet as a 3rd Grader
Parents forming an excellent train for the song Little Black Train
My letter sent to the Portsmouth Town Council and copied to the Portsmouth School Committee:
June 9, 2010
Dear Member of the Portsmouth Town Council,
My name is Sandra Hammel, live in Portsmouth, taught music in the Portsmouth Public Schools starting in October 1973 and left after 29 years. All those years I stood up to keep music in our community's schools, attending many School Committee and Town Council meetings and going out on a limb to preserve the minimum of giving the students a weekly music class at the elementary level. Minimum. Music classes should be every day. Music skills are those very skills that the very young benefit from because they develop and nurture the readiness skills needed to learn to read - auditory processing skills, such as auditory awareness, auditory memory, auditory figure ground, auditory discrimination, etc.
A quick google search brought this up:http://www.succeedtoread.com/auditoryskills.html "A common weakness is in auditory discrimination skills. For example, many poor readers do not 'hear' differences in letter sounds. To them, the five short vowels sound almost exactly alike." Music lessons develop the abilities of the child to better discriminate differences of sound and therefore helps the child be more successful not only in the music classroom, but in the reading lessons. This is not "new" news, but well accepted for multiple years. However, many even who should know these things, don't. Oftentimes, teenagers who drop out of high school, do so because they have struggled with their reading skills which affect so many of the subjects required in high school. So if we are serious about keeping our students in school until they graduate this should be on our radar screen of what is a priority.
And rationalizing of the inclusion of music in our schools using this argument isn't the only reason for music's existence in our community's schools. Because this doesn't begin to express what is so advantageous from the standpoint of music's benefits itself. Music can stand on its own as reason enough to be part of the basics of education, although most people may not realize those reasons. But when tied to other subjects it seems to enable people to say, "Hey, well, maybe it is justifiable to include in the discourse of what should be included in the experience of our children's lives."
All the years I taught in Portsmouth Schools, I had no children going to the Portsmouth Public Schools because I had no children. That changed late in my teaching career because a young boy entered Hathaway Elementary School in the second grade who was in foster care. That boy has been my son since his fourth grade year and now is an exceptional engineering student at Northeastern University. I have no students in the Portsmouth Schools at this time. So, I speak now as a taxpayer who pays for others' children to have what they need. I care about the community. I care about the children in our community and the education that we as a community provide for the children.
I speak about music here. But, the Portsmouth Town Council members who voted to cut the Portsmouth Public School budget over a million dollars will necessitate cutting more than music from the schools. I say "You are wrong to do this". I am well aware how these things go. And I know that those who feel brave enough to cut the Portsmouth School budget have their supporters.
Even some of those who feel emboldened to cut, can step back, reconsider and make a braver decision and fund our schools. There will never be a day that this problem goes away. We just need to get smarter about how we are going to get through this immediate year's budget problem, but then get really smart and figure out ways to get ourselves a long range solution in action to thwart future years' similar dilemma. If we care.
There is no better investment that we can give ourselves as a community, than the education that we provide for our community's children. They are our future leaders. They are their future. Sincerely,
or Portsmouth will be the Pits regarding Education .................................................
................................................. Uploaded by PortsmouthSchools June 2, 2010 Portsmouth RI School Department Budget Meeting Part 1
First video of last week's town council/school committee budget workshop. There are 13 separate videos. The 1st one starts out discussing the open space/recreation bonds, but ends with Dr. Lusi presenting the FY 2011 budget.
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................................................. Uploaded by PortsmouthSchools June 2, 2010 Portsmouth RI School Department Budget Meeting Part 2 .................................................
................................................. Arguing Part 11 Motion to "Level Fund" Uploaded by PortsmouthSchools
Tribute to influential teachers ............................................. .............................................
The North Central College Choir that I sang in Uploaded by ilovemylifesblog
In honor of Paul Warren Allen, who was the head of the North Central College Music Department and Conductor of the North Central College Choir recorded here in 1968. Three years later the college eliminated the music department.
I wouldn’t want to be President of the United States of America. Ever. But more, now, than before Bushed ucked it up. The outstanding public debt as of 16 Oct 2007 is nine TRILLION, forty-eight BILLION, nine hundred twenty nine million, six hundred fifty one thousand, eight dollars and fifty four cents. That looks like this: $ 9 , 0 4 8 , 9 2 9 , 6 5 1 , 0 0 8 . 5 4
The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $1.42 billion PER DAY since September 29, 2006!
“The U.S. budget deficit is financed by borrowing. More and more of that money comes from China, now the United States' second-largest lender, after Japan. China's investment in U.S. government debt has more than tripled in the past five years, from $71 billion in 2000 to $242 billion in 2005. ….Congress and the president have been unwilling to raise taxes or make deep spending cuts. The only alternative is to borrow.” http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/prem/200510u/nj_schneider_2005-10-25
China! Do we really want Bank China to be in control? What are we thinking!?! Are we thinking? Who is minding “The Store”? It’s GW Bush and robbing us in more than one way. Imagine if the government suggested spending one-fourth of this amount of money on the education of our children. We would have said “no”. Imagine if the government suggested to spend one-fourth of this money to help our children who are “at risk”. We would have said “no”. Imagine if the government had suggested spending a small portion of this money to reimburse the Social Security accounts. We would have said “no”. Right? Imagine if the government had suggested repaying the Indian Trust Funds that have been robbed from by the very government agencies that were to protect the funds – we would have said “no”. Why are we willing to let our government to invest in the Iraq war and not spend our tax money on what would really invest in our country’s people? And the $12 BILLION that was LOST by sending it in cash to Iraq on wood pallets – how much did you read or hear about that?! “We had to pay Iraqis in cash,” Mr. Bremer said of the money, most of which came from Iraqi oil sales. “Delay would have been demoralizing and unfair to millions of Iraqi families.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/07/washington/07bremer.html?n=Top%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FPeople%2FB%2FBremer%2C%20L.%20Paul%20III What of the demoralizing and unfairness to millions of USA citizens?!! I don’t understand the apathy of the country that we call United States of America. However, I think it would be more appropriately called the Divided States of America. We let this insanity to go on via George Bush and keep going through our lives. It is outrageous that we don’t get angry about the debt. In my town it is annually a contentious subject that our taxes are raised by the town by $350. And where is the same reaction to the federal runaway spending on a war that has had a moving “target” continually?
FOLLOW THE MONEY (OIL): TWELVE BENCHMARKS
1. January 2003: The Wall Street Journal reported that representatives from Exxon Mobil Corp., ChevronTexaco Corp., ConocoPhillips and Halliburton, among others, were meeting with Vice President Cheney's staff to plan the post- war revival of Iraq's oil industry.
2. March 2003: Iraqi Oil Ministry was one of the few structures the invading forces protected from looters in the first days of the war.
3. April 2003: During the initial assault on Baghdad, soldiers set up forward bases named Camp Shell and Camp Exxon.
4. May 22, 2003: President Bush signed Executive Order 13303 providing full legal immunity to all U.S. oil companies doing business in Iraq in order to facilitate the country's "orderly reconstruction."
5. November 2003: McKee (ConocoPhillips executive who is overseeing Iraqi oil industry) quietly ordered a new plan for Iraq's oil. The drafting would be overseen by a "senior adviser," Amy Jaffe, who ....now works for James Baker, the former Secretary of State, whose law firm serves as counsel to both ExxonMobil and the defense minister of Saudi Arabia. The plan, written by State Department contractor BearingPoint, was guided, says Jaffe, by a handful of oil-industry consultants and executives.
6. March 2004: Iraq's interim constitution, the Transitional Administrative Law (TAL) passed in March 2004 by Iraq's Governing Council, sets forth that Coalition Provisional Authority laws, regulations, and orders are to remain in force after the transfer of sovereignty unless a duly enacted piece of legislation rescinds or amends them.
7. August 30, 2005: Bush says U.S. troops would continue fighting in Iraq in order to protect the country's vast oil fields, which he said would otherwise fall under the control of terrorist extremists.
8. February 2006-June 2006: USAID contracts with Bearing Point to draft Iraq’s oil law to provide "legal and regulatory advice in drafting the framework of petroleum and other energy-related legislation, including foreign investment".
9. March 15, 2006: Gen. John Abizaid, the Army general overseeing U.S. military operations in Iraq said the United States may want to keep a long-term military presence in Iraq to bolster moderates against extremists in the region and protect the flow of oil.
10. July 2006: U.S. Government and oil companies get a copy of the draft oil law. In September 2006 the Internation Monetary Fund and World Bank receive their copy.
11. February 2007: "Draft Hydrocarbon Law" was submitted first to the Iraqi Cabinet and then to the Iraqi Parliament (Council of Representatives) by the Cabinet.
12. April -May 2007: Defense Secretary Robert Gates and U.S. Vice President Cheney each travel separately to Baghdad to push political benchmarks and specifically the oil law.
From a Study of U.S. Influence on Iraqi Oil, by Erik Leaver, Carol and Ed Newman, Fellow Institute for Policy Studies June 4, 2007. Click above title to read full article and complete bibliography of sources. http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/23353
And yet we won’t vote for any candidate who would admit that taxes will be raised. Are we rational?
I love my life. I love where I live. And I am passionate about my passions. I love to dance. Necessary to live: music, piano, singing, writing, acting, painting.
I have been fighting for and supporting the arts all my adult life. Since 2004, I have been working with other activists to end the Darfur genocide.
I have traveled to Europe many times since my early twenties. Places I have been: many USA states including Hawaii, Montreal, Canada, Barbados, France, Spain, Luxembourg, England, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Greece and Germany - and have wonderful memories.
My last trip was in May - June 2013 to Spain.
I would like to travel to Europe and Kyoto, Japan.
I love the southwest where I have visited Hopi, Navajo, Zia and San Idlefonso potters.
Life is exciting and I intend to live it full-out to the end.
B.S. and M.M., both in music
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Khartoum, Sudan Stop Genocide Time
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Spain Time
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Melbourne Time
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Hawaii Time
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RAFA NADAL -BRING BACK LONG PANTS - SLEEVELESS TOPS
Double Click on Videos to Enlarge
Darfur - The Abandoned Genocide - a video by Sandra Hammel
Want to help? Call 1~800~GENOCIDE
"May I Suggest" by Susan Werner
Satchita - Playing for Change
Stand By Me ~ Playing for Change
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Genocide is not only a word,
it is crying of the whole human race.
There is nothing redeeming about being silent
when speaking up is the humane thing to do.
The honor and integrity of the human race is at stake.
This is the letter that arrived in the mail, the day before the vote. It has falsely stated opinions in it. Who wouldn't have voted "no" to funding the schools, if you believed this letter to be true?
