EXTRA...

NStar clear-cuts; Nauset cuts class; Klimm cuts out; Mitt's momentum cut

TODAY's quote: “I’ve spent months agonizing about this." - John Klimm
“We’re not trying to dismantle anything. We want to make sure we’re not funding something when there is already enough capacity to handle students with special needs. These funds could be used some where else.”
- Superintendent Richard Hoffmann

Nauset cuts a Brewster preschool class, lays off three, saves $120,000

“Right now the decision has been made. Can it be unmade? Yes. And the recommendation to four school committees is we don’t need a class room.” - Dr. Richard Hoffmann.The Cape Codder reports that Nauset Superintendent Dr. Richard Hoffmann (on right) told parents this week that one of the two preschool classrooms at Brewster Stony Brook Elementary School will be eliminated both to economize and because there are seats available in other similar classes in the system.

He told the parents that the $120,000 savedby the closing could restore positions or items cut from elementary school budgets the last few years.

As reported here last week, the elementary schools in the Nauset Region are in the only Cape districts that does not accept in-bound school choice students. 

Instead, the four Nauset district elementary schools hemorrhaged $215,855 to elementary schools in other districts while not accepting school choice students from other Cape towns.

Collectively the four Nauset Regional towns of Brewster, Orleans, Eastham and Wellfleet, lost a total of 33 students, assumedly because those four towns don't wish to have their children in class with students from nearby towns.

Superintendent Hoffmann made about $149,000 in his last post as head of the Ashland Massachusetts 2,630-student district while his salary at Nauset ranges from $150,000 to $165,000 depending on performance which to date most say has been exemplary.

Dr. Hoffmann is a former art teacher who lives in Brewster. When he took the Nauset job in 2009, he said he wanted to work on environmental issues as Nauset's superintendent like promoting "green" building practices.

Read The Cape Codder story here.

Falmouth seeks explanation for NStar's Mashpee River clear-cutting

From 3 in a row to 1 in a row

Only ten days ago the national media was reporting that our state's former Gov. Mitt Romney was 15 percent ahead of the rest of the candidates in South Carolina and heading for three wins in a row after Iowa and New Hampshire wins.
      Then the Iowa recount took one away, and last night Newt Gingrich took South Carolina away, so now he's only "one in a row."
     See the New York Times story here.The Falmouth Enterprise reports cutting came despite prior pledges not to touch river bank trees. The cutting occurred in a small area on the eastern bank of the river at the northern end of the Mashpee River Woodlands Conservation Area, and was part of the utility company’s regular maintenance the company said.

Read the Enterprise story here.