Thank you, Mr. Phelan.  Good evening.  As Joe said, my name is Elissa Cascio, and as President of the Rhinebeck Central School District Board of Education, it is my pleasure, on behalf of the Board Members and the District, to welcome you this evening and to thank you for being here.  

 

          Although they have already been in use by our students and community for more than a year, this is our moment to take a deep breath and appreciate the magnitude of what these new and renovated facilities represent.  From my perspective, they are the result a monumental amount of work by countless individuals, AND they symbolize vibrant, meaningful, and unlimited opportunities for our community’s children – both the students of today and those of the future.

 

          Although we are hosting tonight’s festivities on this campus, we equally celebrate and appreciate the new and renovated spaces at all three of our schools - Chancellor Livingston Elementary, Bulkeley Middle School, and the Rhinebeck High School. 

 

          Many people sitting in this room, and living in our community, never thought these facilities enhancements would ever become a reality.  Others, however never had a moment of doubt.  Well, thank goodness for those people!  They kept us encouraged to keep trying, to rework the plan, and to prove to the community that the needs were real, the scope of the project was appropriate, the investment was necessary, and the time was right.

 

          It is a privilege for me to have this opportunity to thank some specific groups and individuals for their contributions towards this reality of our facilities enhancements. 

 

                    Utilizing survey data, we learned from our District residents that in order to galvanize support for a meaningful building project, our community members needed to be closely involved with the Board in developing a plan.  And, the Community Facilities Task Force, or CFT as we affectionately refer to them, was established. The CFT was comprised of 18 volunteer community members who attended 11 meetings over three intense months during the spring of 2003.  They were given a specific charge by the Board of Education and they met it by reviewing data, studying the existing buildings and campuses, considering the present and future educational needs and goals of the District, learning about state and federal requirements for school facilities, meeting with our building principals, and assisting the Board in prioritizing potential project components.  The CFT volunteers also served as ambassadors in the community to educate everyone who would listen  - about the process and the needs that were a priority for this project that ultimately was supported by a majority of our voters on January 27th, 2004.  I’d like to thank the community members of the CFT  by name:

Melanie Babineau                  Donald Rothschild

Cathy Booz                            Eileen Rowley

Greg DeSylva                         Paul Slayton

Joe Ely                                    Edward Sullivan

Mark Fleischhauer                 Lou Trapani

Ike Garrido                             Doug Westcott

Tom Heller                             and Barbara Wolcott

Helen Knapp                          Also contributing to the CFT were:

Bob Miglino                           Bob Haskins        Laurence Montalto

Karen O’Connor                    Howard Mackie            Paul Reagan

Dave Reynolds                       John McGuire     and Janet Stetson

 

A small team of professional advisors joined CFT members and worked alongside them to achieve their goals.  These specialists were:

 

Bob Muscatello and Rob Lopez, from Einhorn Yaffee & Prescott Architects

 

Carl Stewart III, from Turner Construction

 

Kitt Dunn and Rob Baumstone, from Ellini & Dunn Communications

 

Rhinebeck Central School District Facilities Director (at the time), Ken Parsons

 

And Our Superintendent of Schools (Joseph Phelan)

 

          Without the volunteer efforts of the CFT, the Board would not have had the benefit of this objective group’s insights and deliberations, and their understanding of what our community might be willing to financially support.  We would not have had the opportunity for face to face interaction with community representatives, and a process for such open participation in governance and decision making by so many, and we thank them.

 

          So, many others volunteered their time, energy, and support for this project that I could never acknowledge them all by name. 

 

          We thank CISPE (Community In Support of Public Education)– for their countless and incredible volunteer efforts, lawn signs, letters to the editor, mailings, advertisements to encourage support for the project, informal coffees they hosted, email updates, and telephone calls.  We recognize the impact you have when you mobilize your volunteer troops, and we are so grateful that you did.

 

          We thank our PTSO – for telephone calls to remind people to vote, and for your fundraising efforts that have resulted in enhancements to these facilities for our children.

 

          We also acknowledge the Children’s Community Trust for their support and their donations that have also resulted in increasing the opportunities for learning, creativity, and experiences of our students.

 

          We thank the Little League and Rhinebeck Soccer organizations for their flexibility and patience during a time when the renovation of our athletic fields completely disrupted availability and scheduling of fields needed for use by their programs too.  We also thank our Town and Village municipalities and the Dutchess County Fairgrounds for providing relief to these groups, and fields for our students, who were scrambling to find adequate places to conduct practices and games.  During the time of construction, we know that additional burdens were placed on the village of Rhinebeck, as well as the towns within the District. The increased traffic and congestion from construction vehicles, and the lack of sports field availability were but two of the many inconveniences we asked these municipalities and their residents to endure.  We acknowledge their cooperation and their patience.

 

          We thank SOAR (Support Our Athletes Rhinebeck) – for communicating the need for community involvement in the process, for offering well informed input into the plans, and helping to keep so many families updated as to the minute-by-minute changing locations of school and other sports events due to our need to accommodate for renovation and construction.

 

          Thank you to so many unnamed volunteers who made telephone calls, handed out flyers, hosted living room discussions, stuffed envelopes, placed ads, wrote letters of support to the editors of newspapers, attended meetings, participated in surveys, asked the tough questions, and challenged us to find a way to explain the changing educational needs, and our health and safety needs that were driving our knowledge that these new and renovated spaces were warranted, and long overdue.

 

          Thank you to everyone who came out to vote, and thank you to each and every taxpayer.  I hope that you have seen us demonstrate our commitment to accepting nothing less than this major construction project being completed on time, within budget, and with all of the elements we promised the community would be included.  We continue to work to build and maintain open communication, a spirit of collaboration and trust with our community, and to demonstrate the value of our taxpayers’ continued investment in the Rhinebeck Central Schools. 

 

          Throughout the project’s development, community vote, and ultimately during the many months of construction, every school employee was impacted and was asked to assist in countless ways so that this project would be completed with a focus on safety in our buildings and our campuses. 

 

          Our  School’s Administrators played a vital role in providing leadership during an extended period of disruptions - great and small,  in contributing to the planning process, assisting us in communicating the justifications for the spaces to be renovated and built so that educational requirements could be delivered to our students. They worked hard to successfully navigate a safe passage through construction for our staff and our students.  I’d like to thank the members of our Administrative team including Ed Sullivan, John Kemnitzer, Ed Davenport, Tony Celenza, Jane Ebaugh, Marc Burg, and Marvin Kreps.

 

          These next two individuals lost many nights of sleep, and nearly went blind looking at numbers, facts, and figures, studying bond ratings, proposing options relative to the ever changing financial markets, submitting and awaiting approvals from the State Education Department, and making sure our taxpayer’s dollars were properly accounted for, invested, and managed.  At the start of the process, Shirley Cannelli was our School Business Official – Assistant Superintendent, and as a result of her retirement during the process, Tom Burnell has become our School Business Official -  Assistant Superintendent.  I’d like to thank them both for their fiscal stewardship, their guidance, and their focus on our community’s investment.

 

          Mr. Sheldon Teider joined our team as Director of Facilities and took on the task of attending to the operations and maintenance responsibilities from an Administrative perspective – midway through the process of this project.  He hit the ground running, and came onboard with building and maintenance expertise, a sense of calm and professionalism, an eye towards safety, and a positive work ethic for himself and his department members His ongoing contributions are far too numerous to mention.  When everyone else gets to forget about how all the mechanical, electrical, water, and heating systems are working – he does not.  Knowing what I know about this man’s attention to detail and how he connects with our schools as an integral part of the educational, and health and safety goals that we have set forth, I thank him for taking his place as a vital cog in the wheel of this organization and throughout the project in such a proactive manner.

 

          In the trenches of our classrooms and hallways every day, our teachers remained flexible, patient, enthusiastic, and dedicated to the safety of our students during construction.  During the planning stages, prior to construction, our teachers provided insight and input as to the deficiencies that needed to be addressed, and the best ways to improve our facilities so that they could professionally fulfill the District’s mission and vision for educating their students.  Some even sought opportunities for learning in math and science for students, by coordinating classroom time with tours of the construction in progress and inviting some of the contractors to talk to our students about various aspects of the work being done.  I know the kids really enjoyed wearing the hard hats when they entered the construction zone.  Teachers were inconvenienced in many ways, and I thank our teaching staff for their support of the project, and for their contributions every step of the way.

 

          Our non instructional staff provided support to everyone during construction.  Whether it was through office work, overhead announcements, managing traffic flow, or operations and maintenance tasks, we thank them for everything they did to keep things running smoothly, to keep our hallways clean and clear, to keeping people informed, and attending to the daily nuts and bolts of the physical plant of our buildings and grounds. 

 

          The contributions of all of our employees to the plans for the new and renovated spaces were invaluable, and many of them gave up their free time to provide input and to be ambassadors for community support of the project.  These contributions did not go unnoticed.

 

          Many Board of Education Trustees have served on our School Board over the years of planting seeds, planning, and throughout construction.  I’d like to thank my current School Board colleagues for their ongoing commitment to the health, safety, and educational programming of our children, and their integrity in fiscal stewardship:

Paul Slayton                 Laurie Rich

Deirdre Burns               Dean Vallas

Mark Fleischhauer       And Karen Hatter

I am honored to work with each of them.

 

          I’d also like to acknowledge and thank the former Board members who have served us in this same capacity in past years, making their invaluable and countless contributions towards the process of seeing these spaces become a reality.

 

           We had a wonderful team of professionals that were hired to guide us through this project.  Tonight I’d like to thank Turner Construction, Einhorn Yaffee & Prescott Architects, and our General Contractor – Meyer Construction.

 

          One man oversaw it all, however, from start to finish.  Mr. Joeseph Phelan, our Superintendent of Schools, orchestrated a process, collaborated with all stakeholder groups, became quite skilled at things he never thought he even wanted to learn about, provided overall vision and leadership in every aspect of this project, and did it all with calm and deliberate professionalism, an appropriate sense of humor, and a dedication of his heart, soul, blood, sweat, and tears.  Thank you, Joe, for successfully bringing this project to completion within budget, scope, and on time – all while still attending to the everyday business of educating our children.  Positive, effective leadership can move mountains, and you, Sir, moved this mountain. Your humility will cause you to say that it happened because you surrounded yourself with good people – such as our District Clerk, Margaret Todisco, and that we had a lot of  good luck – and those points are true – but you led the way, and it happened the way that it did because of you.

 

          My disclaimer for the evening is that if there is anyone who I have not mentioned, who I should have mentioned, we thank you too!

 

          The greatest reward is to experience these new and renovated spaces come alive with the learning, creativity, talent, dreams and growth of our young people.  The opportunities these spaces will provide are limitless.  If you’ve not yet attended a band or choral concert, a play, or other student performance here in this auditorium, or a student sports competition in the new HS gymnasium, or on our Athletic fields, I encourage you to come to the next one. To see children thriving in our new and renovated spaces at Chancellor, and here on this campus is confirmation that this project was the right thing to do.   I’ve heard many parents say that it’s magical to be a witness to our students thriving and growing now in a venue that matches the caliber of  their talents, their creativity, and their endless possibilities.

 

          Many of you may not know that the process of work that has successfully brought us as a school community to this moment began long before there was ever talk of a referendum.  Teams of community members, faculty and staff members, those with special interests in the arts and athletics, and others had actually begun to meet, brainstorm, and lay the foundation for this plan long before the Board of Education even considered bringing forth a referendum to the community.  One representative of this original forward thinking, vivacious, ground breaking, group was also a Board Member serving our District for 12 years, and he is here tonight to share a few thoughts as he stands in this Rhinebeck Central School District Auditorium for the very first time.  Please join me in warmly welcoming my former Board of Education colleague, Dr. Arthur Pritchard.