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Looks like the boys versus girls fights aren’t confined to the Hooksett School Board as New Years Eve saw a couple of prize fights where girlfriends beat up their boyfriends. Thirty two year old Lindsay Ashooh of Manchester punched her boyfriend, forty nine year old Kenneth Babcock also of Manchester, in the face and tore his shirt. Babcock retaliated by knocking Ashooh down with a punch to the face of his own, then pinned her to the ground by placing his knee on her throat. Babcock was arrested and charged with simple assault and second degree assault. Ashooh was charged with simple assault. Later in the evening, Hooksett P D responded to another domestic assault; this one featuring twenty four year old Melissa Lindstrom of Hudson. She was charged with two counts of simple assault for slapping her unnamed boyfriend and kneeing him in the groin. Police denied rumors she’d discovered her boyfriend was the ObamaCare Pajama Boy. And, just the day before, twenty two year old Brittany Hamilton was picked up by Hooksett’s finest for punching her boyfriend in the face and pushing him. We’ve posted all three releases with all the fun filled details and photos of all three women and one victim for your review.
Hooksett School Board Clerk John Lyscars is starting the New Year with a challenge to Pinkerton Academy Headmaster Mary Anderson. While Lyscars was complimentary of the Derry high school, he warned that if changes weren’t made to the restrictive tuition contract negotiated between the two, it would be quote “dead in the water as soon as it arrives as a warrant article in March.” End quote. Lyscars is concerned that a rejection of the tuition agreement will cause the chance for a long term arrangement between the two to quote “fail miserably.” Lyscars urged Anderson to reconsider the requirements that will force seventy five incoming freshmen to attend the Derry school in the coming school year and ninety percent of the incoming freshmen beginning in two thousand nineteen for the rest of the contract.
News from our own backyard continues after this
Discontent with the Common Core national standards is spreading in the region. Jason Guerrette, a former Litchfield School Board member opposed to the imposition of the national standards, was rebuked by incumbent board member John York in an email released to Girard at Large. In the email, York tells Guerrette quote “I understand you do (not) like the common core. Please stop sending these emails to me about your dis-like for common core. Please feel free to send me emails of programs you think are better than common core and will improve the learning process here in Litchfield. Your time would be better spent on this process (than crying wolf all the time).” End quote. Given that Campbell High in Litchfield was placed on the priority school watch list and given a three year improvement plan by the State Board of Education after the state’s waiver to the No Child Left Behind Act imposed Common Core on the town, one would think York would be more inclined to hear what opponents had to say. Guerrette was a guest on the show last February to challenge York and the Litchfield School Board for what he said were misrepresentations of the budget placed before the voters at town meeting in March. We’ve linked to the interview for your convenience.
The President of the American Federation of Teachers launched a broadside at the so called Value Added Measurement that will incorporate student standardized test scores into teacher evaluations. Tweeting quote “VAM is a SHAM,” Randi Weingarten placed the nation’s second largest teachers union squarely in opposition to the new evaluation paradigm. Meanwhile, questions are surfacing in the Queen City over how it will handle state teacher evaluation requirements dictated by the waiver to the No Child Left Behind Act and the acceptance of so called SIG grant funds, both of which require all Title One Schools to align educator evaluations to the State Model System, which is this VAM thing that will require at least twenty percent of a teacher’s evaluation score to include student performance on the extremely controversial Smarter Balanced Assessment Test. Manchester has seven priority schools, multiple SIG grants, many Title One Schools and a superintendent, Debra Livingston, who sat on the committee that developed the evaluation system. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? We’ve posted both report Livingston helped develop to evaluate teachers and t study that caused Weingarten to declare VAM a SHAM for your review with this news read at Girard at Large dot com. Reliability and Validity of Inferences About Teachers Based on Student Test Scores, NH Task Force on Effective Teaching Phase II Report
That’s news from our own back yard, Girard at Large hour ___ is straight ahead!
