Volume 18, Number 5
Berlin’s Only Hometown Newspaper
www.berlincitizen.com
Thursday, Januar y 30, 2014
Local recalls ‘eye-opening’ Kenyan experience By Charles Kreutzkamp The Berlin Citizen
Kayla Recck, born and raised in Berlin, traveled to Nairobi, Kenya from Dec. 27 to Jan. 16. The college student worked with International Volunteer Headquarters at the Bethsaida Children Centre, an orphanage in the Soweto area of Nairobi. East Soweto is part of the Kibera section, and is known for its extreme poverty. “The whole experience was amazing. It was definitely eye-opening and showed me the luxuries that I take for
granted living here in the States,” Recck said. The luxury of clean water was particularly apparent, as the people Recck encountered in Kenya paid for unclean water that they carried in 50-pound jugs on their heads and backs. Recck raised $1,680 of her $1,800 goal for the trip on GoFundMe. “Kayla made a great contribution to the program while she was in Kenya and always went above what was asked of her as a volunteer,” See Kenya / Page 5
The Board of Education meeting Jan 14. (Charles Kreutzkamp / The Berlin Citizen)
BOE featured in national publication By Charles Kreutzkamp The Berlin Citizen
From right: Moses, Fidellis, Kayla Recck, and “Gran” at the Bethsaida orphanage in Kenya. (Kayla Recck / Submitted)
The Berlin Board of Education has been the subject of statewide and even national attention before for the Board Member’s Handbook, and now the board’s work is being featured in the February issue of the American School Board Journal. “We are very proud of the board here in Berlin,” Superintendent David Erwin said. The Journal, a publication of the National School Boards Association, features the Berlin BOE as a school board success story. The article writes on how the board has standardized excellence in a shared understanding of its work, and a way of deliberating, behaving and conducting itself. In particular, the Board Member’s Handbook was praised. The board received attention for the Board Member’s Handbook at the National School Board Association conference in 2012 and 2013. Copies of the Board Member’s Handbook have been requested by school board members in Maine, Indiana, Alaska, and Washington State. The board of education can have an enormous impact on a school district’s performance, Brochu explained. The two years handbook was adopted in 2011, Berlin was recognized by the College Board for
increasing access to and performance on AP tests. Board President Gary Brochu used his expertise as someone who practices education and school law and has served on the board of education for more than a decade to spearhead the handbook project, writing most of the first draft. Brochu emphasized the importance of developing a strong board culture. Because members of the board are up for election every year, it is especially critical that new members are brought up to speed as fast as possible. The board’s pre-existing policy book was inappropriate for this task because of its immense length and dwelling upon technical details, such as permissible pesticides for landscaping. “That wasn’t a document on how the board operates,” Brochu said. The question of how to institutionalize a strong, professional board culture was one of the most difficult parts of writing the manual. The board deliberated and came up with a list of core ethical values to this end. Developing a list of core values “focuses a conversation of who we are and how we do things,” Brochu said. The core values the board selected includes value on deliberating in many voices but governing in one, and emphasizing group responsibility. Having the conversation alone has an enormous impact, Brochu said.