Surprise! Cozy Low Bid for PR Contract

Four bids were received for the district’s proposed Public Relations services.

• $50,400   (Massachusetts)
• $46,800    (California)
• $39,500    (Massachusetts)
• $18,000    (New Hampshire)

The low bid is from SERESC, the organization where superintendents go off to their final taxpayer funded reward.  About SERESC   Our former superintendent, Mr. LaSalle, now heads this organization and Dr. Metzler is one of seven fellow superintendents from neighboring SAUs who comprise the Executive Committee. You might remember SERESC as being the organization that gave us Mrs. Metzler as the Spanish consultant for kindergarten.

SERESC is quick footed, if nothing else.  They recently managed to snag Jason Grosky’s wife, Gretchen Grosky, as a PR consultant and have proposed her as the service provider in their bid.  Mr. Jason Grosky is chairman of the Timberlane Budget Committee.

The Community Relations Committee, which disgraced itself by opening these bids outside of the publicly announced time and place for the opening, will be deciding on their recommendations at their next meeting in early December.  Then they will put their recommendation forward to the school board who will bless the committee’s hard work and thank them for finding such a marvelous consultant right in our own backyard!  Actually we don’t look in backyards.  We climb up on ladders and peer into bedrooms.

Mrs. Grosky is a former journalist and editor who registered her own PR company, GMG Strategies LLC, with the state of New Hampshire in August 2013.

I should stress that no decision has yet been made and no contract has yet been awarded, but I smell her name plate being printed.

Only five short years ago our policy KDCA (student communications) said this:

“The best possible community relations grow from a superior teaching job in the classroom. Enthusiastic pupils with serious intentions, well directed by sympathetic and capable teachers, are certain to communicate with the parents and the community.  The School Board believes this is the cornerstone of good community relations.”

That earnest and encouraging paragraph can no longer be found in any of our policies.

See Dr. Metzler announcing that he had given Rob Collins of the Community Relations Committee Mrs. Grosky’s name  at the May 29 School Board meeting:

http://vimeo.com/album/255898/video/97162461     FORWARD  TO   3: 42: 40  .

Should you be concerned about the independence of elected officials in the district or the SAU,  let me reassure you that there is nothing to worry about. It’s business as usual. The wife of  SAU board member, Jason Cipriano, was hired as a full-time teacher at Timberlane in August.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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