Thursday, February 28, 2002

Cape teachers become students

Published in the Current

Cape Elizabeth students had an extra two days off this past week, and though the teachers had to work, they had a luxury too: professional development time.

The district has set aside five days from this school year for teacher development work. Two were in November, before Thanksgiving vacation, two were last week, extending February vacation, and one will follow spring break in April.

In the two-day sessions, the first day is filled with district-related work, primarily curriculum mapping and organization.

The second day is a “building day,” when teachers in the separate schools can work in small groups or independently on their own, on projects relating to professional development.

The district work this year is called “curriculum mapping,” drawing up a detailed picture of what material teachers cover, and when they do it. The idea is to get a full report of what students are learning, and when. It lays the groundwork for future plans, including curriculum changes\ and new standardized tests or other assessment methods.

This sort of planning is something many districts are without, but Cape Superintendent Tom Forcella sees it as a necessity. The schools did get some e-mail and telephone complaints from parents about the extra time off, though school officials said there were not many.

“This work needs to be done,” Forcella said. Making sure the teachers talk to each other about teaching, principles and educational continuity is basic, he said.

“That’s the foundation of the work that we do,” Forcella said. And the district is committed to not only asking teachers to take the time, but also to give teachers the time they need to do it.

“It’s a lot of work,” Forcella said.

This year, in particular, is a lot of detail work for the teachers, who have to enter all of the units they teach into a centralized database.

“We want to be able to see the scope and sequence K through 12,” said Sarah Simmonds, the district’s professional development coordinator. The position is a new one this year, and is part of the district’s efforts to help teachers grow and learn, as well as streamlining the schools’curricula.

The inventory teachers are building will help as the district goes through a state-mandated process of developing a “valid, reliable” local assessment method by the 2006-2007 school year.

As teachers enter the information into the database, they also are asked to select specific areas of the Maine Learning Results standards addressed by each unit. Next year’s project will be the next step, examining how well the teaching meets the state standards.

“We’re saying, ‘Here’s what we do. Here’s what the learning results say,’” Simmonds said.

It is a custom-designed database, in which teachers can see all the information pertaining to the grade levels they work with, though they can only change or update information relating to classes they teach.

They also can search on keywords, so a teacher could, for example, see what other teachers talk about Egypt or Native American tribes in their classes. This could be an excellent resource for new teachers as they are hired, Simmonds said.

In the process, teachers are having good conversations about their work, and about ideas affecting education.

“You see lots of light bulbs going off” in teachers’heads, Simmonds said.

In many districts, Simmonds said, a real curriculum analysis doesn’t happen until assessment is the topic at hand. Removing assessment from the inventory process, she said, makes things easier for the teachers and streamlines the process of developing assessment as well.

“You’re not learning two things at the same time,” Simmonds said. “Every time you take a step, you learn something new.”

On Tuesday, the “building day,” teachers did more work individually or in small groups.

Pond Cove teachers focused on reading and writing, lesson study, new organizational techniques for material to be taught, and also discussed the educational principles that might influence the addition to the building.

Middle school teachers worked on their individual professional development plans, reviewing and refining their teaching. Some designed new units to teach, and others worked with technology, improving their familiarity with digital video, PowerPoint or web site design.

Teachers at the high school continued their work from Monday, and did some work in their departments and in their own classrooms.

Cape prepares for budget fight

Published in the Current

The Cape Elizabeth School Board is ready to fight the Town Council to keep its budget.

While an all-day workshop scheduled for this Saturday, March 2, could change the 2002-2003 budget total, at press time the proposed budget stood at $15,091,234 – a 5.7 percent increase over this year’s, or an addition of $815,583.

That equals an additional $1.27 per thousand on the tax rate, or an estimated $250 on a home valued at $200,000. The current town rate is $21.70.

At a budget workshop Tuesday night, board members characterized their request as “conservative” and “responsible,” and suggested that town spending be cut in other areas.

“If the Town Council is really serious about cutting the budget, maybe they would consider giving back their salaries,” said board member Jennifer DeSena.

Each councilor gets $350 a year, plus Social Security, according to Town Manager Michael McGovern, making the total annual cost to the town $2,637 for the seven councilors.

There are three major factors behind the budget increase: salary raises and increased expenditure for benefits for existing staff; increased staffing
to keep class sizes optimal and adequately serve students in special education programs; and a 24 percent cut in state funding to the district. “Eighty cents of the tax increase is due to the loss of state subsidy,” said business manager Pauline Aportria.

The district will add 2.5 full-time-equivalent positions among the regular staff, and 3.9 full-time-equivalents in special education.

Benefits for existing staff will not be expanded, but continue to become more expensive, said Superintendent Tom Forcella, and will cost 17 percent more next year than they do this year. This year’s budget included a 7 percent increase in benefits spending over last year.

The personnel expenses will cost $838,583 in combined salary and benefits, and services and portable classrooms, related to the planned construction projects at the high school and Pond Cove, will cost $80,000. The district also will spend $59,500 to purchase a bus – an expense budgeted for but not spent this year.

While the budget increases total $978,083, the overall increase is less than this amount, because of energy conservation and lower energy costs, reductions in debt service and smaller cutbacks throughout the district.

The district will get $589,598 less in state funding than it did this year, a decrease of 23.64 percent. Reserve money from this year’s planned bus purchase and additional state funds held over from this year will carry over to offset some expenses.

A proposal to charge student activity fees at the middle school and high school, projected to raise between $50,000 and $60,000, was tabled. Board members expressed “philosophical objections” to charging such a fee.

Spending has been reduced throughout the district, including in the professional development program, which had been slated to include additional resource staff in each building. Other additions also have been eliminated, including a computer lab technician for the high school, athletic support at the middle school and world language at Pond Cove.

“There are no new programs in this budget,” Forcella said.

Instead, 76 percent of the budget will be dedicated to salary and benefits. He said the district is remaining true to its plans for the future. “We are addressing our strategic goals with this budget,” Forcella said, but warned against continuing cutbacks and neglecting programs that already are planned or even begun.

“How much can we afford to put it off?” he asked.

The School Board began to prepare its defense of the budget Tuesday, anticipating questions from the Town Council and suggesting changes to PowerPoint presentations and other documents that would help clarify the issues when they are presented to the council.

One assumption in this budget proposal is that class sizes stay within the district’s limits, as set in 1987 and largely unchanged since then.

“It’s based on some pretty solid quality education principles,” said board Chairman George Entwistle.

Entwistle, like Forcella, noted the danger of not funding programs begun in previous years. “We begin to not realize the full value of the investments that we’ve made earlier,” he said, making specific reference to slower-than-planned increases in technology support staff. The computers and other equipment are already in the schools.

One hidden bugaboo not addressed in the budget is disposal of old computer equipment, now stored in closets and spare space throughout the district. Computers are frequently classified as hazardous waste, because some components contain mercury or other heavy metals, according to Gary Lanoie, the district’s technology coordinator.

The athletics budget also includes $5,000 for a new pole-vault pit, needed to replace the current high school pit, “which may be illegal,” according to high school Principal Jeff Shedd.

Finding the road to health

Published in the Current

Fourteen years ago, Caryn Treister had a 1-year-old daughter and a son on the way. But her body was racked by headaches and nausea, and she knew something was wrong. The doctors told her she was having a rough pregnancy and sent her home.

“It really bothered me,” she said. The doctors weren’t helpful, and Treister, who had been a top model in Chicago for 12 years and was still living in Chicago with her family, didn’t know where to turn.

She gave the doctors one last chance to figure out her problem, and a stomach specialist asked her the key question: which was first, the headaches or the vomiting? It was the former, and she was in for a brain-scanning MRI two days later.

Before Treister was ready to go home after the scan, her husband had already been paged and had raced to the hospital. She had a massive brain tumor, and went into surgery that evening. Doctors doubted her fetus would survive, if Treister herself did.

But she was a health-conscious woman who had tried to stay fit, so she pulled through and so did her baby.

“It was really a wake-up call,” she said of her survival. The tumor was benign and hasn’t returned, but she still feels its effects in how she lives her daily life, she said.

She got even more into fitness, and started teaching swimming and water aerobics part time, spending the rest of her time at home with her children. She also began paying more attention to nutrition.

“I really really tried to eat well,” Treister said, reading labels, choosing whole grains, and doing research on dietary supplements.

“If I didn’t do it, nobody else would,” Treister said.

When she and her family moved to Cape Elizabeth in 1996, she was thrilled. She had grown up in Exeter, N.H., and her parents and four siblings live near there now.

“For me it was really coming home,” Treister said. “We can all get together.”

“I also wanted to give my kids the mountains and the ocean,” Treister said.

They had a few health problems, too. Her daughter, now 14, had chronic fatigue syndrome, and her son, now 13, had asthma.

As Treister set up a gym in her basement and began to study toward her fitness trainer’s certification at USM, she felt like she was missing something.

“I always felt there was something more,” Treister said.

She had begun taking in individual clients for fitness training. “I love motivating people, I love helping people,” Treister said.

Then her aunt told her about a line of nutritional supplements that fit her needs and those of her family, friends and clients.

“It was like the final piece,” she said.

Her daughter’s fatigue disappeared. So did her son’s asthma.

One of her clients suffered terribly from fibromyalgia, a disease of unknown cause that gives a patient near-constant pain throughout the body.

But after using the supplements, “she’s 100 percent now,” Treister said. “It’s almost like a fairy tale.”

Treister, who wanted to be a social worker when she was in high school, has now found her calling.

“I really wanted to make a difference,” Treister said.

She teaches water aerobics for adults three days a week at the Cape Elizabeth town pool, and has become a distributor for the supplement line. She also is the holder of three state records in corporate track competition, as a member of the USM corporate track team.

But the satisfaction she takes from her job is the wonder she has truly found. “I have changed a person’s life,” Treister said.

Verizon-ISP battle may be nearing conclusion

Published in Interface Tech News

CONCORD, N.H. ‹ Continuing a case opened in 1999, the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission (PUC) has received closing briefs from all parties concerned in the increasingly contentious network congestion-dry copper broadband access dispute, but a timetable for further action remains unclear. There may also be broader repercussions, affecting Verizon New Hampshire's rates for all services in the state, and its ability to offer long-distance telephone service to New Hampshire customers.

In 1999, all parties agree, 911 access was unavailable in certain New Hampshire communities due to network congestion, which was blamed on the wide use of dial-up Internet service. In response, the PUC opened a case to figure out how to solve the problem.

One proposal, put forward by the New Hampshire Internet Service Providers Association (NHISPA), was to allow ISPs access to so-called "dry copper" (copper wire pairs with no equipment attached to them) so the ISPs could offer low-cost broadband Internet access, reducing the load on the telephone network.

Verizon New Hampshire now claims that the network congestion problem has been solved through the installation of additional equipment. Some PUC officials agree, adding that there have been no reports of this type of network congestion since June 2001.

"The network congestion issue has been solved," said Verizon New Hampshire spokesman Erle Pierce. As a result, he said, the discussion over whether his company should offer dry copper loops to ISPs is now moot, although he admits the ISPs could bring it up in a separate PUC case if they choose.

At least one ISP disagrees that the congestion is solved, and insists that dry copper is the way out.

"Lines are busy all the time," said Brian Susnock, president of the Nashua, N.H.-based Destek Group, which also has a federal suit pending against Verizon New Hampshire, alleging the company engaged in improper procedures regarding exceptions to standard tariffs.

Susnock said the PUC changed the reporting standards to allow more congestion, a charge PUC telecommunications director Kate Bailey denied.

Other allegations of PUC staff problems can be found in the filings.

From the NHISPA: "(The) staff's position is totally unsupportable and has no basis in fact, experience, or technology."

And from the Town of Northampton Cable TV-Broadband-Telecom Committee: "I suggest to you that your staff does not understand what is going on out in the real world of telecommunications, and that this lack of knowledge is problematic."

Bailey denied those charges, and protested their inclusion in official documents. "It was extremely rude to say the things that they did," she said. "I don't believe (our) staff said anything technically wrong."

She added that the ISPs could become CLECs ‹ regulated entities ‹ and gain access to dry copper loops that way. The ISPs would then have to offer some service that the FCC describes as "telecommunications," but not necessarily voice, Bailey said.

Susnock asserts that there would be high costs associated with becoming a CLEC, such as a sizable monthly fee charged by Verizon for access to its infrastructure database. However, Bailey claims the PUC disallowed that fee last year, and that no CLEC in New Hampshire is charged that fee or pays it.

Susnock describes Verizon's operating requirements as "anti-competitive," and vowed to continue his efforts to change them.

There may be more than just 911 access at stake with these allegations. New Hampshire's Office of the Consumer Advocate has called for a full study of Verizon's services and costs statewide (called a "rate case").

Separately, Verizon has requested permission to offer long-distance telephone service in New Hampshire under the provisions of section 271 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

But a decision on the network congestion case is not on the PUC agenda yet, and officials did not disclose when it might be.

Wednesday, February 27, 2002

Intellicare combines call center software, services

Published in Interface Tech News

SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine ‹ Expanding its offerings to health care organizations, call-center specialist Intellicare is now offering a unified messaging service combining telephone, fax, e-mail, Internet chat, and voicemail in a single desk workstation.

The system, which the company calls a "blended media contact center" and sells under the product name Intelliview, can route incoming traffic to several destinations, based on several criteria. For example, a Spanish-language e-mail message would be routed to a Spanish-reading assistant, or a fax from a patient inquiring about cardiac care would go to a representative with special knowledge about cardiac issues.

It offers a solution to a problem hospitals, insurance companies, and large medical practices are having: How to prepare for providing Internet customer service at a time when most people still use the phone?

One criterion is real-time handling, according to Victor Otley, chairman, CEO, and president of Intellicare. "Live agent interaction is extremely important," Otley sai d.

But phone traffic is by far the most common means of seeking customer service, Otley said, and he doesn't see that changing quickly.

"We believe that (migration to e-mail and Internet chat service) will happen over a period of years, not months," he said.

Intellicare itself operates call centers, and can augment a client's own customer service or do it entirely, on an outsourced basis, while remaining in compliance with federal privacy laws governing medical records.

The privately held and venture-funded company has 75 full-time equivalents spread across between 100 and 200 people, Otley said.

The firm grew 45 percent last year and is expected to grow 80 percent this year, as the company steps up marketing and sales efforts to get the product out the door.

One buyer has already bitten and been pleased. Kara Goodnight, the call-center supervisor at Texas Health Resources in Arlington, Tex., said her company, which operates 13 hospitals in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and handles 200,000 customer calls per year, conducted a massive research effort before deciding to go with Intellicare's combination of software and outsourced service.

"We felt that their software was the best product to meet our needs," Goodnight said.

In addition to the advantage of sharing a support platform between Texas Health Resources' call center and Intellicare, which will handle some calls, she said that a particular hurdle was privacy.

"We were very concerned about having our data reside on somebody else's server," Goodnight said. But Intellicare was able to assuage that concern. "We feel very comfortable that they're housing our very important data," she said.