Highland School Superintendent Joel Freer spoke at last week’s Lloyd Town Board meeting to refute recent negative comments that were made by a resident about the school district and the students.

“I’ve known many of these students since they were kindergartners and I see the amount of time and energy that their parents have put into raising them and the time an energy that my teachers have spent teaching them. Our kids have come a very long way in the 13 years that they work with us,” he said. “There was a comment made that our kids don’t go to quality colleges or something along that line.”

Freer said, “I am a product of SUNY Oswego and I think the state universities are wonderful and I’m very successful and many of my teachers go through the state university system in the teachers colleges. We have students that go off to the military and it’s very admirable that they do that and we have other students that go through Ulster BOCES and earn CTE credits so they can go right into the work force. And finally we do have students that go to reputable colleges; our Valedictorian [Alexander Papazov] is going to Harvard this year and we congratulate him and think that’s wonderful.”

Freer handed each board member a flier of last year’s district profiles with a list of colleges they are attending.

“Every state university is on here, community colleges, Vassar, Marist, and you name Ivy League colleges all across the country [and] we’ve had students attend those colleges,” he said.

Freer offered some clarification on the criticism Town Board heard in the public comment period at their May 15th meeting. He believes this person may not have known,” the true facts and the quality of the citizenry that we have here in Highland.”

Freer pointed out that a large number of the seniors are graduating with Associate Degrees.

“We’re super proud of our kids and I hope every one in this community is proud of our kids,” he said.
Freer was referring to comments made by resident Karen Angel at the board’s May meeting. She said she wrote a positive piece about Highland for the New York Times two years ago, adding that this put the downtown hamlet on the map after it was published. Angel said she cannot write a piece like this today, “because Highland no longer has a nice friendly spirit….When you have personal feeling preventing you from being objective, you can’t write that story.”

Angel said she wrote and provided pictures to the town about scattered garbage along North Eltings Corners Road, “and received either a perfunctory or no response from members of the Town Board.” When asked if the, “town could do something to discourage littering and dumping, “I did not receive a response. There’s a problem with the culture when people are dumping and littering to the extent they are in Highland and you need to change it.”

Angel directed a comment to Supervisor Dave Plavchak.

“You can let people know they’re going to be fined if they don’t clean up their property. That’s what happens in other towns; that’s how you change a culture and that’s how you change a practice in an area,” she said.

Angel took her comments further saying, “Highland Schools are mediocre in every measure of the word. I mean SAT scores below 600 is considered mediocre.”

Supervisor Plavchak cut Angel off saying she should take her issue about the school district up with them and urged her not to assume anything on what Town Board members may be thinking.

Angel concluded by saying she cannot find a single resident who is in favor of more development in town, “which seems to be the sole focus of this board. People are much more concerned with quality of life issues than they are about adding more housing units to the area. Highland and its government have a reputation for being unconcerned with those issues and also with environmental protections.” She added that she feels the Town Board is AWOL on these issues.

Angel left the meeting but Plavchak said he told her they were organizing a cleanup but she would not agree to that unless the town put up cameras all along N. Eltings Corners Road and spend money on enforcement.

“I’m not going to talk about all of the issues. I’m just going to say to always understand the other side of the story and there is one here and we’ll let it go at that. There are over 11,000 people in town from all over the place, we respect them all, we listen to them all. We don’t always agree with them and some people take that as not listening, but I can’t help that.”

Plavchak stressed they do respond to complaints, “and I think so far this board has proven we’re responsive. But her coming in here and dropping a bomb and leaving shows me what I’m dealing with.”