About two dozen residents took advantage of the open forum with school audit team Berkshire Advisors on Tuesday evening, with parents stressing value and qualitative factors, and members of the PCC continuing their campaign to plant doubts about the study. Town Councilor Karen Gleason chaired the session, conducted by Mike Walker of Berkshire, who thoughtfully responded to questions and took copious notes during the two-hour session. Rep. Amy Rice was there as well.

Parent Diane Brown was one of several who urged Berkshire to carefully consider the impact of any cuts, lamenting the loss of the gifted and talented program. "It's the caliber of this community that's represented by these schools," she said, adding that Portsmouth's kids need to be competitive not just within America, but globally. "We need to raise the bar."

Most of the parents who spoke voiced similar concerns. Joe Raposa described how his son had been helped by the school department's early testing and intervention. "He's why Individualized Education Plans (IEPs) were developed," said Raposa. He said his son had wanted to be there to thank the schools in person, but he added proudly, "he's at Stonehill College."

Debbie Oliveira echoed the sentiment, that her three kids have "all great teachers, and all great schools." She praised the work of the folks in the department. "Each year, the teachers have to do more and more with less and less. It's frustrating as a parent to see every expenditure questioned."

When I hear stories like this, it makes it really hard for me to objectively report on the lackeys of the grocer's machine who take the mike to plant uncertainty and nitpick.

Jeff Richard came to the podium with a series of questions about the areas Berkshire is examining. Were they looking at teacher selection and evaluation? At the numbers for home schooling, which might indicate "a lack of confidence" in the schools. How about the number of children who go to private schools. Another confidence issue? And look at the Chamber of Commerce study. Rhode Island schools consistently got "D's and F's."

An aside on tactics. Notice, Richard doesn't have evidence that any of these are germane, but what he's accomplished by putting this out in a public forum is to make this an issue that Berkshire or the schools now have to expend energy to either investigate or disprove. This is the nature of our asymmetrical conflict with the PCC. School supporters need to be perfect: every undefended attack is a point lost. The PCC, on the other hand, with the bravery of being out of range, gets to lob a dozen questions, as Richard did, and then declare victory if even one of them cannot be rebuffed. By forcing school supporters into a prevent (or no-doubles, if you prefer) defense they control the agenda.

For example, consider the oft-cited Chamber of Commerce study. There are serious methodological issues with how they decided to give Rhode Island "Ds and Fs." Here's how the study authors describe the process:

"To grade each state, we first created a NAEP index by averaging the percentage of 4th and 8th grade students scoring at or above the proficient level on math and reading on NAEP in 2005. We then distributed grades based on a curve: The top 10 states received As, the next 10 states received Bs, and so forth."
— Leaders and Laggards, p. 64

You like being graded on a curve? Or arbitrary 10-state cutoffs to force an A-F distribution? Is that fair? No. But Richard doesn't have to be concerned about fairness. He gets to put this out there on their PCC-TV show (this was one non-Town-Council meeting they chose to tape, surprise surprise) and it's on the record, uncontested.

PCC, Inc. Vice-President Joe Lorenz used a similar strategy, drilling down on a "survey" that was sent to school department employees. He asked why it hadn't been sent to him or his wife ("a kindergarten teacher") arguing that Berkshire might "learn something from people outside." Walker had to patiently explain that the survey related to the internals of the district, like how long it takes to respond to a maintenance request, which it was unlikely outsiders would have an informed opinion about. But Lorenz and other PCCers harped on this line of questioning, to the point where I actually had to get up and ask Walker directly about the focus groups which had been conducted at all the schools to solicit public input, just to get it on the record.

And take Tailgunner Gleason. She used her time on-camera to pat herself on the back for coming up with locking building doors and using buzzers. "Safety and well being" was a priority for her. (This coming from someone who wanted to cut nurses and guidance counselors at the elementary schools, but I digress.) Then she lobbed yet another unsupported accusation: "There are kids from other districts that are here without permission." Does Ms. Gleason have evidence of this? Let's see it.

But I'm going to give the last words to the school supporters. Chris Carceller, who urged Berkshire not to recommend cuts to any more programs, saying, "This town does not want an average school system." Mary Short, who noted how changes caused by budget cuts, like shortening building hours, had reduced the time teachers had to runoff papers at the end of the day. "Any change you make affects everybody," she stressed. Marianne Raymo, who is one of the leaders of the Portsmouth United effort to bring all the parent-teacher organizations under one nonprofit umbrella, was blunt: "Extracurriculars happen because of parents. Parents get charged a lot of user fees."

I have to point out that at this juncture, Tailgunner interrupted Ms. Raymo. "Do you have a question?" "I'm sorry," replied Raymo. "I thought we were up here speaking." For the record, Gleason never said "boo" to any of the PCC speechifying. Just another thing to remember come election time.

Parent Diane Brown urged greater communication, and hoped that the school department could leverage some of the parental energy on display at the meeting. "I want to see their voices result in action," she said.