Archive for the ‘Mountain View School’ Category

Mt. View High School Vandalism?? or Prank??

Monday, June 2nd, 2008

Time for something completely different

Driving past Mt. View School today, this writer was shocked to see the amount of garbage on the High School lawn.  Not food mind you, but it looked like the township truck which picks up the yearly junk exploded.  Everything was there from a couch to a kitchen stove, down to a rug.  I am not talking about a few things - probably a couple of hundred items give or take. As of late this evening, most of it remains.

 So, it’s time to round up the usual suspects.  Time to check out the surveilance video as they did last year. Last year, class of 2007 wrapped the message board in clear plastic and a message “Mountain Poo”, or something similar was spray painted on the plastic. Obviously the intent was to have some fun and minimize the damage.

There is a pretty good chance this was the “Senior Prank” for the class of 2008.  If this turns out to be the case, certainly very poor judgment was excercised by the perpetators. 

It will take time and money to clean up this junk, never mind the message it sends to the taxpaying public.  If in fact this was the Senior Prank, doesn’t this tell the public that these students care so little for their school they “trash it”?  Some school spirit.

What a lousy thing to do to the rest of the students who presumably have school spirit.

Of course a much more disturbing scenario would be if the people who did this were adults. Let’s hope not…

One question for the staff at Mt. View, why isn’t the junk picked up? No matter who did it, it looks really bad and needs to be cleaned up ASAP.

Shame on whoever did this in the first place. 

Posted in 2008, Mountain View School, Susquehanna County | No Comments »

Mt. View Teacher Issue

Friday, February 22nd, 2008

According to published reports in the Scranton Times (2-22-2008) and other sources, Corey Gesford, an English teacher in Mt. View School District, was arrested yesterday, charged with forgery, making unsworn falsifications to authorities and illegal use of a professional title.  These sources stated the criminal complaint indicated among other things that he copied a legitimate teaching certificate and changed it to include his personal information, falsely claimed to be certified to teach high school English and Social Studies.  Additionally, the sources said that on applications to the school district in 2004 and 2006, he falsely claimed to have earned a bachelor’s degree from Penn State. 

Of course, if found guilty, one could and should be very unhappy with Mr. Gesford’s actions.  According to the report he could face years in prison and a hefty fine. 

Presuming Mr. Gesford is innocent until proven otherwise is a critically important matter for everyone to remember, as this is what our country is built on.  One would hope that this is all just a very bad mistake or mixup of paperwork and that things would get straightened out in due course.

However, either way, there are several questions the community should rightfully ask the Mountain View School Board - Why did it take so long to find this out?  If an application was made to the School District in 2004, why wasn’t this checked out then?  Certainly, if it was missed then, shouldn’t the 2006 application been checked out?    Wasn’t the name at least checked against a state registry by school officials?  What about the references and background check?  What plan of correction is being put in place to assure this will not happen again? 

That this could possibly occur here in our little corner of the world is very disturbing at best, to realize that it could be happening right now anywhere else and many times over is absolutely chilling.  For how do we know that someone else, somewhere else hasn’t faked credentials to have improper access to our children? 

This matter is an outrage.  If it did occur, it never should have.  Basic checks and balances MUST be in place to protect our children.

Posted in 2008, Mountain View School | 5 Comments »

Mountain View School Board - Who won? What are the problems? Let’s discuss the issues!

Tuesday, November 20th, 2007

The question has been raised on a different post on this blog as to who won the race for school board directors in Mountain View Schools.  It is no secret that there was a very hard fought write-in battle for the directors’ positions.  What led to such controversy?  Is this partially due to the actions (or lack of actions) of certain board members?  How is the school doing academically?  When the Scranton Times issues a report card for all school districts in the spring, Mountain View is NOT a shining star above all in the county.  Why is this?   Enquiring minds would like to know.  For those of us who are taxpayers in the Mountain View School District who children either currently attend or have attended, we would like to know what is going on.

Please post comments here rather than the previous topic.  Thank you. 

Posted in Mountain View School | 2 Comments »