Danielle Walsh, Keeping Middletown Informed

' And The One Word I Hate More Than All Of Them' Anyone who knows me personally, knows I have a few, shall we say 'lovable quirks' sprinkled with just a touch of crazy. Well, one of these 'quirks' is an aversion to certain words in the English language. Now, I'm sure you've seen and read an article or two on people who throw up in their mouth a little (like myself) when they hear the words moist, dungarees, blouse, or coins, but there is another word that I find so overwhelmingly overused, misused and annoyingly politicized that the mere whisper of it can send shivers of disdain down my spine and immediately inspire distrust in my mind towards anyone who dares to utter it's four syllables. TRANS-PAR-EN-CY Blech...Admit it. Isn't it just the worst? It inspires thoughts of politics and politicians and secrets and boredom and all the things we should care about and don't and then feel guilty about because we don't really feel guilty that...

How Did We Survive Our Childhood? 'Well, The Truth Is, We Failed....A Lot.' Recently, a friend posted on her Facebook page 'How did we survive our childhood?' It was in response to another mother trying to fix a problem her middle-schooler was having. Little Susie was coming home starving because of issues she was having with the lunch lines. It's a story we've all heard hundreds of times...Parents judging each other for micromanaging their children's problems. We're all guilty of it. I know I am. I gotta tell you though, I don't feel especially guilty about it. Its not because I don't empathize, or that I want to see kids upset or hurt. But for the love of Sweet Jehovah, you aren't really helping anyone by not letting them fail. Do you know how we survived childhood in the 60's, 70's, 80's and even the early 90's? We Failed! A lot. Before there were elitist, intellectual child rearing terms like 'Helicopter Parentin...

 Middletown Ranked #1 For Cleanest Shoe Laces " And other School District Stats I Don't Care About" The Middletown Board of Education had its first Workshop Meeting of the year led by new president, Pam Rogers on Tuesday, January 15th and as usual, it lasted until almost midnight. It started right out of the gate with the previous president, Joan Minnuies taking some hard jabs at President Rogers over the BOE calendar, her Committee assignments and her new adopt a school initiative. To her credit, Mrs. Rogers didn't take the bait, and tried her best to move the Meeting forward. In the Shared Services Update, the love-fest between the BOE and the Township Committee is blooming and I for one am cautiously impressed. The two bodies have agreed to keep the elections in November for the time being. And Committeewoman, Patricia Snell (who I still think should have been our Mayor) attended the entire BOE meeting and even stayed to speak with the public a bit after it...

A Tale of Two Middletowns  'Why Locals May Owe You An Apology'  When you hear a Middletown a resident refer to 'two Middletowns,' my guess is your instinct is to go into fighting stance, as the North/South divide has a long and tumultuous history not unlike the Sharks and the Jets, minus the showtunes. But there is another more subtle divide among residents, one that unites even citizens of the North and South sides of town. And it's one I noticed recently, while recommending a local business to a friend. For the record, I live in the Port Monmouth Section of Middletown, but throughout my lifetime I have lived and worked in almost every section of our 42 square mile little town. Last month, I brought my favorite cookies to share with friends at a school gift auction at our local VFW. One woman sitting at our table, who had recently moved to Middletown, asked where I had got them. Being a huge supporter of local businesses, I was eager to recommend Cookienapp...

One Wrong Equals Two Rights 'Why a Board of Education Vote Can Be Split 7-2 and All 9 Are Right' A Follow Up of the 'New Year...' Blog Sunday morning I awoke bright and early to attend the Emergency Meeting of the Board of Education. (Please see previous blog for full details.) As you may recall, late Thursday afternoon the Middletown Township Committee sent a notice to their Board of Education  informing them of their intent to pass a resolution changing School Board Elections from November to April. The BOE responded with this emergency meeting to preempt the TC's vote and pass their own resolution first, maintaining November elections. All this was done with the belief that whichever was passed first superceeded the other legally, which it turns out may not necessarily be the case. The legalities are not my expertise, nor the focus of this piece. After an article from Russ Zimmer at the APP, a letter from the SuperIntendent's Office as well as the pr...

NEW YEAR, SAME OLD BULLSHIT 'The Middletown Board of Education and Township Committee are now in a race to decide when you will vote for School Board Members with zero input from YOU' First, I apologize for the vulgarity, but sometimes I am astonished at the lack of respect and trust the Township Committee and the Board of Education have for each other.  If you thought a new year and new members would bring a change, think again. It's no secret the BOE and the TC haven't always seen eye to eye. As I former BOE member and president myself, I've encountered the frustrations of trying to create common ground. The Middletown residents, however, have made it crystal clear that they want to see a better working relationship between the two entities to not only reduce taxes, but to keep the public better informed of issues that affect their families. And in turn, all the candidates who ran this year for both BOE and TC made 'working together'  and 'trans...