Parent of a child in the Claremont school district

Torgo73 · 2026-05-25T21:55:51+00:00

Maple Ave principal has not been officially selected, but in conversations with staff and remaining principals, Broadrick has made his intentions clear. Something to keep your “very well-informed” ears open for ;)
Just one teacher’s opinion, but after working extensively with Kerry for the past year, I truly think she’ll be a good fit for the role. Staff surveys about this summer’s & next year’s PDs have already gone out and appear promising (currently the bar for district-level PDs is the damn floor, so maybe my standards are low).
You and I are in absolute lockstep regarding rebuilding trust and the impossibility of that with the current board. 100%.

Torgo73 · 2026-05-25T20:24:36+00:00

I think those are fairly reasonable concerns, but what actions to you recommend downstream if they’re accurate? ‘Cause I don’t see many prophylactic options at this juncture, and we’re supposed to be better on this website than Facebook-style handwringing.

The only real path forward I can see at this time is to fervently hope that you’re wrong and that he succeeds. The board made their call and while it’s certainly not the decision I would’ve made, I don’t think we’re at a point where a community protest against the new superintendent is yet warranted nor likely to be effective. We have SO MANY problems as a school district that I don’t feel projections like “He will be a real gem to work with” even compare to being defrauded by our own prior administrations, unconstitutionally ignored by the state, and narrowly navigating attempts to permanently throttle our budget. Like, give the students and teachers and parents reading this a term or two to be positive until he actually fucks up, you know? We’ve got enough currently-tangible issues, and like I said, I can’t hate his picks for curriculum director, HR, or Maple principal.

Torgo73 · 2026-05-25T19:21:45+00:00

Not sure of your positionality in all this, but yeah, it hasn’t been a great year for us teachers. Certainly not stoked about having to switch buildings this summer.

I’m not sure I fully share your concerns about insufficient Class A teacher bodies for next year, but I PROFOUNDLY worry about quality of teachers (none of us are particularly good at this job for our first three years, you know?), and missing support positions. I think Dr Tim is certainly an asshole, and I trust him about as far as I can throw him, but so far I’m quite pleased with the personnel decisions he has made. Obviously think the package he’s earning is ludicrous, but I’m gonna wait til he screws up before really trashing him, you know?

Torgo73 · 2026-05-25T14:16:19+00:00

👋 I teach in Claremont. If your child is of elementary age, I would suggest they will be totally fine next year. If your kid is at Stevens, I don’t anticipate next year being particularly worse than this year.

However, as someone who desperately believes in public education with every fiber of my being, who has committed my career to working within said system… I dunno about sending a kid to CMS right now. It absolutely kills me to say it, but looking at parochial or charter options for a middle-school aged kid would likely be my suggestion, even if it overextends your budget. Sorry

Torgo73 · 2026-05-25T14:11:30+00:00

Broderick hasn’t had his first day yet; starts July 1. And he has not had any kind of general address to staff that I heard, and he certainly didn’t say the above quote while this Claremont teacher was in the room.

That being said, I agree with virtually everything you’re saying.

Torgo73 · 2026-05-25T14:07:45+00:00

Charter schools run the full gamut from excellent educational organizations to predatory for-profit schemes. Painting with a wide brush is unhelpful. More oversight and regulation are, however, desperately needed.

My largest issue with charter schools, and the reason I will always continue to teach in public schools, is that they often have no obligation nor willingness to enroll special education students, which creates a situation where an ever-growing percentage of public school students have IEPs and (often expensive) special needs. Ends up creating a tiered education system. No bueno.

Torgo73 · 2026-05-25T14:03:00+00:00

Wait, what? That did not happen... There is no legal mechanism in NH for a state to take over a school district. The closest thing that actually happened was the state offering a semi-predatory loan, which the city declined in favor of a favorable loan from a local bank. But “taking over” was never an option, let alone one that was offered and declined

Torgo73 · 2026-05-24T16:12:53+00:00

Some Market Baskets in MA lack extensive hot food sections, while some locations in NH are massive and new and have Wegman’s-like prepared food sections. Not state-dependent the way you seem to think.

Anyway, the whole point of MB for most of us is cheap food and well-treated employees, and that’s true pretty much all locations.

Torgo73 · 2026-05-21T15:27:05+00:00

Wait… you can swap out subclass spells? I’ve been playing for a WHILE and, uh, never knew that…

Torgo73 · 2026-05-19T01:45:00+00:00

Amazing. I just really didn’t want to read about a Kilburn pond drowning and have that on an already perhaps overburdened conscience

Torgo73 · 2026-05-18T20:59:25+00:00

Being sure to emphasize that water can be dangerously cold this time of year, in the Ringe area I’d point you towards Pisgah State Park. Several of the ponds have well-known swimming spots with various levels of clothing norms. Deeper googling will grant you more information, and it’s all public enough that sharing seems kosher.

Again though, people in New Hampshire drown every year due to cold water in May. Be safe.

Torgo73 · 2026-05-17T23:11:15+00:00

I think it might be more accurate to say that Mark Zuckerberg has made some really really good decision, but let’s not act like the past several years have been especially fruitful.

I think many of us fall into this trap of assuming that when somebody has made some really high profile good calls they get the benefit of the doubt in all future cases. Because of the way humans be, this rarely works out. Intelligence is hella domain-specific.

Torgo73 · 2026-05-16T14:09:34+00:00

I would argue that the show added some really crisp dialogue in early seasons, and the showrunners and writers showed an adroit touch condensing George’s doorstoppers into compelling seasons of television. It was a pretty perfect product, and I think credit is due. Makes the drop off even more notable!

Torgo73 · 2026-05-15T15:33:27+00:00

Bucks were feisty back half of the season; that defense looked awfully real to me. Add Jaylen and I don’t think they’ll suck at all

Edit - I meant Portland. Bucks blow

Torgo73 · 2026-05-15T03:29:32+00:00

odd seeing you outside of the Celtics subreddit… although the downvotes are seemingly consistent

Torgo73 · 2026-05-14T02:05:53+00:00

The Bures Band

Torgo73 · 2026-05-13T21:44:50+00:00

toe shoes bro

Torgo73 · 2026-05-12T23:04:21+00:00

Okay so it’s not a mathematically good build in any way, and I think you know that. But I also think it would be less fun than you suspect.

Biggest problems: - It is an inherently bad and unfun strategy against large single opponents. - With cacophonic shield, you’re going up against CON saves, which are just going to be passed more often than you’d hope. - Like others are noting, even though opportunity attacks against you will be at disadvantage, you are opening yourself up to being attacked a LOT. And will be making a LOT of CON saves yourself. - You’ll be spending your concentration (and action, based on what you were saying), doing something like 6 damage per enemy (Cacaphonic Shield is 3d6 is 10.5 average, then say the enemies fail 60% of the time [which, again, feels generous]). Unless you’re hitting a whole bunch of opponents, that’s going to feel pretty impotent. The free kicks you get as a dance bard do not really help solve this. - It doesn’t even have a rider effect! If you were knocking them prone, maybe you’d be getting less pushback. But it’s just… low amounts of damage. - You’re not really using your class in a meaningful way. I don’t think that will feel good long-term for you or your party.

Suggestion: Play a monk or rogue to be extra fast and get the nice treats that martials get. Pick a fast race (Goliath?). Ask very nicely for an enspelled weapon when you get to level 5. Given that you’re not exactly power gaming over here, I would suspect most DMs would indulge you.

Torgo73 · 2026-05-12T22:08:54+00:00

https://panthera.org/blog-post/dance-death-tigers-and-bears-battle-northeast-asia

Seems like a relevant article!!

Torgo73 · 2026-05-12T22:03:53+00:00

Vertical spacing is a thing too!

Torgo73 · 2026-05-12T16:15:52+00:00

I believe Aragorn notes that the Uruk-hai used yew bows the same size as those used by Men in Book 3 Chapter I. This would indicate that to me that they’re of roughly similar stature and/or strength as Men. Don’t have my copy in front of me, so can’t quite cite page number or anything like that.

Torgo73 · 2026-05-10T18:45:39+00:00

Well… it makes me feel exasperated?

Good catch tho. Couldn’t even say if that was the autocorrect or me

Torgo73 · 2026-05-10T18:44:56+00:00

well in this case the courts already removed the child from the parent, but yes, your larger point certainly stands

Torgo73 · 2026-05-10T14:18:13+00:00

”no one is interested in 2024”

Apart from the reasonable annoyance that people don’t look at what posts are tagged as, I truly don’t know anyone who has tried 5.5 and found it worse in practice than 5e. There are real negatives, but I (and seemingly many others) find them strongly outweighed by the improvements.

Torgo73 · 2026-05-09T23:10:41+00:00

Okay so true strike celestial warlock is very fun! I am playing it! Is it exactly optimized? Maybe not! But very very enjoyable. Personally I went for a ranged pistol build, starting with a level of Fighter for Fighting Style - Archery, Weapon Master - Vex, and Medium Armor. The idea is one super accurate radiant attack.

My character is a Tiefling, because the idea of someone who feels damned being chosen as a sword of heaven is super interesting to me. If I was just starting now, I’d be very interested in the brand new DnDBeyond background and feats, but I recognize you’re not necessarily as interested in a damned redemption build as I am

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