To the Editor:

I was pleased to see your bylined comments on school mergers.

When Dave Martin was in the Assembly I visited with him in his office and he leaned back and said, "I've been here for quite awhile and all I've got to show for it is a piddling bill on covered dish suppers." He knew and I learned in my 10 years working occasionally with the legislature that without support of the leadership you could save your breath. Centralization of control is almost impossible to believe for the 99 percent of the people who don't see the sausage made in Albany.

Collective action, with hired guns who know where the quid pro quo possibilities are, is where any possibilities to action are.

St. Lawrence County is unique in the level of talent available, if mobilized. A committee of June O’Neill, Tom Coakley and Tony Collins and Max Fisher would be an example. Ernie Labaff would have influence but I'm afraid unions are part of the problem.

We have to accelerate distance learning (see Ulster County BOCES/VAP and now Jefferson).

Look forward not in the past.

The state is getting financial windfalls all over the place, especially from the financial district. School districts are owed, legally, a bunch of money. (See http://www.aqeny.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Education-Funding.pdf.)

A. Cuomo and Spitzer before him are rabid about consolidation, but Cuomo is nationally ambitious and needs everybody happy.

Short term, somebody has to co-opt NYSUT and leverage the colleges to maximize the effectiveness of using BOCES for the high achievers through distance learning. In reading minutes of a BOCES regional meeting a St. Lawrence County rep specifically said that we were slow on distance learning due to teacher concern about jobs and influence of the union. Long term both administrative and teaching efficiencies need to be put in place beside realistic big plus small consolidations.

Larry O’Brien

Canton