24 December—Let’s hear it for John Morosani, a Litchfield member of the Region 20 Board of Education who doesn’t take crap. So here’s the poop: Just last week, Emily Cole of Goshen, the new region’s former chair (she was removed from the board at a town meeting in June), bitched in an email to the Region 20 board and elected officials of the region’s four towns about $326,000 in cuts the board had made—only as a start, we hope—to help offset the deficit resulting from negligent administration and oversight (to put it gently).

Among other things, Emily, who still was chairing the board when a—but not the current (and probably growing)—deficit was announced in the spring, made a point of shedding tears over the four staff positions—only the first of several, we hope—eliminated by the board. As it happens, one of the four positions made redundant is that of project coordinator

And as it happens, Emily Cole’s sister is Region 20’s project coordinator. We don’t know what a project coordinator does in a school system, but Emily’s sister, Deanna Marchand, appears at least to manage the “live feed” on the Region 20 website, whose last post is over a year old. But you can be sure that Deanna’s redundancy has nothing to do with Emily’s bitching. Of course not.

So here’s the pregnant part of John Morosani’s brilliantly unambiguous response to Emily Cole:

“What an [unwelcome] surprise your email was. I am amazed that you who [remain] vice chair of the disastrous financial mess [soon to be dissolved] Region 6 finds itself in and [chaired] for the first 23 months of Region 20 would reach out publicly to blame those who are trying to clean up the mess you presided over. It’s sort of like the person who brought the circus to town complaining that the street sweepers aren’t doing a good enough job cleaning up after the elephants.

“You should thank your lucky stars that you lost the vote in Goshen in June and haven’t had to spend countless hours in the enormous effort required to get the schools onto an even footing.”

Right on, John! Thanks!

Back to the poop, then, elephant ordure, along with other animal waste, is marketed by enterprising zoos as zoo doo. Evidently the zoos do a good job cleaning up after the elephants.

Incidentally, while we’re on (or in?) Region 20 poop, the latest intelligence on coke in Lakeview High is that we haven’t been able to confirm the alleged commerce in the girls’ loo. But nobody we’ve spoken to has actually denied anything . . .