Dorchester Times: Suggestion Box II: Your Comments For The School Board

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Suggestion Box II: Your Comments For The School Board

As we did last summer, we are again offering Times' readers the opportunity to comment directly to the elected members of the Dorchester Board of Education. Issues may include school infrastructure, instructors or other staff, spending and budget, or other school-related topics. (Please refrain from directly or indirectly mentioning specific individuals, however. Such comments will not be published.)

Our "Suggestion Box" series provides an open forum for readers to offer suggestions, complaints and compliments for local leaders. It also allows readers to pose questions -- and we hope that School Board members or staff will take time to reply. We only ask that readers keep any critical remarks civil.

Below are the comments left last week for the members of the Dorchester Village Board. As always, we are impressed with the thoughtfulness of the comments and ideas offered by readers, as well as the common courtesy and sincerity in which they are presented. We rejected only one comment in last week's discussion.

4 comments:

AnonymousJuly 7, 2008 at 8:52 AM
I like the job our school board is doing. There are areas we can nit pick but overall they are getting the job done and not scared to improve things.
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AnonymousJuly 7, 2008 at 11:02 PM
Just curious as to why the district needs to shell out 10,000 dollars for a consultant.

where did this money come from. It sure wasnt part of the budget. If we have money like that laying arounnd it looks like it could have been better spent on tcchnology.
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AnonymousJuly 10, 2008 at 9:25 PM
Joyce K said........
Our current school board is doing an excellent job. It's an awesome task trying to make sure things a done the best they can be and correctly. Our Board members give of their time and efforts without pay and receive very few "thank yous". I congratulate them for their courage to embrace change and make things better for our students, staff and our future.

On the issue of needing a consultant, we do need someone who was totally involved with every aspect of the project to be able to make sure everything is completed correctly. At least that is my opinion.
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AnonymousJuly 11, 2008 at 11:42 AM
I totally agree. It needs to be finished right.
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Dorchester: A Good Little Family Town

Dorchester, Nebraska (est. population 630) is located in northern Saline county. Close in proximity to Interstate 80, Dorchester is only 25 minutes from the state capital of Lincoln (est. population 250,000) and about 55 minutes from Omaha (metro population 725,000).

Dorchester's median resident age is 37 years. In 2005, Dorchester had a median family income of approximately $35,600. The median house value was about $63,000. About 95 percent of Dorchester residents commute to work via Interstate and highways.

The village has a quality public school, which received a $4.1 million expansion and modernization in 2008; it offers a small classrooms and individualized attention. Total enrollment of grades K-12 is around 230-250 students.

Ancestries of the Dorchester area are primarily German (42.4%), Czech (24.9%), Irish (12.5%), English (5.4%), and Dutch (4.9%).

Dorchester Historical Facts

* On July 4, 1871, the railroad reached Dorchester.
* Incorporated in 1881, Dorchester's population grew from 200 to 500 by 1882.
* In 1882, Dorchester had 90 buildings, 35 of which were businesses or public facilities. Brick buildings lined both sides of Washington Avenue for two blocks.
* Dorchester's longest-running newspaper was The Dorchester Star, which was published until the late 1940s.
* By 1889, Dorchester's population is said to have reached 800, while the town housed an opera house, a two-story brick schoolhouse with a bell tower, and four churches.
* By the 1910s, Dorchester had electricity, a water tower and a fire department.
* Dorchester's main arteries, Highways 6 and 33, were graveled in the 1940s.
* Dorchester's first irrigation well was drilled on Chris Weber's farm and rural electrification was finished following WWII.

A Village with History

Dorchester is one of the "alphabet towns" on the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad line built west from Lincoln. The town site was selected for its pleasant location in the northern part of Saline County, about eight miles west of Crete. This situation is an attractive one, being on the level prairie land, midway between the West Blue River and Turkey Creek. The first named stream is three miles north, and the latter about the same distance south from the town. Dorchester was platted in 1870 and incorporated in 1881. The name "Dorchester" came from either for a suburb of Boston by that name or a town in England. No one is sure. Two of the very first settlers were James Seely and Edward McIntyre, who both made Dorchester their permanent home.

Dorchester: In The Beginning

Here is a look at Dorchester around 1890, less than a decade after its official incorporation, as documented by Andreas' History of the State of Nebraska:
* POPULATION: "About 300, and is made up of a substantial and progressive class of citizens, who are moral and industrious. ... The town grew but very little until the year 1879, for the reason that Pleasant Hill, on Turkey Creek, a short distance south, was the county seat and naturally drew a trade for quite a large scope of country."
* BUSINESS: "The business and professional interests of the town are represented by three general merchandise stores, two drug, one grocery, one furniture, two hardware, and two millinery stores, one bank, two restaurants, two hotels, three livery stables, a post office, one newspaper office, two elevators, two lumber yards, two coal yards, two blacksmith shops, two lawyers and four physicians."
* SCHOOL: "The schoolhouse is a good one. The schoolhouse was built in 1872, since which time the public schools have been continually kept up. The present schoolhouse is 24' x 40' in size, two stories high. The school is graded and consists of three departments. The house is found too small, and arrangements will soon be made to increase its size."
* CHURCHES: "There are three substantial churches."
* HOMES: "The residence portion of the village is made up of neat houses of different styles of architecture, but none of them very large."
* NEWSPAPER: "The Dorchester Star, which was established August 21, 1881, by H. C. Bittenbender, who edited it until January 19, 1882, when he sold it to Ryerson & Bullock, the present proprietors. The Star is a bright weekly paper, five-column quarto, in size, and is Republican in politics."