Joshua Leinsdorf
35 Forester Drive
Princeton, N.J. 08540-5328
Voice: (609) 688-9320 Fax:
(609) 688-9319 Cellphone: (609) 658-8919 e-mail:Josh@Leinsdorf.com
Dear
School Supporter,
Regretfully, I am writing to say
that I will not be a candidate for a fourth term on the Princeton Regional
School Board. I urge you to consider
replacing me. Running for public office
is the best education money can not buy.
Holding public office is an eye-opening experience. As a member of the public, getting
information out of government bureaucracies is a burden. As an office-holder, the information
routinely and necessarily comes to you; also, information is routinely withheld
from you. The quality of the school board member is of paramount
importance. Many people seek to serve on
school boards merely to keep taxes low, regardless of the educational
consequences.
Princeton Regional Schools has a
policy of conducting exit interviews with departing staff. Because I have
worked for you these past nine years, I want to pass on my experiences and
observations. Public education in New
Jersey and the nation is in a precarious state.
In spite of massive expenditures, only 70% of the students are graduating
from high school with a 12th grade education. Another third has a subsistence education,
and the final third of the students excel.
Princeton is in the latter category, primarily because of your commitment
and priorities.
The biggest problem facing the
schools in New Jersey and the nation is a lack of accountability. The school system is carefully designed to
prevent any connection between the scholastic achievements of the students and
the assessment of the activities of the school staff. New Jersey has a compulsory school attendance
law, not a compulsory education law.
Students are required to attend school for 180 days each year. They must be instructed in English, Math,
Social Studies, History, Science, etc. for so many hours each week. But nowhere in the voluminous rules,
regulations and statutes does it say that the students are required to learn
anything.
It is perfectly possible to run a
completely legally compliant school district where not a single student can
read a word or add two plus two. New
Jersey did not even have statewide standards for high school graduation until
Tom Kean became Governor in 1981. Even
then, in order to get the bill passed over the lobbying of the teachers and
administrators unions, the legislation required only a 9th grade standard for high school
graduation. Partially through the
efforts of my wife, Kathy Blohm, and me, to implement
a 12th grade standard for high school diplomas, the standard was
raised to 11th grade in 1992, where it remains today.
The Freedom Agenda
So, what is the
logic of having a school system with no mandatory academic standards? Freedom. New Jersey schools protect the freedom to be
illiterate and incompetent in math. The
fear is that if students are required to know the meanings of certain words, or
forced to be able to do mathematics up to a certain level, then who knows where
it will stop. One day, they might be
forced to sing the Internationale. No.
Mandatory education standards are a socialistic, communistic concept and
here in New Jersey where freedom rings we are having none of it.
The fact that
this freedom to fail absolves the staff in the schools from any responsibility
for the students’ education is just an unintended consequence, however hard the
professional unions fight to preserve it.
Until the State
of New Jersey promulgates clear, measurable, rigorous academic standards that
all students are required to meet, where graduating seniors must pass 12th
grade tests, the spiral of increasing costs and collapsing achievement will not
be reversed. No school board, or school board member can affect this
situation. Only the state legislature
and governor can step up to the plate on the issue of standards and
accountability. So, while I am leaving
the school board, I intend to remain in the fight.
Teachers
After academic
standards, the second major crisis facing the schools is teacher quality and
recruitment. Princeton has many fine,
dedicated teachers who do a stupendous job.
The highest compliment we can pay to a teacher is “we are lucky to have
you.” Princeton has more than its fair
share of those teachers. Unfortunately,
many experienced teachers are close to retirement.
When I went to high
school many of my teachers were Columbia, University of Pennsylvania and Vassar
graduates. Today, with college
educations ranging from about $50,000 for a state school to $200,000 for a
private education, not including the four or more years of lost income
attending college, careers in teaching starting at $50,000 a year make little
economic sense. New teachers begin their
careers at modest salaries carrying huge debts.
What changed?
From 1940 to 1973,
the United States had what was popularly called a military draft. In fact, the Selective Service System was inter alia a means of allocating
manpower in the civilian economy.
Exemptions from military service were non-monetary benefits used to
encourage people to enter badly needed but poorly paid professions like
teaching. That is why it is called the
Selective Service System and not the Military Manpower Procurement Act. People
could serve their country selectively, either as teachers or as army
infantry.
Not surprisingly, it was the people who
entered teaching to avoid service during the Korean War who taught the students
who turned out to be the student protesters during the Vietnam War. Now that the draft has ended and the United
States has a policy of an all volunteer military, a generation or more of
people who might otherwise have entered the teaching profession became lawyers
or went to work on Wall Street. The
consequence of that imbalance is plain to see.
In my nine years on the school board only one Princeton University graduate, that I know of, has become a teacher in the
Princeton schools. Ironically, many of
the people currently entering the military for the education benefits hope to
become teachers after their enlistments expire.
Furthermore, the
structure of the teaching profession does not answer the needs of either the
teachers or the students. The 19th
century industrial production model of schools and teaching is not working in
the 21st century. Teaching is an art. People can be great teachers for seven or ten
years, and then need to take a break, to marry or have families of their own,
and then perhaps return to the classroom fifteen years later.
There are plenty of
people who work in business or in government who, after a period of time, want
to share their experience and expertise with students as well as be closer to
home so they can parent their own children.
The system of licensing and certification makes it difficult for people
from other fields to get into the classroom, while the pension system makes it
painful for teachers to get out. The job
mobility that is the hallmark of a vibrant economy is almost completely absent
from the school system. Furthermore, credentials to teach or work in the schools is largely a
measure of the employee’s own education and a reward for good behavior, not a
measure of a person’s ability to teach or inspire students.
Again, the changes
in policy required to bring schools into conformity
with the hiring and personnel practices of every other industry can not be made
by a single school board or school board member. The structural changes required can only be
made by the state legislature and governor.
One
peculiar problem with public education is that most of the rules and
regulations that in business and industry are considered management
prerogatives, in public education are legislative statutes. The teachers and administrators unions have
used their political clout over the decades to get the legislature to write
laws regulating the most minute activities of teachers
and administrators. This would not be so
bad if there were also countervailing laws detailing the academic standards
that students are required to attain.
Then there would be a balance. It
is the absence of clear standards, the vague meaningless nostrums like
“thorough and efficient” that result in the Through
the Looking Glass quality of many education decisions. Teachers can be found deficient because
lesson plans are not submitted on time.
The fact that these teachers’ students might be excelling beyond all
bounds is not considered a mitigating circumstance in a system with no clearly
defined academic standards. So, many of
the decisions appear to be, and are, if not arbitrary, then at least irrelevant
to the task at hand. This is why so many
parents feel frustrated when trying to remedy obvious educational problems. Without clearly identifiable, measurable,
academic standards there is no way to put the other rules and regulations into
proper perspective. The means becomes
the end, instead of a means to an end.
But
here is a little secret I learned after decades of involvement in the public
schools. Although there are reams and
reams of statutes, although officials cite state law and statutes as reasons
for whatever policy or action is being justified, there are almost no sanctions
or penalties in the education law, so it is all political. With a few notable exceptions where violations of the education law is a misdemeanor or a small
fine is levied, the only penalty for violating the education law is the
equivalent of a bad report card from the Commissioner of Education. It is not like criminal law where violations
of statutes carry specific penalties of years in jail or monetary fines. Most of the laws governing schools are really
administrative determinations internal to the Department of Education. The rules and regulations of the New Jersey
schools require districts to provide transportation for students who live
further than a certain distance from the school, but does
not require them to learn anything once they get there.
The Princeton Regional School
Board is really just a department of the State Department of Education. In extremis, it can be suspended by the
Commissioner and its duties exercised by an appointee. In reality, however, the school board of one
of the best districts in the nation is not going to be suspended by the
Commissioner. In other words, it is the
excellence of the academic achievements of Princeton’s students that confers
political power on the Princeton Regional School Board. The greatest regret I have from my years on
the board is that that power was barely used to try and improve the schools.
Taxes
At
this point you must be thinking, what is wrong with this guy. He has written more than three pages about
education and the schools without once talking about taxes, which is usually
the only topic mentioned in most education
debates. Well, without academic
standards, it is impossible to really talk about education.
New
Jersey spends $20 billion a year on public education. If New Jersey’s public school system alone
was an independent country, it would have the 93rd biggest economy
in the world, on a par with Libya and Kazakhstan, both oil exporters.
The
tax problem is not a fiscal or economic problem, it is an educational
problem. Income rises with
education. The biggest jump comes with a
high school diploma, when annual earnings rise from $17,000 for non graduates
to $31,000 for those with diplomas.
The
40,000 students annually who do not achieve a 12th grade education
level would be contributing $520,000,000 more every year to the income of the
state if only they had a 12th grade education. The next year, there would be another
$520,000,000 added. In other words, the
total income of New Jersey would be 10% higher by just ensuring that everyone
graduated from high school with a real twelfth grade education.
So
the problem with school taxes is not the taxes, it is the product coming out of
the schools. More, better educated
graduates would have better jobs, higher incomes, and pay more taxes thereby
reducing the tax burden for the others.
In addition, a vast proportion of the prison population is composed of
people who are functionally illiterate.
Not only would tax revenues be higher if every child was required to
achieve a 12th grade education, but government expenditures would be
lower because of falling crime and fewer prisoners.
Not surprisingly, people do
not want to pay high taxes to a school system that does a poor job of educating
students. Here again, without clear
academic standards, it is impossible to gauge how well the schools are
performing. The racial segregation of
the New Jersey schools, combined with the absence of mandatory academic
standards, has meant the comparability in education has come to be defined as
equal expenditure. In New Jersey school
jargon, this is called the Abbott Decision.
Defining educational
equality as equal per pupil expenditures is a disaster both educationally and
financially. When equal education is
defined by dollars spent per pupil, there is no incentive in the system to
deliver higher educational quality at a lower cost. That leaves taxpayers paying as much for
schools where 50% of the students fail to graduate as they do for the Princetons, Rumsons, Tenaflys, Millburns and other
districts that deliver superior results.
Objective academic
benchmarks are essential, especially in the poorer performing districts. It is important that every first grade
teacher should be able to stand up in front of his or her class and say to the
students that they will be in first grade for life unless they master the
reading, writing and mathematics curriculum.
The Genesis of
Problems in Public Education
Only in the past half
century have high school diplomas become mandatory for getting and holding a
job. When I was a junior in high school,
a classmate suggested I was a fool for planning to attend college. “What can you do but be an English teacher?”
he said, suggesting instead that I get a job at the General Motors plant in
Tarrytown, New York where wages were $20 an hour.
Less than fifty years ago, a
person could drop out of high school, get a good job, buy a house, marry and
have kids. Today, a high school diploma
is a necessity. So, while the schools
are, in fact, better than they have ever been, the job they are being called
upon to do is bigger and more difficult than ever.
Taxpayers now expect the
schools to educate everyone to a high standard.
The schools themselves agree with that goal in theory, but refuse to
implement policies and programs to accomplish it. As usual, the inertia of the status quo
prevails.
Really closing the
achievement gap, really giving all of what should be 4 million high school
seniors (only 1.5 million even take the SATs) a first class education is a
pre-requisite to emerging from the current economic collapse. Those of us with decades of experience in
education have seen this coming. It is
like the converse of the dot com, stock market, or real estate bubble; it is
the school system implosion. Only 70% of
students nationwide are graduating from high school and the schools are open
only 50% of the year and the school day is only 7
hours long. Do the math.
The New Jersey
School Boards Association
School boards are required
by statute to belong to the New Jersey School Boards Association. The School Boards Association is a lobbying
group, allegedly representing the interests of the local boards. Local school boards are materially impacted
by the policies of the legislature and governor and need to have their voices,
your voices, heard in Trenton.
In fact, the School Boards
Association is a company union. Instead
of representing the opinions of the school boards to the legislature, it
represents the interests of the legislature to the school boards and,
effectively, prevents the school boards from organizing in their own interest.
On the surface, the School
Boards Association is a membership organization. All 555 regular local school boards are required
to belong and pay dues. Princeton pays
over $28,000 a year in dues. However,
the School Boards Association has managed to promulgate rules that mean that
only 9% of the school boards are needed to constitute a quorum for
business. This is accomplished in the
Association’s By-Laws by defining quorum as fifty boards from a majority of the
twenty-one counties being present. So, while it is called a school boards
association, the quorum is defined by as a majority of the counties
represented. Cute,
huh?
Every school board in New
Jersey has one vote in the School Boards Association. That means that Newark with over 40,000
students has the same number of votes as Roosevelt with 90 students, a 450 to 1
discrepancy. (Guess which district has
the minority students.) The 100 biggest
districts (18% of the total districts) have 58.1% of the students, 87.5% of the
black students and two-thirds of the Hispanic students. Meanwhile the smallest 278 districts (50% of
the school districts) have 11.67% of the students who are 75% white, 6.78%
black and 11.87% Hispanic.
In other words, New Jersey
has managed to create a New Jersey School Boards Association where, even though
white students are only 55% of the total student body in New Jersey, white
students are more than 75% of the student body in 57.65% of the districts and a
majority in 82.34% of the districts.
Of course, this blatant
unfairness was challenged in the courts by the AFL-CIO in 1966 soon after the Reynolds v. Sims decision that found
disparate sized state senate districts to be unconstitutional. The New Jersey Supreme Court upheld the
disproportionate voting power of the New Jersey School Boards Association by
saying that the Association was not a legislature, even though it spent
taxpayer funds.
So the policies of the
School Boards Association, which is really the policy software of the school
boards in New Jersey, is biased in favor of small, largely white, rural school
districts. To add insult to injury, the
School Boards Association is tasked by the legislature to teach ethics to new
school board members. Is it any wonder
the New Jersey public schools are a mess?
Soon after I was elected to
the school board in 2000, I proposed a resolution be sent to the School Boards
Association calling for books to be given to all poor children at birth. All studies show that exposure to letters,
numbers and words at as early an age as possible has a lifelong impact on
student achievement. Better preparation
of poor children for school is an economy and tax reduction issue. It is important to save money on special
education, one of the biggest items in the school budget. A $10 or $20 expenditure on learning
materials at birth can save thousands or tens of thousands of special education
costs when the child reaches school four or five years later.
My colleagues on the board
were unanimously supportive. The
resolution passed and was sent to the New Jersey School Boards Association
delegate assembly. To my utter shock and
amazement, the New Jersey School Boards Association, while freely admitting the
educational benefits of the idea, opposed it because the resolution had
suggested that the program be funded with the sales tax collected on
books. I had always been told not to
suggest a program without a funding source.
The School Boards Association claimed that using the sales tax on books
violated their policy opposing dedicated taxes, a
hypocritical position given its own income was a mandatory payment from the
school boards. Furthermore, the resolution
was about education, the taxing mechanism could have been removed. Opposition
to the proposal was spearheaded by Jim Dougherty of Tabernacle Township.
I was surprised and confused
until two years later, when Jim Dougherty became President of the New Jersey
School Boards Association. Then I got
the message (in case I hadn’t previously in Atlantic Highlands or when teaching
in Trenton.) To move ahead in the New
Jersey public school system, selling the children down the river while creating
jobs is the way ahead. Criticizing a
program, a lack of books, an uncompleted school, is an absolute no-no that will
lead to ostracism and a loss of position.
To get ahead, one has to constantly say everything is wonderful while
leaving the system basically unchanged.
In my more cynical moments,
I think the public schools are just a giant education certification system,
certifying the quality of the education that the students bring from the
home. Child 1, who grew up in a house with
an Oxford English Dictionary in every room, A, A, B, B+, A-, B, B-, A-. Child 2, who grew up in a home with no books,
C, C+, B, B-.D, C, D-.
There are other problems
with the School Boards Association, like its failure to follow its own by-laws
when it suits the leadership and the lack of a secret ballot in delegate
assembly votes. So, there can be no real
reform of the New Jersey schools without the reform or, preferably, the
abolition of the New Jersey School Boards Association. That would save the taxpayers $7 million
right off the bat, while improving education.
Memorandum of
Agreement
The biggest threat to the
quality of education and the safety of students is the Memorandum of Agreement
between the Attorney General and the Commissioner of Education that the local
school boards are supposed to approve annually.
This agreement seeks to turn schools and teachers into extensions of the
police forces, but without the constitutional and legal guarantees and
protections to which defendants are entitled in a criminal proceeding.
For example, the memorandum
requires teachers to turn over to the police students possessing drugs, and
promises that the teachers and administrators will maintain a “chain of
custody” of the contraband (so that the student can be successfully prosecuted
in court.) Worse, it seeks to hold
faculty liable for omissions of reporting.
So, if a student has or does something illegal, if a teacher or
administrator knew or should have known
(italics mine) about it, they may also be guilty of a crime. That raises the thorny question of whether a
student’s school work is now going to be examined for possible criminal
conduct. If a student writes a paper in
which someone is smoking dope, and then is subsequently arrested for pot, has
the teacher committed a crime because he or she should have known about the
drug use based on the paper the student wrote?
Protecting the safety of the
students is the schools’ highest priority.
The Memorandum of Agreement does just the opposite by destroying the
trust that needs to be established between students and teachers both for
educational and personal safety reasons.
If a student brings a weapon into school, the best protection is for one
of the student’s friends or acquaintances to alert the staff. Once teachers and administrators are
identified as being extensions of the police force because they are having
students arrested for pot, students will be loath to confide in them.
Let me give you an example
from the real world. Rafael Mack was the
community liason teacher at the Jefferson School in
Trenton, where I taught. One day a
student came into school with a basketball.
Mr. Mack asked for the basketball (playing basketball in the halls is a
danger to other students), the student refused, Mr. Mack forcibly took the ball
from the student. In the course of the
taking, the student fell, breaking his wrist.
Long story short, Mr. Mack was arrested for assault, and the principal
was arrested for covering up the assault.
Another example, Carl
Jordan, an Annapolis graduate and the only full-time African-American teacher
at Steinert High School in Hamilton was walking to
practice when he intervened in a fight between two girls. He pulled the bigger girl off the smaller
girl. The bigger girl happened to be the
daughter of a police officer. Long story
short, Mr. Jordan was arrested for inappropriate sexual contact because the
girl claimed Mr. Jordan’s body came in contact with hers while she was being
pulled away from the smaller girl. In
the end, the grand jury did not indict Mr. Jordan, but if you were a teacher,
wouldn’t you think twice now about intervening to protect the safety of the
other students given what happened to Mr. Mack and Mr. Jordan?
I know a guidance counselor who will not
comment on a girl’s inappropriate dress because he feels that any criticism can
be too easily flipped into being depicted as a sexually inappropriate
comment. When a girl is dressed
inappropriately, he just calls her parents.
And it is not just the
public schools. When nineteen year old
Rider University student Gary Devercilly died of
alcohol poisoning after a fraternity initiation, Mercer County Prosecutor
Joseph Bocchini tried to indict the school’s
administrators along with the president of the fraternity who was not even
present at the initiation and was at a different location studying for an
examination. A nineteen year old is an
adult, old enough to enlist in the Marines without parental consent. Now fraternity brothers and school
administrators are being held criminally accountable for the behavior of a
nineteen year old male.
This is not about a
politician trying to use the prosecutor’s office to persecute black teachers
and administrators or build a national reputation by being the first to convict
college administrators for a student death.
This is about money.
Pensions
In
June, 2007, the State of New Jersey pension funds were valued at $81
billion. At that time, actuaries said
the plan was underfunded by $30 billion.
The actuarial assumptions on which the pension plan is based anticipate
an annual return of 8.6%.
In
the seventeen months between June 2007 and November 2008, the value of the
pension funds fell $24 billion to $57 billion.
In other words, New Jersey’s pension funds are now underfunded by 50%.
The
state has only two options: levy the taxes during a recession to raise the $50
billion shortfall (total annual state revenues is currently $30 billion) from
taxpayers already reeling under one of the highest tax burdens in the nation;
or find a way to cut the pension benefits or, more precisely, cut the number of
people receiving them.
Last
fall, Governor Corzine’s ethics reform provided for
public officials convicted of crimes to lose their state pensions. It is always fun to beat up on elected
officials. When people hear “public
official” they immediately think: Mayor, Governor, Congressman, Assembly
representative, zoning board member, council member, etc. the elected and
appointed officials who are constantly being investigated. Naturally, depriving these elected officials
of their pensions if they commit crimes has widespread support.
School
teachers and administrators are also public officials. Like the military, they can lose their jobs
and licenses for unbecoming conduct outside their official duties. I think the Memorandum of Agreement combined
with unethical, politically ambitious prosecutors is designed to create crimes
of omission so teachers and administrators can be deprived of their pensions. This was common practice in the 1970’s when
employees in private industry vested their pensions after 25 years. It was not uncommon for the employee to be
fired at 24 years and 9 months, just to deprive him of his or her pension. This kind of abuse led to pension reform.
Regardless
the Memorandum of Agreement subverts the educational purposes of the schools
and compromises the safety of the students.
Malfeasance versus Nonfeasance
The
real problem with the schools is not that there is corruption, but there is
non-performance. No one takes
bribes. It is just that a lot of people
collect salaries without doing their jobs.
This problem can not be solved without mandatory academic standards.
Silencing Critics
The
major reason obvious changes do not happen is that the schools have found a way
to keep critics quiet. The parents of
children in the schools can always be blackmailed by threats of not letting
their children into the best classes, or by being given the worst teachers. If that fails, there is always the threat of
being prosecuted for “harassment.”
Saying
they are being harassed has become the favorite method of silencing government
critics. Filing suit against critics for
harassment, defamation or libel is commonplace.
There is even a term of art for this process,
it is called a SLAPP suit (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation).
The
ethics training by the School Boards Association is another way change is
thwarted. The first thing you will have
to do as a newly elected school board member is spend an all expense paid
weekend at a luxury hotel being “trained” in ethics by the School Boards
Association. If a private firm did the
same thing, it would be called bribery unless you reported it as a gift. This is why newly elected officials almost
always behave just like the person they replaced. The system is designed to co-opt newcomers
into the system. I avoided this by
reimbursing the district for the cost of my training. Therefore, instead of the fancy dinners
making me more pliable, then just made me angry and more hostile. Education dollars should not be spent wining
and dining new board members in fancy hotels.
So,
there are multiple mechanisms in place for ensuring schools do not change.
Being a School Board Member
Serving
on a local school board is an interesting, worthwhile experience. It is also time consuming, expensive and
frustrating. The legislature has been
working overtime to make school board service even more onerous by giving the
School Boards Association a bigger role than ever in the training of school
board members.
Nevertheless,
there is no task more important than straightening out the schools. As I have tried to show in this letter, the
problems are huge and the need for honest, interested school board members is
urgent.
I
am not leaving the school board because I have given up. I am leaving the school board because my more
than forty years of involvement and experience with public schools can be
better used in other venues.
Only
10 signatures of registered borough voters are required to become a candidate
in the school board election. Petitions
are available from Board Secretary Stephanie Kennedy at the Administration
Building at 25 Valley Road. Phone: (609) 806-4224 e-mail:stephanie_kennedy@prs.k12.nj.us The petition must be submitted before the
filing deadline of 4:00 p.m., Monday, March 2nd,2009 at
the School Board office at 25 Valley Road.
Do not be intimidated by the Election Law Enforcement Commission paperwork,
this organization deals only with campaign contribution reporting requirements
which are inoperative unless significant amounts of money are raised and spent
(which will not be the case in the school board race.) Remember, most of the administrative
procedures are designed to favor experienced political party functionaries and
discourage ordinary voters like you from exercising your full rights in the
political process. Don’t be fooled. There are only about 500 school board
election voters in Princeton Borough.
With a telephone tree of ten friends you can contact them all in person,
for free.
How
big is the time commitment, is the question I am asked the most about being a
school board member. The answer is, as
much or as little as you want to give.
The position is unpaid. The
minimum is to attend the public meetings once a month. On the other hand, you can turn it into a
full time job. School board members
receive a sizable packet of information from the superintendent weekly. It is essential to be interested education
and like the kids. That is the only real
requirement. It also helps to be
familiar with some aspect of schools.
Another important consideration is to discuss running with your
spouse. Being a school board member
means at least one night a month when you won’t be home.
The
first thing you will discover as a school board member is that everyone is
trying to run you. All kinds of people
will say, you have to do this, or attend that, or come
to this meeting, whatever. When I was first elected to the school board, a
friend told me, “Just remember who put you there.” It was a piece of advice I never forgot. I was on the school board because of you,
because of your votes. I worked for
you. The entire structure of government,
the training by the New Jersey School Boards Association, the perks and
privileges that come with the office are all designed for one thing, to make
you a member of the club, of the inner circle, and to make you forget who put you
on the board in the first place.
I have a petition and would be happy
to answer any questions and help anyone who wishes to run. Give me a call at (609) 688-9320 or e-mail me
at jleinsdorf@monmouth.com.
Thank
you for the privilege of allowing me to serve on the Princeton Regional School
Board these last nine years. I hope you
have been satisfied with my work.
Joshua Leinsdorf