Bielefield Elementary School PTA Pasta Dinner & Art Auction

A submission from Eye reader & Bielefield Mom Jane Majewski who documented the Pasta Dinner to share specifically with the Eye.

Bielefield Elementary School PTA Pasta Dinner and Art Auction a Huge Success!Want to know what happens when fifth graders combine art and pasta? An amazing night of fun that raised over $550 towards the fifth grade year book budget.

Fifth graders stepped up to the plate to serve pasta and meatballs to over 92 customers. They were donned in aprons and smiles as they served their school community. The pasta portion was an amazing success according to Pedro Herrera, a PTA member and co-chair of the event, due to the Middletown kitchen staff Maryanne Corvo. "MaryAnn was extremely helpful supervising the volunteers in the kitchen, making certain that safety codes were adhered to in an extremely efficient manner". MaryAnn Corvo is also a parent of a Bielefield student.

Samantha Gagnon a fifth grade student reported that the art auction brought in a whopping $403.50 towards their yearbook budget. Samantha's mother, Ellie Gagnon was the other co-chair who was pleased with the turn out. The artwork was beautiful and included individual pieces that students had created as well as class projects that were made with each of the fifth grade teachers. Those fifth grade teachers, Ms. Monnes, Ms Garrity and Ms. Carta were also in attendance and were beaming with pride of their students accomplishments.

Great Job PTA, Fifth grade teachers and class of 2012!

Jane Majewski

Board of Ed Frustrated With State "Embargo" of CMT Results

At last night's Board of Education regular meeting, Superintendent Michael Frechette was still unable to discuss Middletown's 2011 CMT scores. Frechette told BOE members that the State Board of Education had released the embargo on 9/1, but then "re-embargoed" the scores on 9/6. At a Superintendents' Group meeting, Frechette said three reasons were offered for this continuing embargo:

• The State doesn't have the capacity to finish processing the scores
• A school in Waterbury was caught cheating and the whole District has to retake the test, so the final state results can't be processed without the retake results
• Other states are starting to "not participate" in No Child Left Behind because of disagreement over benchmark levels. CT has asked for a change in the regulations because now 81% of the districts in CT are on the NCLB list because the federal benchmarks were increased. If left at 80% proficiency (meaning 80% of kids are at or above proficiency on the test), all Middletown schools would be off the list.

Several interesting threads came out of this "I can't talk about scores" stance. First, on top of being identified as a school needing improvement, Bielefield Elementary School also has an overcrowding issue in its two Kindergarten classes. Principal Jeff Fournier was asked to describe to the board how this situation is being handled, and he described the 6 certified teachers, 2 intervention teachers and 2 paras who have been brought in to assist the two classes. (More on this subject in a separate story - still waiting for some additional information.)

Second, during the (first) public session, MacDonough parent (and BOE Candidate) Ed McKeon told the BOE that he had called the Freedom of Information Agency and was told there was no such thing as an "embargo" of public information. Once information is in the hands of a State Agency, it becomes public information and has to be released. McKeon also questioned how only Title I families could be offered the choice to attend a new school (since 2 Middletown schools have to offer choice after not meeting adequate yearly progress two years in a row) when the policy states choice has to be offered to Title I schools. This would mean that ALL the families at a particular school would have to be offered choice, not just singled out families. McKeon had a list of questions for BOE members and he chided them for not being more concerned about policies being made in the Superintendent's office without BOE oversight (since the scores can't be talked about...).

Finally, several BOE members repeatedly questioned Superintendent Frechette about what would happen if Middletown "violated" the embargo, and if Frechette knew when the embargo would be lifted. "I don't know, and I'm frustrated too...you have as much information as I do," commented Frechette to BOE member Sheila Daniels. BOE member Corinne Gill couldn't see how principals and parents being offered school choice could know what was going on if the scores were embargoed, and Frechette replied that he was allowed to give info to those two groups but no one else. "I find this unacceptable, " Gill finished. Frechette just shrugged and replied it wasn't his rule. BOE member Ryan Kennedy asked BOE Chairman Ted Raczka to send a letter to the State Board of Ed, asking why there was an embargo, what the penalty for violating the embargo would be, and when it would end. Raczka agreed, but also commented, "If you aggravate the State Board of Ed, they can find any number of subtle ways to remind you of the proper relationship and the children will suffer..."

After this comment, BOE member Sally Boske told the board that she knows other districts have sent letters, but haven't had any luck with responses. "I don't think we're going to get a response, but we should be on record anyway." Boske went on to comment, "Don't forget we're also in between Commissioners, so there's no help going that route either." Corinne Gill then asked where the embargo is authorized in state statutes, and stated that "It really scares me that we are allowing ourselves to be held hostage by the State BOE." Boske replied, "I have confidence that Michael Frechette is going what he's supposed to do."

The meeting then turned to other subjects, like how long it would take to start a rehab of Keigwin Middle School. Director of Facilities Ken Jackson said it's about a 4 year process to have a feasibility study, to get the grant from the state, and to set up a building committee. BOE member Ryan Kennedy asked whether there was going to be a Facilities Committee established (as part of one of the recommendations from the re-districting process) to create a 20 - 25 year facilities plan. BOE Chairman Raczka said yes, but that nothing would be done until after the election in November.

None of the committees (Budget, Communications, Curriculum, Policy) have met, and most alluded to not meeting until after the election. BOE Member Sheila Daniels commented, "It's not OK that committees aren't meeting just because there's an election coming up. School has started regardless of elections, and there's work to be done."

The only happy news of the whole evening was that none of the Middletown school properties sustained any direct damage from Hurricane Irene. Several branches or trees come down, but nothing that damaged a building. There were other minor leaks or cases of minor flooding, but nothing significant.

Commentary:

I didn't think that politics were supposed to play an overt role in how education operates in a town, but that was clearly the case last night. First, there was the drama between BOE Candidate Ed McKeon and BOE Chairman Ted Raczka. Members of the public have 3 minutes to address the board, and McKeon clearly wasn't finished speaking when Raczka informed him time was up. McKeon kept talking, saying he was almost finished, and Raczka quickly called the meeting into recess and then jumped up and turned the TV feed off. In all the BOE meetings I've seen, I've never seen the TV turned off when someone tries to keep talking past the time limit. Raczka usually bangs his gavel and tells the person he or she is out of order, but I've never seen such a quick move from "Your time's up" to an immediate recess, and the TV has never been off. In fact, BOE member Corinne Gill questioned Raczka's actions later in the meeting, saying, "When did we decide it was our policy to turn the TV off if someone exceeds their time?" Raczka could have told McKeon he was free to continue his comments for another 3 minutes at the 2nd public session, but he didn't mention that at all.

Secondly, to hear that no committee work is going on because there's an election in two months and the membership of the board is changing or might change is just insanity. Add to that the fact that the Superintendent is making changes, based on CMT scores, to how the system is running, but he can't tell the board what he's doing or why. There is an overwhelming force being brought to bear on the 2 overcrowded kindergartens at Bielefield, yet it is unclear that the same approach is being done for the overcrowded 4th grade at Moody. Furthermore, BOE Chairman Raczka commented that he wanted to make sure that "Bielefield was up to the level of quality at all of our other schools, " and this left me pondering some math and its implications: two teachers require the assistance of 10 other individuals for about 50 kids...

Don't get me wrong - I'm not suggesting that our kids aren't worth it. I'm suggesting, and I fully admit I don't have the class size numbers in front of me yet, that the effort seems out of proportion to the resources available to every other class in town. This puzzles me, and either there's an answer that will be revealed once the mysterious embargo is released, or I've got some digging to do.

In the end, this is supposed to be about doing our best for our kids, and it seems like there's a mix of "enforced" non-supervision and election "hide-and-seek" going on (BOE members are hiding from their responsibilities while voters are seeking answers and results). Even if the state did succeed in lowering the CMT benchmark, that's just a paper result. It doesn't change the fact that we should be working toward EVERY child meeting the benchmark, and this effort has to continue whether there are elections or not.

Bielefield Elementary Evacuated to Wesley

Parents of Bielefield students were just notified via the Honeywell Alert System that their children are being evacuated to Wesley School. Neither the Superintendent or BOE Chairman Ted Raczka could be reached for comment in the last hour. There is no additional information available on the district's website as of 1:55pm.

Anyone with additional specific information is encouraged to comment on this article. The top priority at the moment is our children's safety and the accurate spread of information. Thank you!

Architects Team with Bielefield Elementary & Help Hungry

Local architect Sean Donadio of Middletown and designer/job captain Chris Speeg, both from Bianco Giolitto Weston Architects of Middletown, along with several collegues, teamed up with teachers and 15 students from Bielefield Elementary School to participate in the 9th Annual AIA (American Institure of Architects) CANstruction design competition. Architecture firms and schools from across CT came together to fundraise money to purchase canned food items and transform them into sculpture. Although the amount of cans collected by the groups were visibly signifigantly less than the previous year, more firms than last year participated; an interesting event as many design firms across the state this year, are experiencing record lay- offs. Unemployment becoming cruel reality for some perhaps inspired more firms to participate even if as best they could. The efforts on display at the competition, like that of the Bielefield team are still outstanding achievements- all contributions in the thousands of cans! All food items collected by each participating firm/school team were then donated to the Connecticut Food Share to be distributed to the areas where the firms an schools are located; meaning the majority of the items Bielefield collected will stay within Middletown and likely be distributed by Amazing Grace Food Pantry. This year the competition was held May 15th in the gallery at the new Hartford Connecticut Children's Science Museum. The award ceremony which will announce winner's of awards such as "Best Use of Labels" and "Most Item's Collected." is May 19th and the sculptures will be on display through the end of the month to visitors of the museum.

The team raised through donation, fundraising, and B.O.E. contribution $3,400 and were able to buy and collect 5,195 canned items. New this year, students visited Amazing Grace Food Pantry, and were able to see where their donations went and helped to sort cans. The students, all of which are between 3-5 grade, learned that families are only allowed to go to the pantry every 30 days and how so many people depended on donations to this facility for survival.

The theme for this years sculpture was SHARING HOPE- GIVING RESPECT-HAVING- PRIDE, a motto at Bielefield School that all students try to abide by. Co-captain Chris Speeg compiled student sketches of their ideas of these concepts into a sinlge sketch and designed the flame. Teachers and designers met with students several times after school to teach them how come up with a 3D concept, to build safely, and work together. A ring of silver pea cans and blue tuna cans surrounding the inner flame made of red tomato cans and orange potato cans was designed to spell out these words. At the build, student's donned red tee shirts and hats to show team unity. During the build, I witnessed team co captain Sean Donadio and teacher Colleen Monnes recieve many compliments from other firm/school team leaders on how well behaved the Bielefield students were. Most other teams consisted of middle school and high school students. Students worked for 5 hours in 15 minute rotations of teams of 5 students with 2 adults at a time to complete the sculpture in a 10ft x 10 ft area. While 5 students built at a time, others worked together to pass cans into the build area, sort, and un pack boxes. Other students were in charge or making sure labels were facing the right way; no one was left with nothing to do! It was a beautiful & chaotic scene. Scupltures remain on display to visitors at the Children's Science Museum in Hartford through June. See the CT AIA.org website for more photos. Go Bielefield Bobcats!

School Choice for Bielefield, Snow, & Spencer

I wrote to Barbara Senges at the Board of Ed about the recent news that three Middletown Elementary schools will now have a choice option, due to their CMT scores over the past two years. She got right back to me with the following information, and I'm printing it verbatim so that you get all the details:

From Barbara Senges, Asst. Superintendent, Middletown Schools:

By Federal Law, No Child Left Behind, school districts are required to offer school choice to parents of students who attend Title I schools that have not made AYP – Adequate Yearly Progress, for two consecutive years and are identified as “In Need of Improvement”. Bielefield, Snow and Spencer are now so identified following the results of the 2009 CMT taken this past spring. Late last week we received a letter from the State department that we are obligated to notify the parents at these schools 14 days before the start of school (yesterday) that they are entitled to transfer to another school because of the Federal Law.

The law, however, gives us the right to choose which schools are open based on space availability. For this reason, we are offering parents at these three schools to transfer students to Wesley (Kindergarten, grades 1 and 3 – 20 students) and Farm Hill (Kindergarten grades 2, 3, 4 and 5 -36 students). The openings at different grade levels in each school vary. All parents need to notify the principal of their school (Bielefield, Snow or Spencer) by Wednesday August 26 of their decision. Each principal is having an informational meeting at his/her school on Monday August 24 at 6:00. If our requests exceed our openings, we will conduct a lottery, giving preference to low-achieving students. The decision to transfer is final and once a student transfers he/she cannot request return to his/her sending school in subsequent years. It is also possible that a parent who has younger children who are not presently in school may not be able to send these youngsters to the new school, if Bielefield, Spencer or Snow (the sending schools) are subsequently removed from the Needs Improvement list and are not eligible for school choice.

The letter also states that the district is only responsible for transportation for transfer students who are eligible for “free or reduced” lunch and are also low achieving. Anyone else who requests a transfer must supply their own transportation.


As I understand it, parents who are in those schools have already received this information by mail, but perhaps this post will be helpful to families that are checking Middletown news while on vacation.

Teenagers in town

For a teen who is ready to get involved in our community, there is no shortage of opportunity -- and there are a lot of advantages. That was the message at Monday night's District Parent Partnership Advisory meeting in the new Middletown High library.

Justin Carbonella, coordinator of the city's Youth Services Bureau, led a panel of Middletown High students as they talked about their experiences with volunteering in town. A mix of parents and administrators made up the audience.



The students spoke about a wide range of community activities, from Link Crew, which helps freshmen adjust to high school, to Dragons in Action, which jumps in on community service projects all over town. One Middletown High senior talked about what a kick he got out of mentoring at Bielefield elementary: "They just think it's so cool to hang out with us, just shoot baskets or talk or whatever."

During question-and-answer though, some parents dug a little deeper into the question of what makes some Middletown High students get involved in activities while other students just hang back. Certainly the kids on this panel are involved in lots of teams, clubs and other school projects. What makes it work for them?

These active kids pointed to three main things that helped them get involved:

•first, these kids have parents who support them, giving rides and engaging them in service projects from an early age. One Vo-Ag student named Julia made the following impromptu and eloquent statement: "I can't imagine what my life would be like if my mom had always said no instead of yes. The thing parents have to remember is that every experience a child goes through helps build who they are."

•second, it helps if their friends are also involved in the activities, letting them multi-task socializing and service. Along these lines, any activity that offers "pizza" was a winner for senior Steven Benevidas.

•third, it takes a teacher or some other adult mentor to link a student with the right kinds of community service opportunities. Several of the students named their relationship with Mr. Carbonella or Mrs. Neidmann (MHS school psychologist) as the key step in getting them started with volunteering in the community.

Bringing more kids into the community service projects at MHS is clearly a priority for Mr. Carbonella. And I hope he acts on the suggestion of one parent, Larry, who noted that community service shouldn't always be something done away from school for some other people -- maybe some of the more reluctant or inexperienced students could get involved in projects that happen right after school for 20 minutes or so. As he noted, a lot of kids can fall through the cracks when getting involved means getting a ride or showing up in the evening or on weekends.

The session also included a presentation on the Change ReACTion project, by MHS students Nyanda Maille, Pauravi Chhaya and Anne Machuga. With the help of a powerpoint show, they described the work that their group did last summer to study the way that the media affects the relationship between teens and adults. Through interviews and surveys with adults and teens in Middletown, they examined teen stereotypes. I appreciated how much attention they gave to asking good questions -- some of them were intriguing. For example, they asked participants to recall the latest media story that they had heard involving teenagers -- 72% remembered something negative and just 18% remembered something positive. Parents in the room were drawn to the slide that showed that more than 20% of adults admitted to "stereotyping" teens who were visiting their child in their home. As one parent said, you don't want to think you are making assumptions, but maybe you are.



At the end of the presentations, many of the adults encouraged Justin Carbonella to get a wider audience for the good work that these teens are doing. And at least one elementary adminstrator in the room was ready to recruit these active MHS students as mentors and role models for her students.


To learn more about the work of the Youth Services Bureau, check out Justin Carbonella's blog.