Bidding for Books at Spencer School

On Friday, December 2nd Spencer School (207 Westfield Street, Middletown) will hold its first ever “Bidding for Books”, a goods and services auction to raise money for new library books. Earlier this year, the library was renamed the Jane Tewksbury Chapdelaine Library, in memory of the beloved teacher who passed away in 2009. Unfortunately, many of the books are in dire shape and without funds in the budget for the library, Spencer is looking at creative ways to purchase new books.

The public is invited to preview the items beginning at 6:00 p.m. with both the silent and live auction running from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Some of the great items available include:

• hand crafted items,
• local restaurant gift certificates,
• WOW gym membership,
• homemade decorated 3-tier cake,
• vocalist for a wedding,
• a cooking class,
• themed baskets,
• a home gym system,
• and much, much more.

There will also be an appearance by Ms. Connecticut, who will be donating a signed book to the auction.

We hope the community will come out and help support this great cause!

Thank you,
Gisela Carlson
PTA Secretary

Principal Commends Moody Students and Teachers for "Smooth Transition"

Moody School began its evacuation at approximately 9:45am this morning when drywall cracks were noticed by school personnel. Principal Yolande Eldridge said that her primary concern was for student safety, so she decided to move all students and teachers to Moody's designated evacuation site as per Moody's evacuation plan.

This plan calls for Moody students to be bused to Spencer School, and Eldridge supervised the loading of buses by class so that students would stay together in their class groups. Once the buses were loaded and all students were accounted for, Eldridge stayed at Moody to issue an initial Honeywell Alert and to meet with the various groups called in to inspect Moody's condition (Westfield Fire Marshall, police, Facilities Director Ken Jackson, and city officials). "I deliberately waited to send the Honeywell Alert because I wanted to personally supervise loading the buses so that we totally and calmly moved the students over to our designated evacuation site."

Eldridge also said that teachers were instructed to bring work with them and that cafeteria staff were told they would have to serve Moody students lunch using Spencer's cafeteria.

"I want to commend everyone involved for the very smooth and orderly day we had. Spencer's Principal, Mrs. Clark, did a great job getting the kids settled. We didn't have any anxiousness from our students. The kids were warm, dry, engaged and they had lunch. I didn't see any reason for parents to have a mandatory early pick-up today."

The student perspective on today's excitement wasn't exactly as cheerful. A 5th grader interviewed for this story had this to say: "I was kind of nervous and frustrated because we were stuck for a long time." The student went on to summarize the day like this:

"we got on the buses at about 9:45 after being told we were having a winter fire drill. About half of us went to the cafeteria at Spencer and the other half went to the gym. We sat around for a long time and eventually got some lined paper to draw on. Then we had lunch and they switched out the groups so we got to go to the gym. We sat there for a while and eventually got to watch a movie."

The student also said that the teachers stood around in the hall and checked on things every now and then, but there really wasn't anything to do but sit and wait. This student was also told that parents could come and get their children, but was confused when very few parents actually did show up.

Superintendent Michael Frechette had no explanation for why the district website had an update at 9:27am on snow removal and an update at 1:53pm on activities cancellations, but nothing at all mentioned about Moody's or Bielefield's evacuations. When asked if there were any plans to schedule specific Q&A time or some other kind of deliberate communication with parents to address concerns over snow days, building integrity, etc., Frechette replied, "We will post on website as well as Honeywell."

If you are a Moody parent or teacher, or even a Spencer teacher, and you would like to summarize your experience (or your child's experience) today, please comment on this story. While it is important to know from the administrator's perspective that the technical details of the evacuation worked, it's also important to acknowledge what the children thought and experienced as well as what parents expected to know. Was it realistic to expect any instructional learning to occur after a full evacuation? Were teachers prepared for that? Did it actually happen? Did parents feel comfortable with the notifications they received? What went well today and what should be done differently next time?

Thank you in advance for your constructive comments!

Cloudy with a chance of Redistricting

Macdonough has been getting a lot of ink lately -- I thought you might like to see some photos to go along with all the chatter.

Last Thursday, we had "Movie Night" at the school - it was suggested by a dad who came to a PTA meeting a few weeks ago, and everyone jumped in to help make it a party.

About 100 families gathered in the school cafeteria and gym. Some wore their pajamas and set up camp to watch "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" while snacking on popcorn (thanks Destinta!).



You can see Reggie Holley and Marilyn Dunkley dishing out the popcorn to a line of patient kids.



For those who preferred some grown-up company, there were lots of parents in the cafeteria enjoying a spread put together by Taneone and Rebecca. There were meatballs, of course, and lots of fresh fruit and veggies.



Of course, I couldn't resist the opportunity to do some organizing too, trying to make sure that all the families know about the redistricting vote on April 6th. We're losing 80 children at Macdonough. Most of the kids who would be leaving us live less than half a mile from Spencer -- and well over a mile from Macdonough. That doesn't make this any easier. I talked to one mom who is slated to move and she said, "No, my child won't be moving. I just had his conference and his teacher says he's more than a year ahead of his grade's reading level. I won't risk losing that and I don't think we'll find it anywhere else. We just won't be leaving. That just won't be happening."

Crazy world, huh? Some people are desperate not to come to Macdonough, and some are desperate not to leave.

So that was Movie Night. I didn't get to see much of the movie, but my kid had a great time, sitting next to his friend-since-kindergarten who'll probably be moving to Spencer next year.

I imagine that there will be a lot of people at the Board of Ed meeting on April 6th (7 pm in the Middletown High auditorium). Some will be for the redistricting - and some against. In the meantime, I'm concentrating on celebrating the community we have together now, even as we get ready for change.

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.

Oddfellows Children's Circus Postponed Until Noon Saturday

The annual Oddfellows Children's Circus, scheduled for a performance tonight at Spencer School has been postponed due to inclement weather.

The show is rescheduled for a performance tomorrow, Saturday August 1, at noon, at Spencer School.

Board of Ed meets with JCJ

The Board of Education had a brief special meeting on Monday night to hear from JCJ Architecture about the District Utilization Study, and conduct other business in executive session. At the meeting, Jim LaPosta from JCJ stood in for Project Manager Greg Smolley. He started out with a general overview of his firm's qualifications and then described the process they are using to study the balance between the demographics of the student body and school buildings. As readers of the Eye know, the firm is charged both with making short-term recommendations about the overcrowding at Moody School (for 2009-10), and then producing a long-term study on grade configuration, racial balance and facility use throughout the district.

According to the presentation, here's where things stand:

At this point, JCJ has visited about half of the elementary schools in town, cataloging the classroom space, reviewing the other facilities and learning about the demographics of the student body. Also, the firm has held two "visioning workshops", first at Moody School and then at Macdonough.

Three of the Board members have attended the visioning workshops: Corinne Gill, Sheila Daniels and Ryan Kennedy. Some of the others were less familiar with the process that the consultant is using and LaPosta took the opportunity to point out that a simple number crunching of building space vs. students only takes a few weeks, but it is too blunt a tool for understanding how the schools fit into our community. He said that the visioning workshops help the consultants listen to what people really want from the schools overall. This ranges from determining the local appetite and/or tolerance for spending on school buildings to the opportunities to open the schools for many more community uses.

Jay Keiser noted that a new visioning workshop has been added for Spencer School on April 22nd. He voiced concern that if Spencer was now facing an impact from redistricting like Moody and Macdonough, then the parents should be told that specifically. This is a bit of an awkward situation, since the consultants have repeatedly said that no assumptions can be made about which schools will be affected by the short-term redistricting plan -- in fact, they are not yet saying that any changes should be made at all. Moody and Macdonough families were reassured that all the elementary schools would be studied for excess capacity, not just their two buildings. LaPosta did state that the assessment of each school's physical capacity would be completed within the next few weeks, and would be considered in the short-term recommendations.

Let's move to the question of timelines. In a slight case of "deadline creep", JCJ now says that they will have the short-term recommendations by mid to late May, or at least by the end of May. Before that time, they will have a visioning workshop with teachers, in addition to the above-mentioned Spencer School workshop. (Revision: After publication, I learned that there will also be a visioning workshop at Snow School on April 30th.) There is also a community-wide meeting planned for April 27th at Woodrow Wilson Middle School, but it is not yet clear if there will be preliminary recommendations at that session, as was suggested at the Macdonough workshop.

Board members questioned the timing of the long-term study, which is promised to arrive by early winter of next year. It was pointed out that any significant changes for 2010-2011 would probably take months to consider and implement. The request was made to get that report back by late Fall 2009, and LaPosta seemed amenable to considering that.

From over here in the cheap seats, I'm starting to worry about waiting another 6-7 weeks before the short-term study is released. There will be tremendous pressure on the Board to make their decision quickly, because of all the logistical changes involved in redistricting families and moving classrooms around. But there will also need to be a period of shock, community feedback and consensus about the decision, not to mention an opportunity to consider the practicality of the recommendations. Stop me if you've already seen this movie, but I think that's the part where parents show up in droves to complain and people are up in arms about the lack of transparency, poor planning and hasty decision-making. I'm all for blue-sky visioning, but I hope the nuts and bolts analysis of the capacity of our buildings and the size of our student body will be released as soon as possible. Surely our short-term solutions will come from that information. Then we could all take a breath and consider our vision for the school system without the cloud of immediate re-districting over our heads.

Voting at Spencer School

At 5:20PM, the Parent Teacher Organization at Spencer School had to resort to selling girl scout cookies, having completely run out of all the customary home-made delectables at their election day bake sale.  Both Districts voting there had nearly 70% of the eligible voters turn out (District 2: 434/637; District 6: 844/1300).  The numbers do not even reflect those voters who voted by absentee ballot.  Two council members who were serving as election workers, Hope Kasper and James Streeto, said they had never heard of such an enormous turnout.