Board of Ed Flies through Agenda

The Board of Education met Tuesday night, February 9, completing its regular agenda in an hour and then moving into executive session (that's why there was nothing broadcast after 8pm).

In District Highlights, Grants Coordinator Elizabeth Nocera reviewed the Middle School 21st Century Afterschool Program. Thanks to a new funding source from the Liberty Bank Foundation, students will be able to visit Middlesex College, Wesleyan University and the CT Science Center.

Superintendent Michael Frechette gave board members copies of the weather forecast, noting that school would probably be canceled the following day (Wednesday, Feb. 10). Frechette also commented that without a snow day, the last day of school is supposed to be June 18th. However, a snow day would move the last day to Monday, June 21st. For Keigwin, because of the four days missed due to swine flu, the last day of school would be June 24. Frechette then told the board that any more snow days would put Keigwin in danger of not having any more days in June to make up lost school (remember the budget cycle, and thus the school year, runs from July 1 - June 30).

The State is coming to Middletown on March 15, 16 and 18 to review the District's Food Service and associated policies. The Board voted to approve Policy 6142.101 (Student Nutrition and Physical Wellness Policy), bringing written regulations into alignment with actual district policies. Board member Jay Keiser spoke of parental concerns he's heard about the amount of exercise in elementary schools and the quality of the lunch choices, suggesting that "we should do a better job of communicating the nutritional value of our lunch menu." BOE member Sally Boske replied that the Food Service Program does have to meet State guidelines, so there is a fairly strict measure of control already in place.

The Ad Hoc Feasibility Committee (headed by Sally Boske) reported that its three subcommittees have been meeting weekly and that the full committee hopes to have a report to the BOE by March 1st. Boske commented that she believes the board "will be pleasantly pleased" with the committee's recommendations. (In case you forgot, the Feasibility committee is looking at the recommendations from the JCJ Architecture report concerning a number of changes that Middletown is considering. These potential changes could include redistricting and consolidating the preschool programs, but they also have to address the fact that Macdonough Elementary School is out of compliance with Sheff v. O'Neil.)

Superintendent Michael Frechette told the Board that he spoke with the State Commissioner of Education earlier in the day, and that Middletown will be getting conditional approval for the plan it submitted to the State Board of Ed (outlining how it will resolve Macdonough's racial imbalance issues). Essentially, the plan lacks specifics, but Frechette commented "that we already knew that," since the Ad Hoc Feasibility committee is still working and the Board won't make a final decision on anything until the committee work is done.

Finally, the BOE voted to establish an Ad Hoc committee to consider creation of a plaque honoring retired teachers.

I thought tonight's meeting was notable for what WASN'T talked about...yes, there is a committee with 3 subcommittees that is working on the JCJ recommendations, but there has been no general discussion between all the members of the board of education in a public setting that indicates what the board's priorities are. All the State cares about is how we resolve Macdonough's racial imbalance, but solving that piece of the puzzle exacerbates the problems at Moody and elsewhere. Still, if one piece of the puzzle affects everything else, we do have to start someplace, and the board ought to have clearly recognizable, prioritized goals that the community can understand and embrace. Tangible suggestions from the Ad Hoc committee are necessary, especially given the number of community players involved. However, the board won't be able to evaluate those suggestions if it doesn't know where it's trying to go, and it won't be able to explain its decision to concerned parents and taxpayers if it can't articulate what principles guided the decision-making process in the first place.

So, while a short BOE meeting was nice on a cold winter's eve, and this EYE reporter had an opportunity to visit and catch up with another EYE reporter, both of us commented to each other that we would have preferred a meeting with depth and substance and a genuine hashing out of the issues. Middletown is out of time with the State, and the 2010-2011 school year lurks ever closer...

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.

Macdonough's Turn

On Thursday night, nearly 50 people gathered in the Macdonough School cafeteria to go through the same "visioning" exercises about our school system as Moody School did on Wednesday night. JCJ Architects are taking seriously their charge to understand what families in town want for the schools -- and at times it was a bit of a struggle to keep people focused on that lofty question when there are so many immediate concerns about possible redistricting for next year.

If you've been following this issue you know that Moody has had larger classes in recent years, and the Superintendent has promised parents that a solution will be found before next year. JCJ was retained to make recommendations by May on this short-term issue, as well as producing a longer-term plan for redistricting all the schools, considering the capacity of each school, the configuration of grades and compliance with Connecticut's racial imbalance law which requires that no school can be more than 25% higher or lower than the district average for minority students.

Greg Smolley from JCJ stressed that he has not been given any directive from the Board of Ed or the Superintendent's Office about what solutions this study should recommend -- he says he has not been hired to justify some plan that is already in the works. But one parent bluntly put it to the crowd: "I'm not buying it." She voiced out loud what many in the room were murmuring among themselves: the suspicion that Macdonough alone might be asked to absorb the overcrowding at Moody School. Smolley didn't back down -- he said that in all the studies he had done, all up and down the east coast, he had never been given less pressure from an administration, and he said "you can believe that or not, I have no reason to lie to you."

I was reassured by his commitment that although meetings are only being held at Macdonough and Moody schools, the short-term recommendations will in fact consider the capacity of all eight elementary schools in town. That means that every school will be reviewed for the potential to take more students, either by moving uses within the building to create new classrooms or by increasing class size -- if in fact JCJ determines that some Moody families will need to move. Although it was a hard sell, Smolley maintained that the only reason that Moody and Macdonough were having community meetings was that they chose the largest building and the smallest building to study, to see if that would give them some insight at the beginning of the process. They will eventually hold meetings at all the schools.

In the context of all that stress, I'd like to report that the visioning process itself was truly a pleasure, primarily because of our lively and interesting table of 8: five current Macdonough parents, one Moody parent who lives in the North End, one Macdonough teacher and one staffer, both of whom live in the neighborhood. As fishmuscle and JAM wrote on Thursday's Eye, our task was to rank 9 items on how they affect the schools. No shrinking violets here -- each person was willing to speak up for their beliefs about what makes a school a good place. Two people were all for putting a higher priority on technology, while the two iphone-wielding parents argued against it. I had phys. ed way down on my list but changed my mind after the teacher pointed out that kids need time to get moving or they can't learn. We talked about the stigma that some of us feel is attached to Macdonough -- mixed with pride about how the school is getting better all the time. We all agreed on the importance of after-school programs, but daycare fell lower on our lists.

Living close to your school was primary for many people -- as one wise-cracking parent at another table noted, we might have been at a realtors' association meeting, since all you kept hearing all night was location, location, location. Although my table was generally frustrated with the format of the lists -- where, for example, was the issue of racial balance/diversity on the list of school qualities, we wanted to know -- it did spur conversation that hopefully was noted by our JCJ facilitator. In my regular life, I attend a good number of public meetings, and I have to say I can't remember the last time I participated in such an open and reasonable discussion about issues affecting our town. In sum, it was a worthwhile evening -- I came away renewed in my appreciation for the Macdonough community and my family's commitment there.

It turns out that the exercise itself was meant as a learning experience. Smolley wrapped up by pointing out that we'd probably noticed how challenging it is for a small community of 8 people to come to concensus on what makes a good school, so we can expect that kind of challenge and compromise to continue throughout the study.

JCJ will have some preliminary findings to share at their next meeting on April 27th meeting at Woodrow Wilson School at 6 pm. Childcare will be available.

School visioning workshop draws 100 people to Moody School

JCJ Architecture held its first Public Outreach/Visioning meeting at Moody Elementary School this evening from 6 to 9. About a hundred parents and other members of the public came, as well as Board of Education members Corinne Gill, Ryan Kennedy, and Sheila Daniels, Mayor Giuliano, and teachers at Moody. All provided their input for the purpose of the District Wide Utilization Study that the Board of Ed has commissioned JCJ to undertake.

Attendees worked in 11 groups of about 8 people each, with JCJ staff as facilitators, to complete three evaluation sessions where individuals ranked nine categories in order of relative importance based on their personal preferences. Then, the group as a whole discussed the categories and developed a consensus ranking . Groups had about 25 minutes to complete their rankings, and very lively discussions took place on multiple issues.

Session 1: The school as a place of learning

Attendees considered school size, class size, technology, classroom/types, physical education, arts programs, grade configuration, non-school amenities, location/travel time. Every one of the 11 different groups ranked class size as the #1 most important, with location/travel time coming in second for most groups. Non-school amenities (health center/day care/community use) were ranked last by most, and everything else was somewhere in the middle.

Session 2: The school as a municipal asset
The features of schools as a municipal asset that were ranked: sustainable, cost to operate, cost to build, indoor/environmental quality, age of building, number of buildings, tax

impact, location, symbol/identity. "Indoor/environmental quality" was ranked in the top two by all groups, perhaps not surprising at Moody School, which only recently eliminated a mold contamination which had caused health problems for teachers and students alike. The other feature that was very highly ranked (1st or 2nd by almost all groups) was "Location". The least important feature for most groups was the school as "Symbol/identity".

Session 3: The school as a community asset
Various possible features of the school as it might contribute to a community in ways beyond education were ranked: health center, daycare, public use, after school programs, preschool/Head Start, parent/adult education/job training, location, community information centers, partnerships with the community. The vast majority of groups again chose "location" as the most important feature, followed by "after school programs," and "pre-school/Head start."

Overall, the meeting was very productive as parents seriously considered what they believed to be most important about the future of education in Middletown.

After the conclusion of these 'visioning' sessions, parents asked the lead JCJ Planner, Greg Smolley, questions about the study and its possible outcome(s). Parents were extremely anxious about the possibility that redistricting would change the school that their children attend. Smolley explained that parents' input from tonight's session would play a major role in their report to the Board of Ed, but he also encouraged concerned parents to attend Board of Education meetings to express their opinion and concerns.

Board of Ed member Ryan Kennedy echoed those sentiments, and further encouraged residents to speak with individual board members, via the contact information for each that is available on the School District's web pages. Four of the nine board seats, including that of the chair, Ted Raczka, will be up for election this year.

Smolley said that the initial report with recommendations to alleviate the severe overcrowding at Moody will be sent to the Board in May. The final report, which will address district-wide issues, will be done early in the next school year. He said that when both the mayor and the School Board facilitate wide-spread community involvement in the process, it reduces the potential for decisions to be hijacked for political purposes. He applauded Middletown's efforts so far, saying that the turnout was greater than they had seen in some other communities.

JCJ Architecture will be at Macdonough Elementary School Thursday evening, March 26, from 6 to 9PM, to repeat this process.

by Jennifer Mahr and Stephen Devoto