The following is Superintendent Brady's email about the Amity Board of Education Meeting.

The Amity Board of Education held its first regular meeting of the school year last night. Highlights of the meeting follow:

1. Principal’s Reports on the opening of school.

Dr. Britton, Dr. Dellinger and Ms. Cutler reported very smooth openings. Each principal commented on the high quality of the new faculty members that have been hired.

At the high school, Dr. Britton welcomed Emily Clark and Ann Wellspeak in English, Christine Young for a French/Latin position, Elena Serapiglia in Spanish, Donald Brechlin for a math assignment and Joanna Najarian-Garb as the new reading teacher/literacy content leader. He also noted that Ms. Jill Polisson, strings teacher, has been assigned full-time to the high school.

Dr. Dellinger welcomed Amy Browning in English, Marissa Manzelli in social studies and Lisa Serio as the new strings teacher who will be working at both middle schools.

Ms. Cutler welcomed Elaine Hashemian for a Spanish position and Sharon Remigio as the new school counselor.

2. Sheila Wycinowski reported on the 2010 Connecticut Mastery Test (grades 7+8) and Connecticut Academic Performance Test (grade 10) Results. The scores in grades 7 are the highest in Amity history. Grade 8 students performed better than they did in grade 7. Year to year growth of the same students is a key indicator of the effectiveness of the academic program.

In grade 10, reading and writing scores were among the highest in Amity’s comparison group. Science improved slightly over last year’s results but both math and science results remain below expectations. We have identified structural anomalies in math where freshmen, sophomores and junior students have been assigned to the same classes. It is very difficult to focus instruction on skills tested on the CAPT when some students in a class won’t be taking it in a given year (freshmen) or have already taken it (juniors). We have identified the group of students who most need attention to skills and competencies assessed on the math subtest of the CAPT and we have created classes of just freshmen and just sophomores. We are now able to focus instruction on CAPT preparation. This is not to say that Amity’s curriculum will be sacrificed. We are taking a balanced approach which incorporates CAPT skills and competencies into areas of the Amity curriculum that are appropriate. Board members expressed their concerns that math and science results were below the high expectations Amity has for student performance.

3. After completion of the 2010-2011 budget, the administration began working on a review of all Amity’s operations to begin to identify areas that might yield greater efficiency from a cost perspective. The initial phase of this review was presented to the Board. It is entitled “Superintendent’s Program Review Report”. This phase of the review takes a historical view of efforts of the past six years to gain efficiencies in expenditures (please open and read the report in the attachment box above). You will find in the report considerable tangible improvements to Amity’s operations that have saved millions of tax payer dollars. It is these efforts that resulted in Amity being identified last year as one of the 20 most efficient school districts in Connecticut by The Connecticut Economy. As we move forward into budget development for the 2011-2012 year, and we look for additional efficiencies, it is important to understand that Amity is already operating in a highly efficient manner. Nevertheless, we will present to the Board at the October regular meeting some tentative ideas for consideration as we consider the 2011-2012 spending plan.

4. The Superintendent informed the Board that Amity will be receiving $112,000 of Federal jobs money. These funds will be needed to help prevent layoffs in the 2011-2012 school year.

5. Dr. Brady congratulated Mr. Rob Kennedy, Director of Amity Creative Theater, for Honorable Mention by the Moss Hart organization for 2009 production of Anne Frank: and Then They Came for Me. This is just the latest in a series of awards and recognitions the Creative Theatre has received under Mr. Kennedy’s leadership.

6. Dr. Brady reported college acceptance data for the class of 2010. Each year we track students applying to the most selective colleges in the country and the percentage who are accepted.

The class of 2010 did extremely well. There were 129 applications to Ivy League schools 19 acceptances were received for a total of 14.7%. Over 60% of applications to highly and most selective colleges were accepted. We do not have comparative data from other high schools since there is no reporting requirement for this data.

7. Mr. Grande reported on the recent Facilities Committee meeting. Highlights included Board support for adding conversion of the choral room to a black box theatre on the five year capital forecast. The administration suggested placement of this work in the 2014-2015 timeframe. Several Board members suggested an earlier time if possible. Upon the recommendation of the Finance Committee, the Board took action to direct the administration to develop a lighting upgrade for sections of the high school that were not upgraded during the new construction. This upgrade would be at no cost to the taxpayers with estimated savings of nearly $900,000 over a ten year period.

The Board discussed roofing at Amity High School. The roof on the older sections of the building is approaching its 20 year lifespan. Director of Facilities Jim Saisa recommended a refurbishment of the roof at an estimated cost of $1.4 million as opposed to $4.0 million for replacement. The roofing work is currently slated for 2012-2013. Mr. Grande recommended that the Board begin to fund this project with any end of year balance being set aside in the capital non-reoccurring expense account after the audit of the 2009-2010 fiscal year is complete. These decisions will not be finalized until January.

Mr. Saisa presented his Facilities Report which documents work done over the summer. This report will be uploaded to the Amity District web site within the next couple of days.

The next regular Board of Education meeting will be held on Monday, October 18th at 6:30 p.m. in the presentation room of the District Offices.

Update: An addition email from Superintendent Brady included the following:

There was an additional highlight at the Board meeting this past Monday which was omitted from the previous report.

Ms. Yvonne Klancko, Director of Amity’s Adult and Continuing Education Program reported on enrollment and revenue for the program over the past three years. Under Ms. Klancko’s direction, the program has experienced significant growth. Enrollment in 2008 was 1,093. In 2010 it was 1,494.

In 2008 the fund balance was $29,287. In 2010 it was $74,705.

The Board expressed appreciation to Ms. Klancko for her efforts.

Section 1-225 of the Connecticut Freedom of Information Act requires that votes from public meetings be available within 48 hours and minutes be available within seven days. Minutes of public meetings are important for residents to be able to find out what is going on in their town. They are also important to journalists who do not have enough time to cover local events. In some cases, they become part of important legal discussions.

The Connecticut Siting Council is currently considering an application by AT&T to put a cell tower in Woodbridge. On July 28th, attorney Keith Ainsworth on behalf of the Woodbridge Conservation Commission submitted an application to intervene in the proceedings.

AT&T objected, relying heavily on the minutes of the Woodbridge Conservation Commission, including noting that the June 17th minutes of the Conservation Commission meeting is not yet available. The July 15th minutes are also not yet available.

On Wednesday evening, the Board of Selectmen met to consider a request from the Woodbridge Conservation Commission for the Town to participate in funding for intervener status re Siting Council Docket #388. If a vote were taken, the results of the vote would not be required to be available until this evening at the earliest and the minutes are not required until next Wednesday. Nonetheless, there have been subsequent filings in the docket concerning the meeting.

Part of AT&T’s objection asserts that the Conservation Commission’s Intervention Request is procedurally defective and lacks authority. They refer to the agenda item at the Board of Selectman meeting to consider the Conservation Commissions request saying

We are advised by a member of the public attending the meeting that the Board of Selectmen took no action on the Conservation Commission’s request.

Keith Ainsworth, on behalf of the Conservation Commission replied,

The Conservation Commission was authorized to take action to file the intervention before the Siting Council and expend town funds in doing so by the Board of Selectmen last evening. AT&T represented falsely that selectmen failed to act on the request

AT&T responded

Attorney Ainsworth’s allegations of a misstatement of fact which was conveyed to us by a member of the public is not accompanied by any independently verifiable facts of his own (i.e. based on discussions with the Town’s Board of Selectmen). As such, the Council may want to call the First Selectman directly to ascertain what if any formal action the Board of Selectmen did or did not take last night.

The response continues noting

The request previously submitted by Attorney Ainsworth lacks a resolution from the Conservation Commission adopted by a duly noticed public meeting of its own authorizing such action to seek intervenor status in Docket 388.

Agendas and meeting minutes matter. They are a way to make sure that everyone’s voice is heard and this can become very important when the lawyers get involved.

Update: Attorney Ainsworth provided a correction which states:

The Board of Selectmen did not take action on the resolution to fund the Conservation but instead declared that the Conservation had its own professional services line item from which it could draw for the funding of this intervention.

He states that he was misinformed. He goes son to withdraw from representation of the Woodbridge Conservation Commission in this matter.

The Connecticut Siting Council has now denied the application to intervene 'on the bases of untimeliness and lack of standing'.

As a final note, Service List indicates that the Connecticut Siting Council has used U.S. Mail to deliver the documents.

From Superintendent John J. Brady:

The Amity Board of Education held its last meeting of the 2009-2010 academic year this past Monday. The meeting covered a number of important topics. I will highlight several below.

On Monday, May 3, 2010 at 6:00 p.m. in the Amity High School Cafeteria, the Amity Board of Education (the “Board”) will hold a District Meeting on its proposed 2010-2011 budget. The agenda for the evening will consist of the Board presentation explaining the increases and decreases to the budget. No vote will be taken at this meeting. A budget referendum will be held on Tuesday, May 4, 2010, and voters are encouraged to participate.

Rescheduling due to the 2/10 winter storm has snowballed. None of this is posted yet, but I was granted early warning so that I could put cameras where they need to be. Information is always subject to change.

Superintendent John Brady made the initial presentations of his budget to the Finance Committee and the Board last night. Overall, the Supt's budget for 2010-2011 represents a 2.19% increase over this year's.

You can tell a lot about a town and its values as well as gain new insights about the economy as a whole by attending town operating budget presentations. In Woodbridge, these presentations are spread over three nights. The first presentations took place Tuesday evening.

Sitting around the tables were members of the Board of Selectmen and the Board of Finance. There was a small table for the people presenting the budgets and seats for maybe a dozen spectators. Three cameras were set up to record and broadcast live the meeting.

As I entered, I was greeted by various members of the community; Police Chief Marcucci, Selectwoman Beth Heller, and WGATV coordinator Pua Ford. With the exception of people preparing to present, the spectators’ seats were empty. Finance Board Chairman Matthew Giglietti started off the meeting recognizing that we are in difficult economic times and the budget needs to be trimmed.

First up was Fire Chief Andrew Esposito. Woodbridge has a new firehouse. It was designed to be a ‘green’ building. During 2011, the warrantees will be up on some of the equipment bought for the building and the ongoing support costs for these items will increase. It is not clear yet exactly how energy efficient the new building is, and the oil budget is an estimate.

Chief Esposito noted that there are currently 53 active members of the department. This is resulting in the need for more funds for training, and that the State, because of its budget cutbacks no longer funds half of the training costs for local fire departments. The issue of decreased state funding and fewer grants available was an ongoing theme of the presentations.

There was also a discussion about the need for first aid supplies, something that has been lacking since Woodbridge ceased to have a local ambulance.

The next presentation was Police Chief Gene Marcucci. The largest proposed budget increase for the police department was to get a police dog. It was explained that a police dog would be useful for finding lost children, as was an issue just this past week, or for finding lost elderly people. It was noted that there are three Alzheimer care units in Woodbridge and many senior citizens.

The third presentation was from Pua Ford of WGATV. She discussed the professional development item which would allow funds for her to attend a national conference on public access television. She spoke about the issues she would hope to learn more about from the conference. There was a discussion about how many people watch WGATV programs on TV or check the programs out of the library. While there was no clear data available, there was anecdotal evidence that the programs are well received. In fact, during the meeting, I received a text message from one person in town who had just tuned in the meeting and later when I arrived home there was an email from another person who specifically tuned in to watch the meeting. I am glad to know that others were watching online, it made the spectator chairs at the meeting feel a little less empty.

Several smaller budget items were then discussed. As technology for the town was considered, Ann Rubin asked if there were possible savings by combining technology budgets of the town and the fire department. It is worth looking into, or perhaps even having a technology oversight committee for all town technology. There was a discussion about banking costs increasing for the town and whether more checks could be written online.

The Human Services budget presentation talked about the increased needs of people in the Town of Woodbridge during these difficult economic times and again raised the issue of the decreased availability of grants. Many great programs made available by Human Services were discussed as well as efforts to work with the Recreation Department and the Town Library.

The Building Department spoke about their budget and the fees that they take in. The idea of having a different fee structure for residential and commercial buildings was discussed and will be considered at a later time, although Selectwoman Beth Heller expressed concern about whether such a move might discourage economic development. For Town Planning and Zoning, there was a discussion about revising the rules about signs. Signs are the biggest issue that TPZ faces, and the rules are not particularly clear. Almost every sign on Amity Road is an exception of one sort or another.

Another sign of the difficult economic times was the discussions of the Tax Collector and Tax Assessor. Assessments are down, but people need to remember it is still going to cost the same amount to run the town. Woodbridge Tax Collector Pat Crisco spoke about tax payments coming in. There was an involved discussion about how the town tries to work with people that are delinquent on their property taxes so as to avoid having to place a lien on the property or send a house into foreclosure.

The Parks Department ended off the meeting with a discussion about equipment that needs to be replaced. This topic had also been brought up by Human Services and the Building Department. The Parks Department had been moved to this Tuesday so that there would be more time available next Tuesday to discuss the Woodbridge Board of Education budget.

It was interesting to note that during all of the discussions, there was no reference to comparing the cost per resident of various services to that of surrounding towns. Perhaps the closest to this was a comparison of building fee structures.

The next operating budget presentation will be on Thursday and hopefully many of the residents of Woodbridge will attend or watch the presentations on WGATV.

The following is an email from the Amity High School News Mailing List:

Good morning Amity and Happy New Year!

The Amity Board of Education held its January meeting last night. What follows are selected highlights from the meeting.

1. The Board received an update on 2010-2011 budget preparations. Dr. Brady informed the Board that the administrative team had been working to keep spending down due to the continued struggling economy. Administrator requests for supplies, equipment and text books were either level with the current year or, in some cases, slightly less. The major costs driving the budget are salaries and new costs for special education programs. To balance the salary increases the Board approved a retirement incentive program for teachers that is designed to encourage twelve retirements. If successful, the program will save over $400,000 next year. The limit of twelve is to ensure that we don’t lose too many of our most expert teachers in one year. This plan will also result in not replacing four of the twelve.

Reducing faculty is a very difficult proposition. I have been working with the high school administration to make certain that reducing four positions will not lead to inordinately large class size increases. Classes affected are projected to not exceed 24 students.

2. Dr. Dellinger reported on a pilot regrouping effort on the Black Team at Bethany. To gather information about grouping in support of the Board of Education goal to evaluate middle school grouping practices, the grade 8 Black Team organized students into heterogeneous groups mixing advanced, comprehensive and core groups. The plan was to conduct a pilot of six weeks duration. It became clear immediately that parents and students had not been informed of this project. The pilot was halted after one week but valuable information about this type of grouping was gained and will be communicated to the middle school committee which is looking at grouping. The committee will reach out to parents and students to improve communication and gather diverse perspectives prior to reinstituting regrouping efforts.

Dr. Brady reported that the State Board of Education voted unanimously last week to encourage Connecticut school districts to eliminate tracking of students. While the elimination of tracking is not a requirement, districts will have to begin reporting on tracking systems and informing parents if their children are in “low” tracks. Districts will also have to inform parents that their children are not being prepared to

Meet requirements for entry into the Connecticut higher education system.

3. Dr. Brady reported that the University of Connecticut publication The Connecticut Economy has identified Amity as one of only twenty-one school districts in Connecticut that are highly efficient. This is compared to 119 districts in the study. The report compared inputs such as teachers and administrators per 100 students with student outcomes such as CMT and SAT scores to arrive at the determination of efficiency. Amity was considered highly efficient because our students have relatively high outcomes even though our staff ratios were modest compared to other districts in the state. For example, Amity had the second lowest ratio of administrators per 100 students in the state.

4. The facilities committee reported that they had received a proposal to site a cell phone tower on the high school campus. Initial revenue would be $21,500 with the potential to grow to an average of $30,000 per year. The Committee did not feel this level of revenue was sufficient to warrant the negative reaction of neighbors and parents whose children would be in close proximity to the tower. The proposal was for a tower that would extend 150-190 feet into the air. The full Board supported the Facilities’ Committee position. There will be no cell tower on the high school campus at this time.

5. The Board received a report of the 2009 audit. Mr. Robert Howard, partner in the auditing firm CCR made a comprehensive report to the Amity Finance Committee meeting which preceded the Board meeting. Chairman of the AFC, Mr. Abbatiello reported to the Board that the audit found the District to have “unqualified clean compliance”. There were very minimal and minor recommendations. Following receipt of the audit, the Board voted to return the following balances to the member towns:

Town of Bethany $ 55,406.00
Town of Orange $119,456.00
Town of Woodbridge $ 86,512.00

The next Board meeting will be on Monday, February 8th at 6:30 pm in the Presentation at the District Offices.

John J. Brady
Superintendent of Schools
Amity Regional School District #5
25 Newton Road
Woodbridge, Connecticut 06525

Phone: 203-397-4861
Fax 203-397-4864
e-mail john.brady@reg5.k12.ct.us
web www.amityregion5.org

Monday evening at the Woodbridge District office conference room, the Woodbridge Board of Education Committee met to review the monthly financial reports and discuss what metrics are most useful in understanding the proposed 2010/2011 budget. For the month ending December 31st, 2009, the school is running approximately ten thousand dollars over on its $11.9 million dollar 2009/2010 budget. The largest over budget items included $66 thousand due to additional transportation needs and $63 thousand due to additional tuition costs for unanticipated special needs students. This was offset in part by changes in teaching and custodial staff which occurred after the budget had been finalized.

Committee member Steve Fleischman inquired about the status of the funds set aside for GASB, asking about how that money was being invested and what sort of returns have been received. These funds are being handled by the Woodbridge Investment Committee which meets on an as needed basis. The most recent meeting of the Investment Committee, as listed on the Town Website was March 31, 2009. Those minutes report the recommendations of the committee to the Board of Selectmen to adopt an ordinance to establish a Town of Woodbridge Other Post-Employment Benefits Trust Agreement as well as the Trust Agreement itself. There is no information in the minutes about any investment decisions.

It is believed that the Investment Committee will be meeting soon and it is hoped that more information will be available from the committee at that time.

The administration reported that the proposed 2010/2011 budget as approved by the Woodbridge Board of Education calls for a 2.47% increase. A discussion followed about the importance of the administration communicating to the town what the value proposition of the school budget is to help people understand some of the different cost structures in the Woodbridge Board of Education budget when it is compared to other school districts.

It is also worth noting that the Superintendent is giving back his 2% salary increase for the year with the money being made available to support professional development for teachers as well as to provide instructional resources for the children of Beecher Road School.

The results of the Finance Committee meeting will be discussed at the next Woodbridge Board of Education meeting.