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