From the Mind of Jason Zandri

By Samaia Hernandez
Record-Journal staff
shernandez@record-journal.com
(203) 317-2266

As published in the Record Journal Saturday January 9, 2010

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WALLINGFORD — The public will have the eyes and ears of school administrators and the Board of Education to­day regarding the proposed $ 88.5 million school budget, which calls for eliminating 55.6 teaching jobs and 117.1 other positions, and reconfiguring the town’s eight elementary schools.

A budget workshop will take place from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the auditorium of Sheehan High School, 142 Hope Hill Road, where elementary school prin­cipals will give presentations detailing the proposal’s impact on each school.

Topics will be discussed in the following order: food services, elementary schools, mid­dle schools, high schools, adult education, special education, maintenance, information technology, central office and final review. Public comment will be allowed after each topic. A lunch break is scheduled from noon to 12:30 p.m.

School officials are anticipating many items will carry over to workshops sched­uled for Tuesday and Wednesday at 6 p.m. More meetings may be held Tuesday and Wednesday of the following week, if need­ed. All meetings will be in Sheehan’s audi­torium.

More than 60 residents, primarily parents, have joined a Facebook group created by parent Jonathan Chappell, saying that they will attend today’s workshop.

“I will definitely be there. I really don’t want my kids separated and in two differ­ent schools. It doesn’t make it easy for the working parents who have to pick up and drop off,” wrote Jen Palmer-Humowitz re­garding the reconfiguration plan in which Highland, Cook Hill, Stevens and Moses Y. Beach schools would serve kindergarten to grade 2, while Yalesville, Parker Farms, Pond Hill and Rock Hill schools would serve grades 3 to 5.

School officials have asked residents to come to the meetings not only with con­cerns, but with their own ideas.

“If you have ideas, we want to hear them,” said board Chairman Thomas Hen­nessey. “Maybe there’s something you’ve thought of that we haven’t.”

Should Wallingford elementary schools be restructured to grades K-2 and 3-5

Yes 76%

No 24%

Total Votes 655

Jeffery Kurz
jkurz@record-journal.com
(203) 317-2213

There’s nothing like a good radical idea, particularly when it pertains to public edu­cation, to get the thought processes mov­ing, not to mention emotions. Just think of all the thought process that gets generated whenever a municipality starts talking about cutting school sports.

I have my own radical idea when it comes to pub­lic education. We’ll call it my pet radical public edu­cation proposal, OK? – which basically consists of starting school way, way later than it starts today, which is so early I don’t even know when it is.

I haven’t developed my pet project to the point where I can suggest pre­cisely when the school day should start, other than to say that it ought to be a time when young people are awake and alert. My guess is that’s somewhere around 2 p.m. (probably later for teenagers). You may note that under the current scenario, that’s about the time when school lets out. Today, we run school systems as though every­body has to get up to milk the cows.

All of this is not much compared to the good radical idea put forth by Wallingford School Superintendent Salvatore Menzo, who has decided that tough times call for a thorough reconfiguration of how the town approaches public education. You’ll be glad to hear it bears no similarity to my own radical plan.

I don’t like everything about the pro­posal; tough times are not helped by cutting jobs, particularly as many as 55 certified teaching positions and 117 full-time and part-time staff. But Menzo’s job, after all, is to balance a budget, and his plan is a cre­ative response to a difficult situation.

Other than tradition, there’s no reason you have to go to the same school from kindergarten to fifth grade, any more than there’s a rule that says you have to get up before sunrise to be a productive human being. Troubling times are calling for a re­vamped assessment of traditional ways of doing things.

Menzo’s plan takes the town’s eight ele­mentary schools and splits them in two: four for kindergarten through second grade, and four for third through fifth grades. The approach gives a fairer pupil population balance town wide (Yalesville now has 511 pupils, Pond Hill 288). There would surely be benefits to concentrating on fewer grades in each school, and likely benefits to outcomes in the all-important Connecticut Mastery Tests, which determine the future of a child forever (wait, that’s England).

This dramatic change to the elementary school plan saves the district $1.4 million. It also reduces class sizes, which is a neat trick these days, considering that many other school districts facing similar eco­nomic restraints are heading the other way and increasing class sizes.

The proposed budget is an attempt to maintain services while costs are rising, and at $88.5 million, the budget is a slender 4.16 percent increase from the previous year. Menzo says increasing by as much as nearly 10 percent was not something the school system could ask for, given the times.

Chances are the school district will have to do with even less. The town is in the habit of asking for more education reduc­tions once a budget has been submitted.

As it is, there are other proposals that are not likely to sit well with some people.

Those include three fewer days in the school year, eliminating the position of de­partment head in the high schools, and re­placing front-door people with voice-activation systems. There’s also a pay-to-play plan, of from $100 to $300, to participate in extracurricular sports.

That last is likely to be generating a lot of thought processes, is my guess, along with parents trying to figure out where their child is supposed to go to grammar school.

Wallingford now has a provocative plan to consider, indeed.