Dr Robinson Begins As

District’s New Superintendent

By Martha Coville

Two new administrators joined the Newtown School District while students were enjoying their winter vacation. Charles Dumais, the new principal at Newtown High School is the first; the second is superintendent Dr Janet Robinson. Dr Robinson replaces interim superintendent Thomas Jokubaitis, who left the district last December.

Dr Robinson holds a bachelor of arts degree in sociology from California State University at Long Beach, and also earned a master of science degree in counseling, and a school psychologist certificate at the same institution. She earned her doctorate, in educational leadership, at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.

She lives in Niantic, which means her commute is nearly an hour and a half long. Dr Robinson is mother to three grown children, and “the four smartest grandchildren in the world.” Her eldest grandchild is in middle school now, and the youngest is an infant, she said.

Dr Robinson has most recently worked as superintendent in the Derby public school system, and in Preston. Before she began working as an administrator, though, she spent 23 years as an educational consultant, first with Robinson Educational Services in Brookfield, and then with Cooperative Educational Services in Trumbull. “I’ve been speaking at seminars all over the United States for about 20 years,” she said.

Dr Robinson said that she enjoyed her work immensely. “I loved it,” she said. “I loved working with teachers. But I hated traveling.” She said that her career as a consultant began when she worked with Lee Cantor, who was researching student behavioral problems at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. She helped Mr Cantor with his first book, Assertive Discipline For Teachers. “The question we had,” Dr Robinson said, “was ‘Why do some teachers have the skills to manage students that others don’t?’” Assertive Discipline became immensely popular among educators, and is now in its third edition.

Following the publication of Assertive Discipline, Dr Robinson continued to work with Mr Cantor’s research team. “From there,” she said, “we asked ‘What about the percentage of students who don’t respond to [our techniques]? How can we positively involve their parents?”’ The series eventually came to include 27 books, all published under Mr Cantor’s name.

Dr Robinson, who is married to a pilot, said that she moved from California to the East Coast in “the mid-seventies.” She said, “We chose Connecticut because it’s so beautiful here, and because it had access to the major airports.”

Dr Robinson said she moved out of educational consulting and into administration for several reasons: She said that although she enjoyed teaching educators, she never saw the fruits of her instruction, because “I was never the one to implement the changes.” Busy conference rooms and quiet hotels wore her down, too. “I wanted some continuity,” she said. “I wasn’t connected to a community.”

Dr Robinson brings experience managing a growing school district from her previous job as superintendent in Derby. Overcrowding in Newtown schools, like the high school, is not nearly as bad as it is in Derby, where “schools are bursting at the seams.” Still she, said that she had observed the growth in Newtown “first hand” while living and working in nearby Brookfield.

Dr Robinson said that she has already visited each of the district’s schools at least once, and met with principals and administrators. The next step, she said, is to meet “the stakeholders,” like the selectmen, and the members of the town’s governing boards.