Superintendent Looks Back On Her First Year In Newtown

By Eliza Hallabeck

After one year as school district superintendent of schools, Janet Robinson said last week that in some respects the year has flown by. In others, she said, it has felt long.

“Newtown has been so welcoming,” she said, “right from the start.”

Dr Robinson started working in the district this time last year, and immediately went to work submitting a budget for the school district. Now, as she is facing the same yearly task, she looked back on her past year in the district.

She lives in Niantic, which would be an hour and a half commute, but Dr Robinson stays in the area during the week to focus on her job and goes home on the weekends, she said.

“I lived in Brookfield for 25 years,” Dr Robinson said, “so therefore I really know this area, and I have a lot of friends in this area.”

When she was a superintendent in Preston, she said, she found the southeastern shore to be fabulous, and the family moved.

“I want to say to the community that I am honored to be working with the school system,” said Dr Robinson, “even in these tough times. There is such a tremendous spirit in the schools that is so positive.”

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.

Prior to working in Newtown, Dr Robinson 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.

She said she thinks there are a lot of differences between school districts.

“Where I get the greatest perspective is when I was deputy executive director at [Cooperative Educational Services] in Trumbull; I had the responsibility of curriculum and professional development for the 14 school districts across the coast,” she said. “So that gave me a perspective on school districts from Darien to Bridgeport; affluent school districts and very poor school systems.”

Newtown, she said, has much in common with many of the school systems with which she has dealt.

“The expectations of families here are high. They want their kids to not only go to college, but to go to the college of their choice,” said Dr Robinson. “That’s very much like Darien and New Canaan and the other districts that I worked with.”

In districts where she has worked before, she said it was clear there were achievement issues and a sense of urgency to make changes and improve what was happening academically.

“Newtown is already strong academically,” she said, “so there is not the same urgency for change. We still need to keep improving, because if you stand still the world keeps moving on.”

Dr Robinson is the mother of three grown children who were educated in the Brookfield school system. She had a consulting business at the time, and, she said, her husband was the chair of the Board of Education there for 12 years. Dr Robinson said her husband was more active than she, but she was also active in the school district then.

“Certainly as your children are growing up, you’re engaged in whatever activities. The soccer parents, the grad night activities…” Dr Robinson said. “Those were great times.”

As Newtown’s superintendent of schools now, Dr Robinson said she brings her past experiences from raising her children in Brookfield to working in other districts with her.

There are many different aspects to her job in Newtown as superintendent, she said.

“I do attempt to do a lot of communication with parents,” said Dr Robinson. “That’s an important part of what I have to do.”

She also meets once a month with the Parent Teacher Association officers. “They’re part of my pipeline of communication,” she notes.

Often, she added, she deals with parents on individual concerns.

Every month Dr Robinson also attends roughly two Board of Education meetings. She also occasionally attends Board of Finance, Board of Selectmen and Legislative Council meetings.

“It’s important that we build a level of trust between and among [the members of the boards],” said Dr Robinson.

When asked if she was particularly proud of anything in her first year in Newtown, she said getting the budget through on the first try last year stands out to her.

This year is a different situation, according to the superintendent. Dr Robinson said the Board of Finance voted for all departments in town to come in at 95 percent of last year’s budget. “Which would put us behind where we were last year,” she said, “so that cannot be accomplished without laying off a large number of people. If it were easy to come in flat, believe me, we would do it.”

According to Dr Robinson, such a lean budget was submitted last year due to empathy for the economic situation, and this year, she said, the economy is even worse.

 “So now we’re trying to look at how we can make cuts in what was already a lean budget,” Dr Robinson said.

“Just rolling over where we are right now, with absolutely no increase of any kind, with just the salary obligations would put us over four percent right away,” she said. “And that’s not counting maintenance that needs to be done on the buildings, or increases in any other maintenance costs, transportation costs. So trying to get this down to where it’s a flat budget can only be done one of two ways. Either we lay off people or everyone in the district takes a one-year wage freeze.”

The district invests a lot of work in staff, according to Dr Robinson, and “we want to keep them.”

In order to avoid layoffs, Dr Robinson said it will be necessary for the district to ask the unions in town to offer one-year wage freezes.

Contracts for the seven unions involved in the possible negotiations are not up now, but the unions can open the option for discussion. Each individual union can choose whether or not agree to a wage freeze.

“When I look at the historical information on Newtown, Newtown has grown so fast,” she said. “When you grow that quickly every year, your budget increases have to be in personnel. You never have the money to grow programs. We do not have foreign language in the elementary level. We do not have this pervasive gifted and talented program. We have people, because that’s what we have needed to accommodate this rapidly growing population.”

Dr Robinson said economic conditions like those currently facing the state and country cause spending to be cut, and in Newtown, “There isn’t anything there. What we have to cut is people.”

It is an unfortunate situation to be facing, she said, because Newtown has always placed value in the level of learning taught in the classroom.

Looking back on the last year, Dr Robinson said her biggest disappointment was when the referendum for the extra $6.045 million appropriation for the Newtown High School expansion project failed on October 7 of last year.

“Unfortunately, we cannot build this project for the $38 million at this point.,” Dr Robinson said. “So we are in the process of rebidding to see if those bids will come back less.”

If bids for the project do not come back under budget, the town has one of two choices, according to Dr Robinson. She said those choices are redesigning the project, which means, she said, the town will only be able to get approximately two-thirds of this project funded, and the second option would be to start cutting back from the design until it comes down below the $38 million.

Over the next year Dr Robinson said she expects all of the public school district principals and herself to attend classrooms to witness the level of higher level thinking and 21st Century skills.

“It’s my job to see that the students in Newtown receive the finest education that they can…” she said. “These other things become obstacles, and my job is to find ways to overcome these obstacles so that the education is seamless.”