Returns To Its Routine—

School Bd Awaits Town Vote In The Calm Of The 11th Hour

By Martha Coville

For months now, the Board of Education has devoted its meetings to planning, vetting, budgeting, and scheduling the high school expansion. Now the project is out of its hands. “We’re at the eleventh hour,” said Chairman Elaine McClure. “This is it. The showdown is coming. The project cannot go to referendum until the Board of Selectmen set a date and approve the debt service.”

The project, together with the school district’s budget, was approved by the Legislative Council on Wednesday. (See related story.) The last stop for both projects will be the Board of Selectmen, which meets on Monday, April 6. The budget and the expansion are expected to go before voters on April 22.

Ms McClure, Schools Business Director Ron Bienkowski, and Board of Education members have repeatedly said that Newtown voters, who last year send budgets back from referendum three times, should understand that the consequences of rejecting the expansion are more complicated.

Bill Furrier, chairman of the Building and Site Committee, has said that he expects construction costs to escalate 15 percent in the next year. “Construction escalation is huge right now,” he told the Board of Finance at its March 27 meeting. He said that voters who consider the present $38 million project too expensive should know that posting the expansion even a single year will cost the town $4 million dollars. This estimate includes both construction escalation and the price of commissioning a new set of construction design documents.

Students And The Curriculum

Without the high school expansion listed at the top of their meeting agenda, the Board of Education was able to return to business as usual, at least for their Tuesday, April 1, meeting. Much of the meeting was spent reviewing and approving proposed curricula.

“It feels nice tonight to look at the students and the curriculum,” Ms McClure said. “So much work goes into the curriculum.”

Assistant Schools Superintend Linda Gedja told the board that writing and reviewing the curriculum is an ongoing process. She said, “The curriculum writing process begins with a teacher survey.” Then, she said, faculty and administrators, break down into curriculum teams and respond to the teachers’ input. The third step in the process, she said, is actually writing the curriculum.

Teams of teachers sit down together to create curricula, which conform to state standards, and respond to teacher feedback. An important part of curriculum writing, Dr Gedja said, is providing teachers with new, or better, resources and suggestions for activities. Resources might include teacher handbooks, but could also take the form of software licenses, or professional development seminars. Finally, she said, the curriculum writing teams return to the teachers and interview them a second time.

District Health Coordinator Judy Blanchard was present at the meeting, and said that she appreciates that Newtown “test-drives” curricula for a year before implementing them. First, a list of “standards and objectives” are developed, to which instruction must conform. After teachers have worked with the standards and objects for a year, the writing committees listen to their feedback and develop detailed curricula.

The requirements they develop are specific and scheduled. For example, the language arts curriculum for eighth grade guides students through a series of text about the individual and society. Teachers are given four units, and told how many weeks to send on each.

The first unit is called “Character and Choice Unit: How is an individual’s character shaped by the choices and decisions he or she makes?” The curriculum says that students should spend five weeks on this unit, and lists the two texts books from which teachers may choose selections. Activities and writing assignments are also spelled out. For example, it says that during the first week a film should be shown, and that “anticipatory” instruction for the rest of the unit should occur. A cross disciplinary activity involving language arts and art is scheduled for the second week.

At their April 1 meeting, the Board of Education approved languages arts curricula for grades five through eight, and reading and writing standards and objectives for grades four through nine.