School Board Addresses GPA, Bus Issues

By Laurie Borst

The Board of Education met Tuesday evening, October 2. Assistant Superintendent Linda Gejda reported on the summer school program, which includes academic and enrichment courses. A total of 683 students participated. Summer school, elementary, intermediate, middle and high school levels had 262 students enrolled.

The SMart program, Summer Music and Art, had 177 participants; Summer Musical Theater Workshop had 35; and the Accelerated Reader Program at Reed School had 209 students.

“My daughter attended the SMart program at Head O’ Meadow. She was involved in the play program,” board member David Nanavaty said. “The final play was an excellent performance. I’m glad we have the ability to do a program like this in Newtown.”

Recently, it was brought to the attention of administrators that the protocol used to determine high school students’ GPAs contained a flaw that resulted in unweighted GPAs being higher than weighted GPAs. A new system was put in place in 2005 that considered all freshman courses to be unweighted. Grades are “weighted” to reflect the rigor of the course.

By assessing all freshman courses with the weighted factors included, the reported GPA is a more accurate representation of a student’s performance. The board agreed to create weighted factors for freshman courses. Making this change results in Newtown students data following the same reporting parameters as other schools, putting them on equal footing when assessed by college admissions offices.

Transportation Director Toni DiLonardo presented a comprehensive report on the bus runs in the district. The report includes each bus number and its capacity, scheduled load, runtime, and mileage on all three tiers. A committee is being formed to assess the data and make recommendations for alleviating the overcrowding being experienced this year.

Working with Mr DiLonardo will be board member Lillian Bittman and parent Lorraine Santore. The board requested that a bus driver volunteer to help as well as one or two others from the community.

At the board meeting of September 18, board member Paul Mangiafico questioned the procedure used to determine out-of-district tuition for the school year. Mr Mangiafico met with Business Director Ron Bienkowski and examined guidelines used by other districts to determine the tuition rate. By following similar algorithms, an out-of-district tuition rate of $12,000 per student was arrived at for the 2007-2008 school year.