Suffield Board of Ed. Sets Revised School Schedule

New was the word of the evening at the Suffield Board of Education meeting Tuesday. The panel welcomed three new members, elected new officers and revised the academic calendar to recover the lost days from the recent snowstorm.

Newly elected members Michelle Zawawi, Scott Schneider and George Beiter were duly welcomed to the board and in one of their first actions joined in unanimously electing Sue Porcello as the new chairman. She replaces Mary Roy. Mary Lou Sanborn was chosen as vice chairwoman and Lori D'Ostuni was selected as secretary.

"I am excited about our new board," Porcello commented in a statement. "Everyone is enthusiastic and ready to go. We have a new board, a new superintendent and a lot of positive energy.”

Porcello has been on the board for the past three years and is a key contributor on several subcommittees dealing with the budget, the operation efficiency study, facilities and communications.

She added that the school district’s work in the past year has generated a number of studies that “have provided us with information on becoming more efficient with our resources and have given us a road map on how to improve our processes in the district.”

The new board’s next order of business was finding a sensible plan to recover six academic days lost to the unexpected and powerful fall snowstorm. Several plans had been discussed and were revisited last night, including extending the school year, eliminating one of the early 2012 vacations and others. In the end a compromise proposed by Superintendent of Schools Karen Baldwin, which was generated from the results of a recent survey, was approved unanimously.

The plan adds the following dates to the academic calendar: Feb. 22, 23 and 24; April 16 and 17 – all coming from previously planned school vacation days – and March 26. The March date comes from the elimination of a teacher work day. This plan, although breaking up the two vacation weeks, retains the district’s flexibility considering the inevitability of more snow days as well as offering a better opportunity for academic effectiveness.

“This may not make everyone happy,” Porcello noted, “but to [board member] Jeanne [Gee]’s point, it lets us do what is best academically. In addition, this makes no changes to the end of the school year and graduation.

In other business, the board heard a detailed report from Baldwin and Suffield High School principal Donna Hayward about the upcoming state-mandated Common Core State Standards which will affect graduation requirements and how Suffield has begun to tackle the enormous revision of its entire academic structure to meet these new regulations.

These new secondary school reform requirements are going to place a heavy burden on teachers and administrators in the coming three to five years to drastically change teaching methods, assessments and educational systems. Baldwin and Hayward demonstrated in their presentation that Suffield is beginning to take steps to meet these new rules but that the process, as with any one involving significant change, is going to be a long one.

Look for more details on the sweeping changes to meet state-mandated standards in Suffield schools next week on Suffield Patch.

The Board will meet again in a workshop and regular session on Tuesday, December 20 at 6:30 pm in the Library.