Suffield Board Of Ed. Charting Course For Future Progress

Moving forward and making progress was the theme of Tuesday night’s Board of Education meeting in Suffield. Department heads reported on adaptations from the BlumShapiro report while Superintendent of Schools Karen Baldwin reported positive news from CMT and CAPT testing for 2011.

BlumShapiro, a consulting firm in Hartford, was hired during the previous academic year to assess the strengths and weaknesses of the Suffield school system from top to bottom. The company issued a lengthy report and the schools’ staff has been busy reviewing and implementing some of the recommendations.

Director of Technology Becky Osleger reported numerous initiatives to upgrade staff and student knowledge of various software systems, including Munis and Power School.

“We have a train-the-trainer program to identify the lead professionals who can educate and teach our teachers to get the most of the systems,” she said. “The feedback on Power School from everyone has been all positive.”

Suffield schools business manager Ed Basile discussed the changes to finance and accounting procedures throughout the schools, including a seamless transition to Quikbooks, an accounting software system.

“It will take a little time, a few more end of months, to get everyone comfortable on the same system,” he said.

Baldwin noted that among the reasons for the change was to have better internal controls over the student activity accounts “to minimize our exposure to fraud.”

Basile added that the Munis system has some bugs to be ironed out but everyone has been receptive to the changes. He added that despite BlumShapiro’s original concerns over the amount of overtime, there has been no abuse of overtime within the school system by employees.

The other major director reporting last night was facilities director Larry Plano, who discussed a new online reservation system for building usage. It offers outside organizations the chance to make reservations as well as building principals the chance tor review these requests. Plano will retain final authorization before a schedule is published. He noted that he will call most of the usual users of facilities and suggested that others who want to use rooms, gyms and other facilities should contact his office.

There will be a link to the building usage calendar and reservation system on the Suffield schools’ main Web site.

Baldwin presented the results of the 2011 Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) and Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT) testing at the meeting. The tests measure student knowledge and teaching effectiveness based upon state of Connecticut standards. Overall, Suffield students are well ahead of the state standards as measured for reading, math, writing and science. This includes grades three through eight, measured by the CMT. Baldwin presented statistics from as far back as 2006 that showed growth in most areas.

One oddity that was discussed was a gap between the writing scores of girls and the same scores of boys on the CMT tests. Baldwin said the gaps of scores were higher than the state averages and that there will be efforts to determine why boys are not scoring as high as girls in the writing tests.  

Another result reported by the superintendent was from the CAPT test, administered to 10th graders as a sort of prelude to the SAT testing for college admission. Baldwin said Suffield students scored very high in all areas.

A remarkable amount of students, between 39 and 53 percent depending on the subject, reached the highest levels of achievement. Every area tested improved from 2010 to 2011, although the reading score was significantly down in 2010 after a nearly 10 percentage point drop from 2009 to 2010. The 2011 level was closer to Suffield’s scores from 2008 and 2009.

“Overall, I think we have a strong foundation here in Suffield and we can build on it,” Baldwin concluded.

The Board also announced the ribbon cutting for the Suffield Rotary Club’s new pavilion at Suffield High School will be on Saturday, Oct. 15 at 1 p.m.