Superintendent Of Schools Janet Robinson Enters The World Of Blogging

By Eliza Hallabeck

With the first post announcement appearing on the Newtown Public Schools website Friday, March 26, Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson said on Monday, March 29, she is hoping to regularly update her new blog as people present her with questions.

By Monday there were no comments on the blog by readers, and, she said, comments would help to steer the blog posts to answer reader questions.

“I figured with all the rumors flying around town,” she said, “and the other kinds of concerns people seem to have, this would be a way for people to go somewhere and ask the questions.”

The blog, according to Dr Robinson, will be for factual information, and will not advocate for schools.

Starting a blog has been something she has wanted to do for a while, but, “Finding the time has been the problem,” said Dr Robinson.

It took a few weeks of set up before she could sit down to write on the blog, and, unlike Newtown High School Principal Charles Dumais’s blog, www.dumais.us/newtown/blog, Dr Robinson’s blog is not a privately funded project. Dr Robinson said her blog, http://newtown.mypowerit.net/blog/922, is posted to the school’s website at no expense.

“It is one of the few free things we have,” said Dr Robinson.

In the blog’s first post, Dr Robinson wrote regarding the school budget as it stood on Friday, and highlighted one question she has been frequently asked since last year.

“This is my effort to keep our community informed on the budget process this year,” wrote Dr Robinson in the post, “and hopefully deal with questions from the community.”

Dr Robinson wrote about how the school budget started as a five percent increase over the current year’s budget when she presented it to the Board of Education in January.

“The BOE brought it down to a 4.8 percent,” wrote Dr Robinson. “When it went to the Board of Finance, it was cut by $2.5 million. $1.2 [million] of that can be captured by probable savings in health insurance, utilities and changing our expectation for special education reimbursement. The remainder ($1.3 million) requires cuts beyond my initial ones in staff and programs.”

She explained the process is now before the Legislative Council, and the council is scheduled to deliberate the subject in the Newtown High School Lecture Hall Wednesday, April 7, at 7 pm.

While speaking to Parent Teacher Associations regarding the budget process, she wrote, she has been approached with questions and rumors.

“The most frequently asked question is, ‘If the BOE gets money added back to the budget will they just give raises or bonuses to the administrators like they did last year?’” she wrote.

Last year Dr Robinson and Assistant Superintendent of Schools Linda Gejda stepped forward to volunteer for wage freezes.

“I felt that if I were asking other groups of people to take a freeze, I needed to be doing it first,” she wrote on the blog. “After the budget was completed, I asked the BOE if we could take our freeze in unpaid furlough days, and that would allow our retirement to not be effected, as this was how it was working with the teacher and administrator unions.”

The school board, she continues, gave both Dr Geja and Dr Robinson a two percent increase to reflect on the Teachers’ Retirement Board.

“And we agreed to take 6.5 unpaid furlough days (which we worked by the way),” she wrote.

Dr Robinson further explained in the post that she has an annuity, bonus, and mileage allowance, which she said is typical in superintendent contracts.

“Without those things, districts would have a very difficult time recruiting superintendents, and, as the current market goes, this is not a particularly rich contract,” she wrote to answer the recurring question.

On Monday, Dr Robinson said the answer highlighted just one of the concerns people have been bringing to her attention.

She already uses email to answer the public, she said, and eventually she plans to post a frequently asked questions list with responses to the schools’ website. The blog, however, allows frequent updating, according to Dr Robinson.

A second post to the blog on Monday announced the district has started searching for two new elementary school principals to fill the positions of both Sandy Hook School Principal Donna Pagé, who recently announced her retirement, and Middle Gate Elementary School Principal Judith Liestman, who may be relocating to New York with her family.

“When I went to the Hawley PTA meeting,” she said on Monday, “they had two pages of questions prepared that their membership had brought up. And I thought, what a great idea to have people generate questions and have a way to answer them.”

If a rumor comes up, Dr Robinson said she will examine it on the blog to see if there is a kernel of truth or dispel it.

People are not always certain about the budget process, too, she said, and the blog allows a place to focus on the facts of the budget process.

Another rumor Dr Robinson said she first heard roughly a year ago, is she has an apartment in town that is funded by the school district. She said this is untrue, and she is currently house-sitting for someone who is out of the country for two years.

“I couldn’t come up with a kernel of truth for that one,” said Dr Robinson.

When the budget process is no longer a topic in town, Dr Robinson said the blog will still be an available avenue for people to post questions and receive answers.

“I’m going to keep the blog going,” she said. “I have intended to do it for some time, and this has sort of pushed me.”