Superintendent of Schools Anne Uberti presented an overview of the year one implementation summary of the district's 2025-26 Strategic Goals at the Board of Education's (BOE) special meeting on Wednesday, June 24.

Uberti said she was incredibly proud to present the overview, as the past year marked a significant milestone for Newtown Public Schools District. This is because it marked the first time in Uberti's 13 years with the district that it has moved away from isolated, siloed goal setting and stepped into a "truly unified strategic direction" designed to guide its work through 2028.

"As we review the first year, our guiding theme and commitment moving forward is simple: reflect, refine, and reach higher," Uberti explained.

She said the presentation would cover how she and her team built the foundation of this three-year framework, celebrate their initial achievements, review the valuable lessons they’ve learned, and outline how they will maintain this momentum and improve their process as they move into year two.

To fully understand this process, Uberti said they must first look back at the foundation they established. In July of last year, Uberti and Assistant Superintendent Frank Purcaro developed a strategic framework based on stakeholder feedback from the 2022 consulting engagement, along with input from the BOE at the time.

Uberti said that by identifying critical instructional and operational needs, they created an aligned plan for all schools and departments. They also set goals in place to ensure continuity and transparency, and also built action steps to build on the successes of previous years. Uberti and Purcaro also shared the plan with district administrators and department heads, and asked them to base their goals for their own buildings and departments on this framework.

The district's three-year strategic goals were later presented to the BOE in the fall of 2025. Each principal, along with Director of Special Education and Pupil Services Deborah Mailloux-Petersen, presented their goals to the BOE around that time as well. Uberti also presented a consolidated version of their operational goals.

"Today, there is a direct traceable connection between the district's high-level priorities, individual school improvement plans, operational areas of focus, and the day-to-day work happening in our classrooms and our offices," Uberti continued.

She and her team also connected this framework to the 2026-27 school budget proposal.

Successes

Perhaps the single most significant achievement of year one, Uberti said, was the successful implementation of this new accountability framework. She said creating a structured process where none previously existed has been a "transformative shift" for the district, as goal tracking had historically been an end-of-year administrative exercise.

Now, Uberti said, they intentionally aligned goals at every level of the district, had leadership teams create measurable action steps and performance indicators, and moved to an active, year-round monitoring model.

"The strategic framework we established essentially became a living document, one that we referenced regularly in administrative meetings, data team meetings, faculty meetings, and budget discussions regarding resource allocation," Uberti noted.

She continued by saying that, most importantly, the district has begun shifting its organizational culture. Uberti said their school and department leaders are becoming increasingly comfortable using real, measurable outcomes to assess program effectiveness and transparently report their progress. This, she added, lays the foundation for the success of all future students, and the success of their district as a whole.

Uberti went on to highlight three of their most significant success stories from year one. The first was the launch of digital portfolio sites for grades nine through twelve to help students track their Portrait of a Graduate traits. They also formed a district AI team, providing a full day of staff training, and passing a formal board AI policy to guide responsible classroom technology use.

The second was that the district operationalized data-driven accountability. They also established synchronized district and building-based data teams that met consistently throughout the year. These teams analyzed student performance in the fall and winter to immediately try to move the needle on whatever data they were looking at. Uberti said they applied this same rigor to chronic absenteeism, using multi-tiered support systems to identify students in need and directly engage with families.

The third is that the district updated its work around school climate to align with new State legislation. Uberti said climate teams and building administrators completed the transition to the new State guidelines, including administering a brand new climate survey explicitly aligned to the updated school climate standards. This gave them baseline data they will need to build next year's climate goals in their improvement plans, according to Uberti.

Additionally, they adopted a sustainable train-the-trainer model for restorative practices, successfully training at least one staff member in every building and, in turn, building internal capacity for training.

"I do believe that each of these achievements is significant in their own right, and I wanted to use them to demonstrate how the accountability framework actually has translated into real results," Uberti explained.

Operational Infrastructure

Supporting the district's instructional work requires solid day-to-day operations, so Uberti said their operational departments focused on improving efficiency across the district. This work entailed looking at facility upgrades and engaging in modernization projects to better the district's classrooms and technology infrastructure.

For technology, they completed a comprehensive district-wide audit of their hardware and network systems, systematically hardened their cybersecurity infrastructure, and designed an equipment replacement road map.

On the facility side, they organized and launched a School Facilities Planning Committee that is looking at long-term facility needs.

"And by connecting our facilities planning directly with the Town's Capital Improvement Plan, we are ensuring that every single dollar invested directly supports our long-term strategic priorities and represents a wise use of taxpayer dollars," Uberti added.

She noted operational excellence also means creatively solving long-standing district bottlenecks without asking for new capital or costly external space.

To that end, Uberti said their facilities and technology directors are collaborating on transforming rooms B150 and B152 at Newtown High School into a multi-use training and community space, maximizing their existing space.

This is important as they have run into space constraints across the district, according to Uberti. She said that when they need to bring staff together for mandatory professional development or hold larger meetings, they are limited to Newtown Municipal Center's Council Chambers or Reed Intermediate School's library.

Since they cannot livestream out of Reed's library, and cannot host large-scale training there during the day without disrupting students, Uberti said this has impacted their ability to hold large meetings and trainings.

"This project will provide our staff with a dedicated training space, and my goal is that we can also use it for future [BOE] meetings," Uberti said.

Continuing the focus on fiscal responsibility, Uberti said they looked at how the district's central office functions. Over this past year, she said they worked with an outside consultant, alongside the district's directors of human resources and business and finance, to take a close look at daily workflows.

This analysis identified where administrative processes were slowed down by fragmented, paper-heavy tasks and manual workflows. Instead of hiring more staff to solve these capacity issues, they went with the consultant, who recommended they automate more of those tasks, particularly onboarding.

Uberti said they ultimately went with Frontline Central, an electronic employee records management system for K-12 districts, which will integrate with their other products.

Reflections, Moving Forward

As with any first-year rollout, Uberti said they must address their challenges and lessons learned. In many cases, she said the work was larger and more complex than initially estimated.

"But I do want to emphasize that I don't view 'in-progress' as a shortcoming. This is meant to be honest, so it is a reflection of reality," Uberti said. "When you think about all of the variables that are being worked on simultaneously, it's like when one thing is getting fixed, another thing is needing attention, and there's also changing legislation, which forces our hand to go in a different direction."

Uberti referred to this idea called the Cycle of Continuous Improvement, which she used in her budget presentation and has been "a motto" of hers throughout her administrative career. It represents a cycle of continuous improvement, in accordance with the steps plan, do, act, and check.

She said the district is in its "critical check" phase, and that they have assessed what worked, what did not, and why. This was a lot of what they covered in an intensive three-day administrator retreat the previous week. This retreat included principals, assistant principals, directors, and operational directors from the central office.

"And from here, we will act by going back and refining our strategies, adjusting our course as we begin planning for the new school year," Uberti said.

She continued by saying she invites BOE members to review the multi-year progress tracker ahead of their scheduled summer Board retreat on July 8. At this session, Uberti said they plan to do a deeper dive into progress with the district's goals and ask any additional questions.

BOE Chair Alison Plante said they also plan to do some self-reflection about how they can operate better as a board.

"Not because we think we're experiencing major issues," Plante clarified. "But since we ask our administrators and staff and students to focus on continuous improvement, we will, too."

Uberti also noted that there will be a presentation of the district's climate survey results at a BOE meeting in July or August.

In addition to listening to the strategic goal presentation, BOE members approved the ratification of custodial and maintenance contracts in a unanimous vote. They also unanimously voted to extend the employment contract of Uberti as superintendent through and including June 30, 2029, and the one-year contract extension for Tanja Gouveia as director of business and finance.

The BOE also approved the extension of the district's propane contract with Mitchell Fuel for the 2026-27 school year.

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Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.