Board of Education (BOE) members discussed Newtown Public School District's preliminary student assessment data and climate survey results at their special meeting on Wednesday, July 8. The meeting, which doubled as the BOE's summer retreat, was held in BOE Conference Room 1.

BOE Chair Alison Plante said the group was going to review the school climate survey results at their regularly scheduled meeting the following week. However, they decided to move it forward and discuss it among several other topics during their special meeting.

Superintendent of Schools Anne Uberti said they wanted the meeting to feel informal, sparking discussion and question from the BOE on the data results. This is why BOE members met in one of the group's conference rooms.

"I think it ties into a lot of questions that you guys have raised about the areas we see as need of improvement in the district," Uberti told the BOE. "And it may become more clear to you when you see what we're doing, along with some of the specific work we're doing with administrators ... but we encourage your participation and questions as we go along."

BOE members were free to raise their hand and ask a question at any point.

From there, Assistant Superintendent of Schools Frank Purcaro led the presentation. He noted that their theme last year was "Together, Igniting Potential And Inspiring Achievement." Since it was his and Uberti's first year together, Purcaro said he wanted to set a tone that they were coming together to reach their potential and inspire achievement in the district.

The theme for this year is "Reflect. Refine. Reach Higher."

"We've talked a lot to our staff and the admin team this year about reflection, so we knew we wanted it to be part of our theme this year, but we also wanted to have that theme involve continuous improvement," Purcaro said.

The PDF for the full presentation, with the district's full assessment data and strategic goal updates, can be found at drive.google.com/file/d/1wQEm9BD0pRYmcTqcNoGS81TsW1CVrIl-/view.

Preliminary District Assessment Data

The first section reviewed spring assessment data from three major State exams: Smarter Balanced Assessments (SBA), the Next Generation Science Standards Assessment (NGSS), and the SAT.

As a reminder, Purcaro said SBAs are given to students in English language arts (ELA) and math. They are scored on Achievement Levels of 1-4; the categories, in ascending order, stand for Does Not Meet, Approaching, Meets, and Exceeds grade level standards. It is administered to all students in grades 3-8 annually in spring, typically around early to mid-May.

69% of students met or exceeded grade level standards for the Smarter Balanced ELA exam in the 2025-26 school year. This is down 1% from the 2024-25 year.

As for the Smarter Balanced Math exam, 73% of students in 2025-26 met or exceeded grade level standards — up 1% over the previous school year.

BOE member Donald Ramsey asked when the results are complete, to which Purcaro said it is usually a precise number at that point.

"You see some fluctuation as they start, they go through, they verify them a few times just to make sure there's no errors in the scoring. You pretty much stay static with whatever that number is," Purcaro explained.

He added that they can sort the results by grade level, school level, and student level. These results are shared with the district data team, which analyze the data and consult the school-based teams.

Purcaro used district results for the presentation since grade-level results were not verified yet.

NGSS, SAT

The NGSS is a State assessment in science and is administered to all students in grades 5, 8, and 11, assessing three years worth of curriculum.

For the 2025-26 school year, 68% of students across the three grades met or exceeded the standard. This is a 2% over the previous school year.

Purcaro said the results for students that they know can do much better in science have traditionally been low for the NGSS. He added that the science department has made an effort this year to talk to students about the importance of the assessment, being a reflection of themselves and the school.

"And we're hopeful that those results will show that difference," Purcaro said.

The SAT is a standardized test given yearly in the United States by College Board. For Newtown Public Schools, SAT School Day for all 11th graders is held in March every year.

Purcaro said that, since the 2023-24 school year, the SAT has gone to full digital administration. While it used to be a pen and paper assessment, it is now completed on a computer.

The SAT assesses students in two main areas: math and evidence-based reading and writing, also referred to as ELA. Scores range from 400-1600. Each category has a college and career readiness benchmark; for evidence-based reading it is 480 and for math it is 530.

Purcaro said they spend a lot of time with a team of teachers and a targeted group of students to help people score at a level of proficiency.

For the 2025-26 school year, 80% of 11th grade students met or exceeded the college and career readiness benchmark for ELA, a 2% increase over the previous year. 55% of students met or exceeded the benchmark for math, rising 8% from 2024-25.

Purcaro noted they focused a lot of support efforts to math because they knew math scores were continuing to drop; 72% of students met the benchmark in 2018-19 and, after a two year gap due to the COVID-19 pandemic, that number dropped to 58% in 2021-22. It increased to 59% the following score year, but had been in steady decline ever since.

"We do see results that are encouraging, enough so that we're going to try to expand what we did this year into next year," Purcaro said. "And maybe we can do it a little bit earlier."

District, School Climate Survey Results

Some changes were put in place for school climate this year, according to Purcaro. He said a new school climate policy was adopted based on new State legislation.

The directive from the State and the policy is to administer a school climate survey aligned to Connecticut Climate Standards. There is a set of around 8-10 Climate Standards that Connecticut has, which Purcaro said provides guidance as to the type of questions the district should ask staff and students.

The district also transitioned from a bullying protocol to a broader "challenging behavior framework" in early fall of last year. Purcaro said they are working through these protocols with the District Climate Committee.

Other changes include the addition of a district climate coordinator with school climate specialists, systematic training for staff in social and emotional learning, and a new harmful language protocol.

With all these changes, the school climate survey was revised for the 2025-26 school year to adhere to the new Connecticut School Climate Standards. It was developed in conjunction with EdAdvance and administered through ThoughtExchange, a K-12 survey and strategic insights platform. Results from the survey are immediately reported and summarized though AI analysis.

The results of the survey, after initial review by school climate committees, shape the school's climate improvement plans. These will be developed and sent to the district climate coordinate by December 31 each year, and later posted for public viewing on the Newtown Public School website.

A different survey was given to students grades 3-6, students grades 7-12, staff, and parents. Each survey asked participants about their perception in three areas: school, safety, and learning. There were eight closed questions per area, and two open-ended questions for each survey.

Every question had a favorability score, a percentage of respondents who answer "always" or "often" to a question.

59% of students grades 3-6 said that they liked coming to school, 68% feel their classmates are nice to each other, and 62% said students stick up for each other if someone is being mean. However, 91% said they have friends in class, 77% feel people in the school likes them, and 90% feel safe at school.

As for students in grades 7-12, questions with low favorability include "I enjoy coming to school" (46%), "students at my school will try to stop bullying behaviors (38%), and "I am eager to participate in class discussion." Questions with high favorability include "I feel safe at school" (87%), "teachers treat me with respect" (83%), and "my teachers want to help all students learn" (82%).

The staff survey had people in various positions, from teachers to janitors, respond.

"Because climate and culture reaches everybody's job," Uberti explained.

Many staff members expressed they feel physically safe on school premises, that their school meets the learning needs of students, and that the relationship between students and staff at their school is good. There were more mixed responses to whether teachers have adequate input on professional learning and student discipline practices are fair and consistent.

Parents largely felt positive about the district, with the survey showing high favorability marks in standers for student achievement, school safety, and communication. The only mark with low favorability compared to the other questions was "I am satisfied with the school's handling of unkind student behavior" (69%).

Purcaro said the administrative team created and is currently working on a school climate data review sheet, where they analyze the responses with high favorability and low favorability and decide on what actions to take from there.

To Purcaro, he said this was the root of their new climate plan.

"We built a lot of what we did last year on what we knew about schools and what we had in the old surveys, but we have an opportunity now to build on new survey results ... It's analogous to what we're doing on the data assessment side. We're going to treat it very much the same way," Purcaro explained.

Additional Discussion

The BOE reflected on the district's year 1 plan implementation and setting goals for the future. These include nine training dates spread across the 2026-27 school year, including feedback training and reflections to administrators and department chairs. They also set up eight Professional Development and Evaluation Committee dates between September and April.

Purcaro also outlined 2026-27 District Professional Learning focus areas, which includes inquiry-based instruction and critical thinking skills development and year two of the district's AI integration.

More specifically, Purcaro said the district would focus on three target areas for AI:

* What should students in grades 5-12 know about AI from an AI literacy standpoint.

* How can students in grades 8-12, along with staff, leverage AI services such as NotebookLM.

* How teachers can use focused professional learning in NotebookLM and Google GEMS.

"We do feel a responsibility to make sure kids are using these things ethically, but also that they have some knowledge of it in a structured way before they leave our school district. Not just because they fool around with it on their own, but because there's an expectation, at the next level, that there's some familiarity with things like NotebookLM," Purcaro explained.

BOE members approved a four-year educational personnel contract in a unanimous vote. Similar to the other union contracts negotiated with the district, Uberti said educational personal are going to get 3% for each year of the four years.

"We were able to move their insurance to the same insurance that we are trying to get everybody on to streamline the insurance and hopefully reduce costs," Uberti said.

She added that they did make a change so educational personnel can take their sick leave in one hour increments, much like the other others.

"We've been doing that for employees that we don't backfill because it benefits us. They're going to be out and they can take one or two hours instead of taking a half or full day," Uberti explained.

Much like with the contract with the custodians, Christmas Eve day will now be a full-day holiday for 52-week employees.

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