The Board of Education (BOE) welcomed new and returning members, and also listened to a presentation on pupil services’ strategic goals at its Tuesday, December 2, meeting.

The BOE extended a warm welcome to its new members, Melissa Beylouni and Don Ramsey, and to its reelected members, Doria Linnetz and Shannon Tomai. This comes after four BOE terms were set to end on December 1 and the aforementioned new and returning members ran for those positions in this year’s municipal election. As there were only four people running, they filled the four available openings.

Tuesday night marked the first meeting with the new board. As such, the meeting opened up with the election of officers. BOE member Alison Plante was re-elected to chair, BOE member Doria Linnetz was elected to vice chair, and Ramsey was elected to secretary.

After BOE members adjusted their seating order to reflect the new positions, BOE member John Vouros led everyone in reading the group’s new core values statement, formerly known as the credo.

The new core values statement is as follows: “As stewards of Newtown Public Schools, we commit to conducting ourselves with honesty, integrity, and respect, guided by Newtown’s core values and portrait of a graduate, we will strive to prepare every student to think critically and innovate with curiosity, adapt, persevere, and pursue goals with strategic focus, act with compassion, collaborate across differences, and communicate with clarity. We hold ourselves to the same attributes we seek to instill in our students, embodying them in our work together.”

In a brief Chair report, Plante congratulated the new and reelected members of the BOE.

“I’m incredibly excited about this group and our opportunity together,” Plante said. “I think it’s going to be a really, really productive term.”

Plante also said she is honored and humbled to continue serving as the board’s chair. She noted how typically, when a new group comes together, it takes time to establish relationships and gel as a team. However, Plante said they are incredibly fortunate with this group to already have a lot of those relationships in place.

She added, “So I think we can really hit the ground running and have a really productive couple of years.”

Superintendent of Schools Anne Uberti personally welcomed back all returning BOE members, while extending a hearty welcome to the two new BOE members. She congratulated them on behalf of the entire district and thanked them for their willingness to serve, as they support Newtown Public Schools’ students, staff, and families.

“I’m very excited about working with all of you, and I know we are in good hands, so thank you,” Uberti said.

Afterward, Director of Special Education and Pupil Services Deborah Mailloux-Petersen presented her strategic goals for the 2025-26 school year. Mailloux-Peterson’s position has her oversee all of the district’s special education teachers, psychologists, social workers, speech and language pathologists, and others. She is also the homeless liaison and works with students who have 504 plans.

Plante said this is another step in the BOE listening to presentations on all of the various goals throughout the district. The BOE started by listening to the district level goals, down to the school level goals, and are now hearing from some of the department heads on their goals.

“And so Pupil Services is the last one that we haven’t heard yet, and so this will complete our presentation goal tonight,” Plante explained.

From there, Mailloux-Petersen took the floor in presenting her strategic goals. Much like previous strategic goal presentations, Mailloux-Petersen shared how Pupil Services can meet the district’s instructional goals through different strategic actions and action steps. One of her largest goals, she said, is creating a rubric which will determine how Newtown Public Schools supports its special education students and if they require adult support.

To create this rubric, Mailloux-Petersen said she is working with her two supervisors and the four elementary school assistant principals in the district.

“So we’re hoping that putting something together like this will provide some consistency throughout the district on who we recommend for additional adult support,” Mailloux-Petersen explained.

She said they are looking to pilot the rubric in the spring at each building with one or two teachers. This way, they can see if they need to tweak the rubric.

“But we look at this as a multi-year goal, so [we’re] looking to pilot it in the spring and then roll it out next year and continue to tweak if we need to,” Mailloux-Petersen said.

She added that they have made some great strides in strengthening partnerships with local businesses, agencies, and community organizations to provide students with additional resources, real-world learning experiences, and support services that enhance academic, social, and post-secondary outcomes.

This is, in part, because Mailloux-Petersen said their transition coordinator has already secured two new locations for students in their transition program for students aged 18-22.

“So she’s working really hard at forging relationships and getting our students into other businesses to provide them ... other experiences than what they’ve had already,” Mailloux-Petersen said.

Other general action steps include involving families in Individualized Education Program (IEP) planning and other student-centered decision making processes, along with implementing targeted, data-informed strategies based on data at the intermediate, middle school, and high school level to reduce chronic absenteeism among students with disabilities, as measured by the Next Generation Accountability index.

Additional Discussion

BOE member Chris Gilson, who is also chair of the Board’s Diversity, Equity, Accessibility and Inclusion (DEAI) subcommittee, talked to the BOE about their thoughts on how the subcommittee could do better. He said the DEAI subcommittee’s goal is to help every student and staff member feel validated, included, and supported, and to ensure every student feels a sense of belonging and has equitable access to vital resources and opportunities.

Gilson said he thinks those are aspirational goals and, as they have seen in the last several strategic goal presentations, are now embedded in the goals of the district’s different buildings. While they have had groups that provide consultation services and help promote a stronger sense of a diverse, organizational purpose, Gilson said progress in living up to those goals “has been slow.”

Gilson called the subcommittee a good sounding board for parents and students and members of the community to come in and have their voices heard, but said that it has always been frustrating for him because “I didn’t really feel like the [subcommittee] was empowered to do anything on that.”

“There’s been some things that we’ve said we should do, but we haven’t been linked in to the equity leaders, we haven’t been linked in to the climate committees in the different buildings,” Gilson said. “I know there’s efforts that are going on at our district ... but the committee isn’t positioned, I feel, in the right place to be doing much about it.”

While he understands operational obligations like that fall to district administration, Gilson said even having oversight to report on different things that are being done in the district would help.

Uberti said she hears what he is saying, and does not want to disrespect anybody by not having the committee, but believes a lot of the frustration is that the other committees have actions they take in the subcommittee.

It has always been her question, she said, as to what action they are taking in that committee. If it is oversight, Uberti said she thinks they have provided a vehicle to be more transparent about what they do.

Uberti said she proposed broadening the committee to be more about school climate because there are a number of initiatives underway, between training and restorative practices. She said it may feel like they have not done a lot, but they have done a tremendous amount of work since 2020.

Uberti said she met with the elementary assistant principals earlier that day, and was struck because they talked about putting accommodations for their English language (EL) learners into instructional program Smarter Balanced.

She said they literally translate everything into their home language, from telephone calls to written materials. This is a far cry from when COVID-19 hit, Uberti said, as they were not translating anything and those families were “on their own.”

Uberti said it can be hard to see on the outside because none of that matters when something “bad happens to your child.” She notes that she has had her heart ripped out by some of the stories she heard at that subcommittee. However, she said they can only fix those problems at the individual level, but are never really going to fix it at the system level.

That said, she knows why it feels that way and wanted to let Gilson know that those structures are in place already.

Beylouni spoke to the school climate committee, and, with her past as a PTA president, is interested in seeing how she could lend herself to the committee and the school in that capacity. For the school climate committee, Beylouni suggested that they rotate the parents to offer different perspectives every year.

She noted that most parents “don’t even know about that committee,” and she did not know about that committee until her kids were in middle school.

Uberti noted Beylouni’s suggestion of making the committee more visible as a good idea.

“The plans should create a circle, that’s my goal ... If there are areas, whether it be climate or other areas that we may not realize need improvement, but you as board members and community members are hearing, then those can be incorporated,” Uberti said.

Gilson said they should be more aggressive on meeting those goals, and to have those presentations on climate to be done before the BOE and not hidden behind a committee.

Plante said they can vote on the committees as proposed, and then the committee can be tasked with figuring out how they want to enable the BOE to provide oversight.

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