A Busy Year In Newtown’s Schools

By Laurie Borst, Nancy Crevier & Martha Coville

It was another year of inspired teaching, learning, and community service in Newtown’s schools. Students were honored for their excellence. Teachers were lauded for programs they developed. Exciting cultural arts programs were provided by PTAs at the schools. Many familiar faces retired and some new ones have replaced them. Some of our school facilities have raised challenges for administrators.

A number of Cultural Arts events were provided to Newtown’s students by the schools’ PTAs. Among the enlightening and enjoyable presentations were Picasso People, a solo show that brought the life and times of Pablo Picasso to the stage, “Ginga Brasiliera,” a dance troupe that brings the history and culture of Brazil to life. “Storeography,” the brain child of Adam Battelstein, an acclaimed dancer and choreographer who has worked with Pilobolus and Momix among others. The Maritime Aquarium offered presentations on animals and their senses and defenses.

In June, 427 seniors in the Class of 2007 became alumni of Newtown High School. Friends and family packed the O’Neill Center on Western Connecticut State University’s Westside Campus proudly acknowledging this milestone in the students’ lives. The school district also saw 28 students complete graduation requirements in January and seven students earned diplomas through adult education.

Newtown High School

The top ten students in NHS’s Class of 2007 were Jennifer Iassogna, Erica Federman, Nikia McFadden, Darcy Fiscella (salutatorian), Tara Cerreta, Linda Chamiec-Case, Tilly Philbrick, Sean Ryan, Brian Pennarola (valedictorian), and Dave Wilkins.

NHS students Ethan Reed and Erin Baier and NMS students Jane Ellen Anderson and Brandon Body were recognized as Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendent Students of the Year.

The biggest challenge Timo has found, echoing last year’s AFS students, has been adjusting to a loss of freedom. In Switzerland, and many other European cities, public transportation is readily available with trains and buses connecting towns and cities. Here, a car is needed to get anywhere.

In October 2006, juniors from NHS sat down to take the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT). Nine of those student’ scores qualified them to enter the 2008 National Merit Scholarship Program. The students were Tyler Adams, Blake Bell, Stephen Dworkin, Allison Jagoe, Sarah Peck, Jordan Reed, Rebecca Reed, Rachel Rockwell, and Tanner Schmidt.

NHS drama students presented Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods on stage at the high school auditorium March 15–18. The NHS production of Into the Woods marked the 20th anniversary of the acclaimed musical’s Broadway debut. Into the Woods revisits familiar childhood fairy tales and enlivens them with a series of grown-up twists.

The Drama Club presented Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest in November. This is a student-organized and directed production. This presentation of The Importance of Being Earnest is the culmination of months of work by a talented group of students.

The Newtown Bee took on its first intern from NHS. Bridie Rubino, a junior, worked at The Bee through the spring, writing about overcrowding issues at the school, cafeteria problems and “The Good, the Bad & the Ugly” of online websites such as MySpace, Xanga, and Facebook.

Newtown High School had several students participate in science fairs. Science fair season kicked off with the Second Annual Science Symposium, which showcased the work of students in Frank LaBanca’s Applied Science Research Program.

 Students receiving recognition at a variety of science competitions included Rebecca Reed, Drew Taylor, Maricate Conlon, Crystal Young, Ivan Virovets, Allison Conley, Matthew Berk, and Dayton Horvath.

Nine NHS students presented the results of the work they did this year on their Senior Projects in April. Students who complete a project are eligible for the Barton Weller Foundation scholarships for music, education, and health care. Alan Korth, Rebecca Reed, Jake Burg, Dayton Horvath, Jake Rebb, Lindsey Greene, Aron Fay, Rob Simone, and Ian McChord presented their projects that ranged from engineering to writing to clothing design.

With family and friends cheering them on, the Newtown Varsity Color Guard took the floor in the Music and Arts Competition Championship in March at Trumbull High School. The guard walked away from the competition with the first place trophy for the fourth consecutive year.

Art students raised funds for Canine Advocates of Newtown (CAN) with Bowl & Soup. The students crafted soup bowls and culinary students provided soup to fill them. The NHS Ecology Club held an Environmental Fair on April 27. The fair was held to celebrate Earth Day, educate people about global warming, and encourage students to make small changes. Several dozen members of Newtown Youth Creating AIDS Awareness for Peers (NYCAAP) journeyed to Central Park in New York City on May 20 to participate in the 10K AIDS Walk New York to raise awareness and funds for AIDS research

NHS Information Technology Leadership Academy (ITLA) attended the Connecticut Innovation Challenge at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford. For the third year in a row, the team, under the direction of teacher Kristin Violette, took first place for web design. The team consisted of Amar Agashe, Zach Bokuniewicz, Nathaniel Burns, Kate Foy, Ivan Judak, Melissa King, Alex Lubinsky, Steven Rollo, Tori Sandifer, and Patrick Shirley. Melissa and Alex were also on last year’s winning team.

The Newtown High School Debate Team brought home eight trophies from the Connecticut Debate Association (CDA) State Finals Tournament. Competition included 34 teams in the Varsity level and 33 teams in Junior Varsity for a total of 134 debaters who qualified to participate.

NHS had 15 minutes of infamy, with broadcast news media swooping in, when it became known that a student at the school had been treated for MRSA, methycillin-resisitant Staphylococcus aureus. The student had been successfully treated and was back in school. The bacterium, highly resistant to antibiotics, had caused the dead of a Virginia high school student. Sensible hygiene guidelines help keep S. aureus in check.

Newtown Middle School

Way back in 1970, Newtown Middle School got new seats in its auditorium. Thirty-seven years later, time had taken its toll. In January, there were 20 broken seats that had been replaced with hard plastic chairs. Many other seats showed wear. Knowing how tight the schools budget is each year, Principal Diane Sherlock, with a committee of teachers and parents, began “Save Me a Seat” fundraiser.

The seats were replaced over the summer break, and on September 5, Mrs Sherlock cut a ribbon on the doors to the refurbished auditorium. “Save Me A Seat” committee members, donors, and town officials attended the event celebrating the replacement of the auditorium seats. Closed in February due to safety concerns, the auditorium can now seat 400 people.

Eighth graders Nicole Lang, Brandon Hart, Kate Siroky, and Josh Engler attended the Middle Level Student Leadership Training conference where the focus was “Making Acceptance Acceptable.” Last spring, eighth grader Laura Paik was recognized by the American Museum of Natural History in its essay contest for her research on goldfinches at her home. Leah Barrett and Josh Engler were among 290 scholar/leaders honored by the Connecticut Association of Schools.

 NMS students participated in the perennially popular Scarecrow Sculpture Contest. First Place this year went to “Donut Justice,” sculpted by Alexis Archer, Hannah Barrett, Rob Daigle, and Doug Pierce; Second Place: “Captain Jack Sparrow,” sculptors Lexi Black, Emily Kopcik, Lauren O’Connell, and Lucy Riley; a tie for Third Place: “Steamboat Willie (aka Mickey Mouse)” sculptors Abbey Doski, Hannah Maret, and Laurel Speed, and “Monopoly,” artists Emily Ashbolt, Nicole Lang, Jen McDonald, and Shannon McDonald; Honorable Mention: “Pumpkin Bear,” sculptors Maddie Dorso, Lauren Harrison, and Katie Martinelli.

 The school held a Rube Goldberg contest in the spring. In this competition, Drew Robinson and Brian Reed; Gretchen Streett, Anne Martino, and Erica Green; and Lila Kohrman-Glaser, Eliana Kohrman-Glaser, Miryam Wilson, and Amy Kung earned first, second, and people’s choice awards.

GATES students entered the CANstruction competition sponsored by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), which had the students working with local architects and collecting supplies for local food pantries.

Reed School

In late March, 107 Accelerated Readers at Reed Intermediate School gathered in the library for a presentation by health teacher Michelle Failla on the book she had just published titled Theo’s Dream. Mrs Failla co-wrote the book with her husband, Pino, about the post-Impressionist genius Vincent van Gogh.

This spring, Reed sixth grade teacher Valerie Pagano-Hepburn revived the Pushcart Wars, an event she facilitated at Sandy Hook School. The event is based on the book by Jean Merrill that tells the story of the clash between street vendors and ever-increasing truck traffic in New York City. On the morning of April 4, Ms Pagano’s classroom looked and sounded like the streets of old New York. Pushcarts filled the room, signs proclaimed various avenues and streets, and student “vendors” loudly hawked their wares.

The sixth graders in clusters with teachers Karen King and Nancy Handler, Christina Mirow and John Bird, and Susan Devine and Amy Smith have been studying Africa this year, particularly the 42,000 Liberian refugees in the Buduburam Refugee Camp in Ghana. After learning about the plight of the Liberian people, the students raised money for a copier, computers, and other school supplies, which Ms King took over to Ghana this past summer.

Reed Intermediate School, with assistance from Chartwells School Dining Services, continued to take the lead with student wellness. On September 5, the school held its annual Reed Rally event.

In September 17, Reed School celebrated National Constitution Day with the screening The (almost) Painless Guide to the US Constitution, and a visit from State Representative Julia Wasserman.

Wednesday afternoons in the Reed Library/Media Center, a small group of students can be found sitting around a table, enthusiastically discussing books they have read and planning ways to share their love of reading with other Reed students. The recently formed club has been dubbed Book Lookers. NHS senior Bethany Morin, who is planning to become a librarian, developed the idea for her senior research project. The Reed students will create a video and a reference notebook with information on the books they read to help other students decide on a title they might like.

Elementary Schools

For the second year, Sandy Hook School students sent Valentine’s Day letters to military personnel serving overseas. Parent volunteer Donna coordinated the project with 14 classes, including kindergarten, writing letters that brightened the day for many service people.

The school received the names of 203 servicemen and six servicewomen deployed overseas. Six packages of additional letters were prepared to be distributed to marines and soldiers in units known to Newtown residents Colonel William Rodgers and First Sergeant Arthur Fredericks, whom they described as “younger men who are in need of a hug from home.”

Chartwells School Dining has implemented the “offer vs serve” system at all schools, except Hawley Elementary, which does not have a cafeteria, in which lunch servers ask diners directly which of the lunch options they prefer with their meals. In this way, children do not find themselves faced with a plateful of items they do not plan to eat, or turned off from an entire lunch because one undesirable selection is bumped up against foods that the child does want to eat.

Hawley teacher Lea Attanasio developed an interdisciplinary unit for her third graders. Using a birthday theme, she planned lessons in narrative and expository writing, helped her students research on the Internet, and brought in members of the community who did not grow up in America to share their birthday traditions. Ms Attanasio was subsequently awarded the 2007 Weller Excellence in Teaching Award in recognition of this project.

Casey Muckell and Liam Garrison were second graders in Linda Giordano’s class at Hawley when they found out they had been selected as winners in the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s 2007 Paul G. Keough Earth Artists Program.

Third graders in Alison Amanzio’s class at Sandy Hook had the opportunity this winter to write and illustrate books that were submitted to the Kids Are Authors annual competition sponsored by Scholastic Books. The two groups that completed the task consisted of Chris Lafky, Austin Carfi, Peter Winans, Kyle Keeping, and James Accousti, who wrote The No Timmy Club, and Kayla Sippin, Amanda Kahn, and Sarah Mawdsley who penned The Journey in the Deep Woods of Michigan.

Dina Mastroni’s fourth graders at Middle Gate School had quite the learning experience this spring. As part of language arts class, the students read the book, The Three Samurai Cats: A Story From Japan by Eric Kimmel. With Ms Mastroni’s help, the students turned the book into a play, Three Samurai Cats, which the students presented. The students dedicated the play “to all of the special people in our lives who have helped us to get where we are today.”

In May, Sandy Hook School Principal Donna Pagé received a donation from Peggy and Mark Sippin, of Sippin Energy Products and Real Estate Company, in the amount of $3,000 to be used for the purchase of SMARTboards, the associated equipment, and training in their use. Later that month, the Hawley PTA presented a check to Principal Jo-Ann Peters that is earmarked for SMARTboards in their classrooms. The PTA raised more than $25,000 through an auction dinner dance.

The office of the Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz honored two local students for their entries in the State of Connecticut’s 10th Annual Poster Contest and 13th Annual Essay Contest.

The theme of the poster contest was “Citizenship in My Community,” which received more than 1,000 entries. From those entries, judges selected five winners from each of the Connecticut’s five Congressional districts. Kathryn D’Alessandro, a fifth grader at St Rose, was one of the five winners for the Fifth Congressional District.

The 13th Annual Essay Contest had more than 1,000 fourth graders from across Connecticut submit essays this year, each writing about a unique place in Connecticut and why they would recommend this place to someone visiting the state. Abbi Winters, who attends Hawley, was chosen for her essay about the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center in Hartford.

On October 15, Hawley School held its kickoff assembly beginning one month of community reading for a fundraiser for Heifer International. In November, principal Joanne Peters announced the students had raised $11,652, enough to purchase more than 72 animals, more than two full “Gift Arks” for that will be presented to families in Africa to provide sustainable agriculture.

At Head O’ Meadow, fourth graders have the option of participating in the School-Community Team (SCT). Among the duties these volunteers accept are serving as helpers for bus safety and delivering morning announcements. They work on a community service project every month. In October, they filled goodies bags with Halloween candy for children who visit the Dorothy Day Hospitality House in Danbury.

It was a chilly morning, November 9, when Sandy Hook School welcomed some 40 veterans to the school for breakfast in celebration of Veterans’ Day. The event began with Sandy Hook parent Bob Elliott playing reveille on the trumpet while head custodian Dennis Best raised the flag, as he does every morning. Following the flag raising, student escorts showed the veterans to classrooms. Everyone recited the Pledge of Allegiance and the soldiers spoke with the students about their service.

In August, Sergeant First Class Michael Brown visited the Children’s Adventure Center on Riverside Road. Sgt Brown had brought a very special gift to present to the children and staff at the Adventure Center. Sgt Brown presented an American flag to teacher Nora Lundgren as the youngsters watched. The flag, which was brought from Newtown, had flown over FOB Ghazni, the US military base in Ghazni, Afghanistan, on September 11, 2006. The students had written to Sgt Brown while he was overseas.

St Rose School

Fifth graders in Beth Salaris’s science class took part in St Rose School’s Invention Convention. The students were given the assignment to find a common problem, brainstorm solutions, and create a prototype within a set budget. Elizabeth Ludanyi, Rachel Maguire, and Daniel Hamar received top honors.

Eight seventh and eighth graders earned a number of accolades at the Science Horizons Fair held at Ridgefield High School. Five students placed as finalists in the Junior Biological category and three were finalists in the Junior Physical category.

In May, a dozen sixth, seventh, and eighth graders competed in the Modern Woodmen of America’s annual Speech Contest. Modern Woodmen of America is an insurance and investment company that sponsors the speaking competition. This year’s topic was Great American Leaders. David Tortora, Jessica Jowdy, and Andrew Hyeon took the top spots.

The Missoula Children’s Theater (MCT) returned to St Rose School for the third year in a row. This year, theater members staged their version of Robinson Crusoe. MCT provides two experienced directors who arrive with scripts, props, makeup, costumes, and scenery. MCT takes familiar stories and puts its own spin on them. Fifty-seven students had roles in the play. At the end of one week of rehearsals, the play was staged at St Rose.

 

Housatonic Valley Waldorf School

The Housatonic Valley Waldorf School hosted a grand opening of its new middle school facility on September 15. The school faculty, along with students, families, and friends celebrated with a ribbon cutting, refreshments, tours, live music, and dancing.

Music

NHS’s music students were busy last winter. Twenty-two band, chorus, and orchestra students were selected to participate in the Western Region High School Music Festival. Brianna Eckhardt was selected to participate in the Music Educators National Conference Eastern Division Music Festival. Nine students participated in the All-State Music Festival. Diana Curcuruto, Mary Kate Hubbard, Lindsey Jones, Dan McSweeney, Quinlan Mitchell, Andrew Nichols, Ryan Silveira, Kevin Walsh, and Dave Wilkins were selected for this honor.

Members of the NHS Chorus attended the All-State Music Festival in Waterbury. Students selected to participate in the All-State Chorus were Ryan Silveira, Diana Curcuruto, Kevin Walsh, Taylor Boles, Andrew Nichols, Mary Kate Hubbard, and Quinlan Mitchell.

NMS students participated in the 2007 Western Region Middle School Festival Concert including Laurel Speed, Brian White, R.J. Roman, Molly Sheluck, Monica Tedla, Leah Barrett, Katie Cummings, Katie McMorran, Brittany Soucar, Megan Preis, and Gabrielle Milano.

Other NMS students participated in the 33rd Annual Fairfield County String Festival. Seventh grade violinist Douglas Pierce, violist Nicole DeFelice, and cellist Julie Ficks, and eighth grade violists Jane Ellen Anderson and Meghan Loose, and bassist Rachel Fintz performed at the festival held at Newtown High School.

Amanda Watson, seventh grader at NMS and student at the Suzuki Music School of Westport, participated in a show on May 1 at Carnegie Hall in New York City featuring a Suzuki Celebration and Music in America’s Schools.

Board of Education

In January, Superintendent of Schools Evan Pitkoff presented his proposed budget of $64,917,305 for the 2007-2008 school year to the Board of Education, school principals, and a handful of residents. The proposal was an increase of $4,533,630, or 7.51 percent, over the previous year’s budget.

On June 4, the Board of Education announced the appointment of Lillian Bittman to fill the vacancy left following the resignation of Tom Gissen from the board in May.

While plans for the high school expansion moved forward, with tax payers approving the architects’ fees, all was not smooth sailing. Shortly before the holiday break in 2006, it was discovered that the refurbished portable classrooms that had been leased to ease overcrowding had mold problems. M Space Inc built new replacement structures and, in February, Building and Grounds Supervisor Dom Posca and his crew had the portables ready when the students returned from their February vacation.

We said goodbye to 24 teachers and administrators who had a combined total of more than 400 years of service. Assistant Superintendent Alice Jackson, Building and Grounds Supervisor Dom Posca, and Sandy Hook School Assistant Principal Cathy Mazzariello retired in June. Retiring teachers and staff members were Joan Popovic, Charlie Brumley, Kurt Ryder, Kathy Madzula, Josie Schmidt, Phyllis Buffa, Carmelia Cassano, Martha Babbitt, Vickie Bassett, Kathy Keating, Fran Simone, Al Beatini, Neil Culhane, Mary Giunti, Kathy Keating, Nancy Koonce, Robert McHugh, Greg O’Loskey, Kenneth Royal, Frances Simone, and Patricia Walsh.

Also leaving Newtown were Superintendent Evan Pitkoff and high school principal Arlene Gottesman. Thomas Jokubaitis was hired as interim superintendent and Jay Smith is the interim principal at NHS. Dr Smith’s permanent replacement, Charles Dumais begins the role in January 2008.

Dr Linda Gejda is the new assistant superintendent. Barbara Gasparine is the new assistant principal at Sandy Hook. Gino Faiella has replaced Dom Posca. John Tusch was hired as an assistant principal at Newtown High School, replacing Cathy Ostar, who became the Director of Guidance. In January, Dr Janet Robinson assumes the superintendent position.