February Vacation Canceled; School Board Members Honored
By Robin Vinci at November 11, 2023 | 9:45 am | Print
Following an unprecedented October snow storm causing outages throughout the City, the Board of Education had difficult decisions to make this week.
Ron Jakubowski, interim superintendent of schools, reported on what took place during the week off of school at a Monday night Board of Education meeting.
He said it became evident by Tuesday afternoon (Nov. 1) that school would be canceled for the entire week due to wires and tree limbs down and people without power.
“The mayor issued an executive order that allowed people to cross over from whatever group they were working in to work with other groups,” said Jakubowski. “That prompted some action by our staff that I am very proud of.”
Foreman, security and custodians teamed up to go to sites to help people who were bringing debris.
“The Park and Recreation did tree cutting and our guys followed along moving debris on to the trucks to get it off streets and power lines,” said Jakubowski. “A food distribution was organized at Rock Cat Stadium on Thursday night.”
Food was donated by the town of Shelton. Over 3,000 meals were given out. The remaining meals went to two housing projects in town.
School buses also went along every route to give the City a blueprint of what trees needed to be removed before school began.
Parents were communicated by emergency communication to cell phones etc… About 70 percent got them immediately and it increased as the week went along.
The schools and parks and recreation opened up sites later in the week for children to participate.
“On Friday we still had 6 schools out,” said Jakubowski. “School opened today (Monday) and we had no problems…However, we had heating and phone problems related to outages.”
“I’m very proud of these men and women work for us,” added Jakubowski
But, the outages prevented school for the week also caused a needed change to the school schedule.
Winter break will be interrupted as classes will now take place Feb. 21-24. Students will have a four day vacation as Lincoln (Feb. 17) and President’s Day (Feb. 20) will remain.
“We were supposed to get out of school June 13. If you add 6 days to that so that would make the last day of school June 21 and it’s not December yet,” said Jakubowski. “We can’t do that. We had 7 snow days last year. In a normal school year we have 3 or 4 snow days.”
Jakubowski said putting students in schools in late July is too hot and students don’t learn as well. This puts the last day of school as June 15 if there are no more snow days.
More snow days will force the board to go into the remainder of Feb. vacation and April vacation.
“I’m very satisfied with the revised calendar,” said Sharon Beloin-Saavedra, school board president.
The marking period will also change as students will get report cards after Thanksgiving rather than before Thanksgiving. Various early dismissal days in November were also changed to December.
It was also the last day on the board for two school board members. Brian Riley and Pat Coyle (former teacher) choose not return and they were honored by the board.
“Both Mr. Riley and Mrs. Coyle have served the students of New Britain very well over the past four years,” said Saavedra. “I actually begged both of them to stay. They served with honor and distinction. The board has no partisanship here….I am sorry to see both of them go.”
“I will not say goodbye, but we will be seeing you again,” said Judith Greco, board member. “I will miss both of you.”
“Not only are we board members, but with the amount of time we spend doing this job, even though we disagree sometimes, we have become friends,” said Paul Carver, board member. “I am truly going to miss the two of you, but I’m sure I’m going to see you two around.”
Jakubowski said both board members have deep routes in the community.
“It’s all come full circle. Thanks for all your time and years devoted to New Britain kids,” Jakubowski said.
