Between the Lines, A Lot of Good News for Education

While no one is happy to see Danbury's students giving up any of their educational resources, studying the schools and budgets reveals a lot of missed opportunities to celebrate. 

A City Council committee discussed school budget cuts Thursday, which Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton said was being looked at from the wrong angle. He said, “We have been able to raise the budget every year, and this is an increase of $1 million.”

 The reaction to the budget by City Council members mirrored the attitudes seen throughout Danbury; everyone wishes there was more money to go around. The focus on the economic downturn has overshadowed many important advances being made by the Danbury School system. Here are some of the highlights:

 According to School Superintendent Dr. Sal Pascarella, “Our upper students are competing with the best of Stamford and Norwalk. Our goal is to be in the upper 25% of the state.”

“All students who go through the Danbury school system start to finish do well, including ESL students. Danbury's Hispanic community has the lowest high school drop out rate in the state,” said Pascarella.

 Danbury's schools are making great progress overcoming the original designation of not meeting Annual Yearly Progress under NCLB. Irving Fox, Chairman of the Board of Education noted, “We are under the gun to achieve performance in the schools, and we can do that. By 2013-14 we should reach 100% proficiency.”

 Danbury High School is one of only 400 high schools that has been honored by the college board for making AP classes available to such a diverse population. There are 27,468 high schools in the United States, according to an MSNBC/Newsweek report. The amount of students in Danbury's AP classes who achieved college credit has increased and the enrollment for next year's AP classes has tripled.

 Danbury's Head Start program is being recognized nationally for it's excellence. Jim Maloney, former U.S. Representative, thanked the mayor and superintendent for their support and said, “There will be a national announcement on that program. We can be very proud of our Head Start.”

 There are a lot of changes being made in the buildings to make them more ecologically sound and more cost efficient. According to David St. Hillaire, Finance Director for the city, “We are doing projects that will make things easier in the years ahead; the buildings will be more energy efficient.”

 “Going with duel fuel has helped tremendously, the price of gas will go down next year, and oil is going up,” said Mayor Mark Boughton. “That is why it so important to have more efficient boilers that can switch back and forth from oil to gas on a dime. When one goes through the roof, we can switch back to the other.”

 The Board of Education is also working on technology to go solar. “A multitude of technology, in the area of the next two years, will be coming to council for those projects, and the cost avoidance will be substantial,” said Pascarella.

 “This system is probably the most diverse school system in Connecticut,” said City Council member, Bob Riley. “We end up placing our seniors in the best schools in the country. Our students go anywhere and everywhere, to the best colleges in the nation. Our elementary schools are second to none, and we have probably the best, most professional staff in Connecticut. When you think of the Danbury school system, it really is superb.”

There are many serious cuts in the quality of education that are being proposed.  Losing full day kindergarten and the possibility of losing some of the arts, language, media and home technologies will effect the extraordinary quality of the Danbury schools. 

“We understand that you can't get blood from a stone, but the general public must understand the impact of this budget to the quality of our education; if we don't have funds we will have to cut some of these classes. Where is it going to end? How are we going to fund to get us back to where we were? This is a community problem,” said Richard Janelli, Vice-Chair of the Board of Education.