By Linda Conner Lambeck

WESTPORT — Two gifts totaling more than $33,000 were accepted unanimously by the Board of Education at its Thursday meeting.

One gift, from the Staples Music Parents Association, will help some members of the Orphenians vocal group with costs to travel to a summer choral festival in Spain.

The second, from the Coleytown Middle School PTA, will help town efforts to install a new sound system in the Coleytown Middle School auditorium.

Orphenians heading to Spain

The Staples Music Parents Association will contribute $23,116.46 toward the Orphenians’s June trip to Spain. The 39-member Staples vocal ensemble and Lauren Pine, its director, will travel to Spain for an international choral festival under the direction of Rollo Dilworth. 

The funds were raised through a dozen or more fundraising efforts, including a “Cabaret Olé” gala and will go toward expenses for members who cannot afford part or all of the costs associated with the trip, according to a letter submitted by Marina Evenstein, and Suzan Jo, co-presidents of the parent association, and Michelle Macris, treasurer.

The group actually raised $25,616.46, but is holding back $2,500 for unforeseen trip expenses or a potential donation to the Voces8 Foundation, a vocal music education charity. Voces8 performed at the Cabaret Olé gala.

Sound system at Coleytown Middle School

The school board this year agreed to add a new auditorium sound system for Coleytown Middle School’s auditorium to the 2025-26 budget with the understanding the PTA would help out. 

The school’s sound system lacks a soundboard and wireless microphones. In January, Marisa Timperman, a co-president of the Coleytown Middle PTA, said the system is so antiquated it’s like using landlines.

The estimated cost of the project is $65,000 to $75,000, according to Elio Longo, the school district’s chief financial officer. The PTA is donating $10,000 toward that cost.

On Thursday, Timperman said the Coleytown Middle School community appreciates the effort made by the district to pay for the new sound system in the new fiscal year’s budget. 

The school board budget is expected to be discussed Monday, May 5, by the Representative Town Meeting.

“This new sound system will help improve our musical program, school assemblies and the Coleytown Middle School theatrical program,” she said. It will benefit the school for years to come, she added.

Within the next couple of weeks, the district will proactively draft and issue a Request for Proposal for the work. The expenditure cannot occur until the new fiscal year begins on July 1, Longo said.

The hope is to install the system this summer.

Freelance writer Linda Conner Lambeck, a reporter for more than four decades at the Connecticut Post and other Hearst publications, is a member of the Education Writers Association.