By Linda Conner Lambeck

WESTPORT — The school district opened the 2022-23 academic year last week with a focus on fun.

Students’ cell phones, for the most part, have been relegated to lockers. Check-in calls to parents are taking place sooner than in the past. Intentional efforts are being made to connect with students, spark curiosity and rebuild a culture and climate that Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice said will clear a path for the high academic standards that attract families to the district.

“We hit the reset button,” Scarice told the Board of Education at its meeting Tuesday at Staples High School.

Carrying out a vision laid out in a strategic plan adopted by the board in June, Scarice said efforts were made at all eight public schools to strengthen the social and emotional well-being of the district’s 5,300 students so they can focus on solving complex problems.

“The positive energy is palpable,” Scarice said.

The challenge will be to sustain it, he added.

That is not to say there have not been some hiccups at the start of school.

Transportation remains an issue because of an ongoing bus driver shortage and, in some cases, crowded buses.

Plans to launch a “WheresTheBus” app so parents can track school bus arrivals at stops, remains a work in progress. It will go live once school bus routes settle down.

Unlike last fall, however, when officials’ back-to-school messages highlighted mask-wearing, social distancing and mold, Scarice was happy to report Tuesday that new HVAC systems have resulted in no air-quality problems.

On the first day of school, Scarice said a total of 388 kindergartners showed up for classes at the district’s five elementary schools. Of those, only 10 students were said to have shed tears.

The climate reset

Time will be spent during the first 30 days of the academic year fostering staff-student connections.

Valerie Babich, coordinator of psychological services for the district, and Ann Neary, a Staples High School teacher, helped lead a committee over the summer to plan what the first day of school would be like.

“This is something we are all focused on,” Babich said.The plan is to check back on Oct. 12 to see how things went.

At the preschool level, the district reintroduced rules to recognize feelings.

Elementary schools are expanding the Responsive Classroom program, a research-based approach to promoting responsibility and high engagement in learning.

In both middle schools, there is an effort to reach out to parents just to say hello within the first three weeks of school.

At Staples High School, plans called for an opening day like no other.

It started with a “Blues” assembly where students were musically serenaded by staff and ended with an ice cream social.

“No one expected that,” Neary said.

Staples Principal Stafford Thomas Jr. called it an exciting start. The school also has 23 new teachers.

Staff and students alike were given permission to have fun and connect, Thomas said.

Coleytown Middle School Principal Kris Szabo said people are happy to be back.

“Just emails from people on first day not complaining to us about the buses … but literally thanking us for the opening start; that their children feel connected to school especially coming out of COVID,” Szabo said.

Board Chairwoman Lee Goldstein said she appreciated the intentional start.

“It doesn’t feel like one more initiative. It feels like a way of being we can sustain,” she said.

She and the rest of the board said they look forward to Oct. 12 to review how the planning turned out.

New year, revised calendar

The 2022-23 school calendar adopted last spring was modified at the meeting.

There will now be no school on Monday, Jan. 2, in observance of the legal New Year’s Day holiday.

In addition, the district will designate June 19 as a holiday in recognition of Juneteenth, now a federal holiday that marks the end of slavery in the United States. 

Although the academic year is tentatively set to end June 15, snow days could push it past Monday, June 19. The absolute last day of school, even accounting for snow days, is set for June 23. Any more than five snow days will force the loss of days not set aside for April vacation.

Gifts support coaching

As they have in the past, school district booster clubs are donating $21,363 to pay for 10 coaching stipends, covering girls’ soccer, volleyball, boys’ water polo and football. The stipends range between $788 and $4,575. Any gift over $2,000 must receive board approval, which was granted Tuesday.

Closing the fiscal year with a $331,000 surplus

As of now, the school district expects to close the books on the 2021-22 fiscal year with a surplus of $331,160 on an operating budget of $125,594,582. The budget year officially ended last June 30.

School officials plan to ask for town approval to carry over that amount into this fiscal year’s budget.

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.