In a town like Wilton, where the schools play such a central role, the chairman of the Board of Education is a hefty position. GOOD Morning Wilton spoke with Bruce Likly, in his second term as board chair, yesterday to talk about some of the most pressing issues in front of the board at the moment.
GMW: There’s been a lot of sturm-und-drang lately around the question of indoor air quality at Miller-Driscoll School, and it’s nice to see the district has made a proactive move in the steps announced Tuesday [that they will conduct a comprehensive re-test of IAQ at the school]. Looking back, do you wish that the district had done things differently, had done this sooner, had been more upfront sooner and had taken this step of hiring someone to say, ‘We’re going to make sure once-and-for-all that the school is clean.’?”
Bruce Likly: As we look at the role of the board, and the role of the superintendent, it’s really the board’s responsibility to oversee the superintendent, and the superintendent to oversee the operations of the district. That’s ultimately a question for the superintendent [Dr. Gary Richards]. When I look at the plan he laid out, it appears to make a tremendous amount of sense. I’m hopeful that it will alleviate any concerns that parents may have. The board has been briefed along the way, and I see a lot of miscommunication and misrepresentation happening, which is unfortunate. I’ll leave the specifics up to the superintendent to address.
GMW: I understand that in theory, and in policy. I think parents, though, look to the board in overseeing the superintendent and the administration as expecting the board to require that responsiveness.
BL: The board expects the administration to be responsive at all times, especially to issues and concerns relative to safety. There are times, however, where the perception and understanding of speed is somewhat clouded because of work the administration might be doing behind the scenes, that the public isn’t aware of.
I know the moment when the issue was raised, Dr. Richards made sure that we knew what was going on, and that there was not an issue or concern. But it takes time to lay out specific details in such a way that parents are fully comfortable. Dr. Richards is very thoughtful and deliberate and thorough manager and communicator. From my observation, he would not want to put information out that was incomplete. I know he’s been doing a tremendous amount of work behind the scenes on making sure he’s got as much information as possible before communicating it. That may leave people feeling like he hasn’t moved as quickly as possible. But he’s moving very quickly.
From what we’ve seen, there is not an immediate concern with radon or CO2.
GMW: I wouldn’t say there’s a widespread clamor, but I would call it a concern that’s growing louder from some parents who have expressed that they are losing confidence in believing the district’s position on that. Can you reassure them?
BL: I’ve heard some of that and I find that really unfortunate. Because the questions and the accusations that I’ve seen have come so quickly, literally sometimes multiple in a day, or day after day after day. And it leaves the administration very little time to actually get the scientific work done to definitively prove the situation. And that’s frustrating. It takes time to schedule consultants, it takes time to schedule contractors, to find and identify the appropriate contractors. It also takes time to get people’s times coordinated.
I know that they’ve been working frequently and aggressively with the state Department of Health. They aren’t just sitting there waiting to pick up the phone and answer questions, that takes time. It took time to work through the process of understanding what broke in the initial radon test and understanding where that happened. I think Dr. Richards is doing a fairly thoughtful internal assessment of how that unfolded, and is figuring the best course from there.
He brought in an independent building hygienist, who went through the whole building, who in his walk through discussed not only radon (as it was communicated to me) discussed the building in general–relative to radon, relative to CO2 and relative to dampness. On top of that, as you saw in Dr. Richards’ press release, he’s looking at bringing in another independent consultant, and that’s going to take time to identify and carry out.
We’re measuring in days and weeks, and it’s tough to look responsive when you’re getting sometimes multiple queries in the same day, and day after day after day. But I’ll reiterate, based on what I’ve seen of CO2 levels, they’re nowhere near the levels that were communicated. That 3,000 [ppm] level was relative to one room where a damper problem in the HVAC unit, and that was fixed. To my knowledge that room is now down to 1,200 or 1,300 [ppm].
As you know, with CO2, that number is going to change with whether or not the door is open or closed, for example; whether the temperature is set at one level or another, relative to how the AC is working at that particular moment.
GMW: Some people view even 1,200 or 1,300 as being on the high end.
BL: I’m not an indoor air quality specialist or a CO2 specialist. I have sat down and read the OSHA reports, and the ASHRAE reports, and they appear to have conflicting information. So I’m confused. Which is why the idea of bringing in an independent expert to evaluate and make recommendations is very important. There is no state statute that I’ve been able to find relative to levels, and there’s no federal statute. There are guidelines for new buildings that we’ve been able to find, but this is obviously a 50 year old building that is on the eve of renovation. So it’s not a simple number that you can point at.
But if you think of CO2 levels in nature being 300, 400, 500 parts per million, what I’ve heard from experts is you prefer to have indoor rooms be within 700-800 ppm of the outdoor level. I’ve spoken with two different doctors, as well as two different HVAC experts. At the end of the day I still think we need to bring in an independent consultant, and that’s what Dr. Richards is doing so I’m thrilled.
GMW: Do you know when that will happen?
BL: You’d have to check with Dr. Richards about that.
GMW: Has there been any guidance that the board has given Dr. Richards about encouraging more frequent communication with parents about this, and about transparency?
BL: No, we have not had any discussions at the board table about that. Depending on how the plan that Dr. Richards laid out unfolds, it may be that we have that discussion in the future. But so far, we’re well engrossed in budget discussions at the moment, knowing that the safety concerns that have been brought up are being dealt with appropriately. We’ve been assured that there are no current safety concerns.
GMW: That’s a good segue to budget questions. Tuesday night, I attended the Miller-Driscoll Building Committee meeting. Glenn Hemmerle, a BoE member, brought up the question that we’re looking at at least two years before any renovation project would possibly start, let alone four years before possibly finishing–and that’s if everything gets passed by the town. In the meantime, you have aging equipment that everyone acknowledges it takes a lot to keep running and it causes problems so that you have to stay on top of maintenance, in the best case scenario. Given that budgets are already high, how are we going to get through the next four years with this aging equipment?
BL: As equipment gets older, it requires more maintenance and more attention. We’ve seen that in our own budgets over the past few years that we have to provide that level attention. We recognize that the [M-D] roof needs more maintenance than the newer roofs across the district, so does the HVAC equipment. Staying on top of it is something that’s being highlighted, without question. That’s probably a good thing, a benefit of the conversation that’s been raised in the community. It needs to be fixed more frequently, monitored more frequently, and it’s more costly to do so.
GMW: This issue being raised, does it distract from the budget conversation with the town and the Board of Finance, hamper the budget conversation, or makes a case for the things you ask for?
BL: I see them as two separate issues. The school budget really is an operational budget for the next school year. The [Board of] Selectmen have convened a building committee for a capital project to address an aging building and all of its mechanicals. And I think they’re managing that appropriately. I’ve heard that there are questions, comments, discussions about how far that building committee is going to go–whether it’s going to be a small renovation, a large renovation, and I’ve heard that they’ve had on the table, ‘Well if it’s a large renovation, why don’t we just knock it down and build new?’ I don’t know where that’s going to go. The Board of Ed really has nothing to do with that, that’s a town decision.
But we have money in our budget to manage the facilities that we have today.
GMW: Turning to the 2014-15 budget, right now it’s proposed at 4.66 percent increase over last year. It’s still early, Dr. Richards is going to present to the town. 4.66-percent, that’s a big number. Having watched the workshop discussions to get to that number, it almost feels to me bare-bones, that you need that 4.66 percent. Going into budget season, with the 1.75 percent target that the Board of Finance gave you, what do you think the BoE is facing?
BL: The board is being very thoughtful in evaluating the budget as it stands right now. As you know, it’s still the superintendent’s budget until some time in early February, when the board will adopt the final budget as the BoE budget. There are still a number of open questions relative to that budget.
- Approximately $330,000 of our budget, of that 4.66 percent, are security measures tied to what the district has been doing to enhance security on an ongoing basis, and also added in as recommendations from the Wilton Security Task Force. There are two personnel in that number–an additional school resource officer, and an additional mental health professional. Those are big numbers. If that $330,000 stays in our budget, it makes it very difficult to move that [4.66 percent] number down. If that number moves to the town side of the ledger, well that’s a $330,000 reduction to the budget.
- Currently participation fees are not included in our budget, where they were last year. That’s $170,000 in revenue and that’s not currently in the budget.
Those two numbers alone, that’s half a million dollars.
Two other things I want to point out:
[Board member] Chris Stroup brought up, where are the areas where we’d like to invest, that we don’t currently have in the budget? It was in collaboration time for teachers, additional technology and additional development time for teachers. We asked the administration to tell us what that means financially. If we’re able to put it into the budget, where it never has been, what does that mean? There may be a faction of the town that thinks our budget may be too low. What is that number?
The other thing I’ve expressed personally, we funded the schools for 2012-13 and 2013-14 at a reasonable level. If we kept all expenditures at zero, with the exception of contractual obligations, that wouldn’t mean cutting. I think we’ve been having a very good year this year. The classrooms are appropriately funded. We’ve supported class sizes, we’ve got reasonable funds in the budget for technology and professional development. So that’s another side of the coin that we need to deliberate on and haven’t.
We as a board decided that, before we have those conversations, we wanted to hear what the town had to say about the superintendent’s proposed budget. So there is a tremendous amount of road in front of us between now and any final number.
GMW: In other words, you need people to turn out to hear the superintendent’s budget presentation on Jan. 23, and you need to hear from the town.
BL: We want to hear from people and that’s not just parents–that’s the entire community. In any way that they choose to communicate with us. Whether that’s via email, a handwritten snail-mail letter, coming to one of the meetings, coming to the public meeting–any way that they feel comfortable. We really want that input and feedback.
It would be wonderful if, as they share it with us, that they also share it with the Board of Finance. Oftentimes, people will share one view with the BoF, and different people will share a different view with the Board of Ed, so that when the two boards get together, they’re looking at different perspectives. That’s sometimes challenging to work through. I’d like to see people contact both boards at the same time.
GMW: Which should be easy to do, with the general email for the BoE going to all the members and the same for the BoF. It’s really just two email addresses.
Board of Education: boe@wilton.k12.ct.us
Board of Finance: boardoffinance@wiltonct.org
BL: The other thing I was thrilled to hear is that people really are reading “Notes from the Board Table,” and that people are watching our meetings and workshops on television. I was at a Miller-Driscoll PTA meeting the other day, and they started to talk about the budget. Parents were expressing that they were watching the meetings–they might not be able to get out because they’re home with the kids, but they’re able to watch it on television. That’s part of the reason I like to keep the meetings on the shorter side, we try to keep it moving because we need to get people the information at home.
GMW: Speaking of getting information out to the people, tell us where we are with the search for the new superintendent.
BL: Great question. HYA [Hazard, Young, Attea] has been doing a great job for us. They did a nationwide search, and we received input from candidates across the country. We’ve now narrowed it down to five candidates: two are in Connecticut, two are in New Jersey and one is in New York. The board is currently doing the next round of interviews with those candidates.
All five are current, sitting superintendents from very successful school districts. Any one of them could do the job. They’re all really bright, really qualified people. It’s an exciting process. What we’re seeing is that a lot of what Wilton is doing is validated as a high-performing school district, and at the same time, there are little pearls that we’re grabbing out of each of [their] districts. It’s kind of exciting.
GMW: Timeline, how do you narrow down and when can we expect to hear something definitive?
BL: It’s not appropriate to tell you when we’ll get to the end, there are too many moving pieces in that process. But we’ll definitely have a superintendent identified and ready to come on board by the end of June. It’s an exciting time.