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BRIDGEPORT — The district’s teachers’s union says Schools Superintendent Paul Vallas is breaking the law by not allowing teachers, parents and the community to participate in their schools as outlined by state statutes.

The Connecticut Education Association, on Tuesday, filed a complaint with the state Department of Education on behalf of the Bridgeport Education Association.

The Connecticut General Assembly created School Governance Councils as a way to involve parents, teachers and the community in the education process. Gary Peluchette, a Winthrop teacher and president of the Bridgeport Education said the law is largely being ignored by Vallas.

In a 15 page complaint, numerous examples of violations are cited and at least four examples of parents or staff members who say the law is not being carried out as intended.  According to the complaint, the councils:

•were not given an opportunity to review the draft budget for the school and provide advice before it was submitted to the superintendent.

•did not participate in the hiring process of administrators.

•did not work with school administration to develop and approve a school compact.

•were not involved in developing and approving a written parent involvement policy outlining the role of parents in the school

•had no involvement in analyzing school achievement data and school needs relative to the improvement plan for the school

•did not assist the principal in making programmatic and operational changes for improving the school’s achievement

•have not been made aware of their authority, nor have they been given opportunities to exercise this authority.

 The complaint goes on to cite a school board meeting at which Vallas indicated there were priorities more pressing that governance councils.

 Peluchette and Vallas were not immediately available for comment. In a written press release, Sheila Cohen, president of the CEA said: “These are just some of the examples of the flagrant disregard Bridgeport Public Schools Superintendent Vallas has shown for School Governance Councils and state law.”

Cohen added, “School Governance Councils have a successful track record of engaging parents, teachers, and community members in important school activities and providing collaborative support to improve student achievement. These opportunities and the benefit of state laws must be afforded members of the Bridgeport school community.”

The Connecticut Education Association represents 43,000 teachers in Connecticut.

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BRIDGEPORT — The district’s new Bridgeport Miltiary Academy High School has a principal.

Byron N. Williams was officially hired by the district this week for $133,005 a year but has been working in the district since last September. The board voted 8-0 with one abstention to approve the appointment.

Williams was not at the meeting Monday. Reached late Tuesday, Williams said this is not the first school he has helped start but is the first military-style school.

Board member Maria Pereira abstained after questioning why the district didn’t ask parents to interview Williams.

Schools Superintendent Paul Vallas said because the school is just starting, it doesn’t yet have a parents organization.

Kathleen M. Jaeger, executive director of human resources for the school district, told the board Williams salary was based on more than 16 years experience as a principal, district administrator and assistant superintendent in Philadelphia and other urban school districts.

He will earn about $2,000 more than Joseph “Jay” Lipp, a science department chair at Norwalk High School, who was hired last month to be principal of the Engineering and Aerospace School, part of the interdistrict Multi-Magnet High School on Quarry Roard, which is set to open in August.

The military academy high school, which will include only Bridgeport students, opens in the fall to 150 freshmen. Their first week will be at an orientation up at Camp Niantic, said Williams. The school will focus on careers in public safety, but will also encourage students to go to college. The school will be housed at first at the Multi-Magnet High School. The plan is eventually to relocate them to the district’s swing space school near the University of Bridgeport.

A former Marine, Williams said in addition to academics, the school will have a number of clubs such as an aviation club he hopes to put together. “I’d like to give some kids the opportunity to graduate with a pilot’s license,” he said.

Other clubs might focus on forensic science , robotics or even water safety. There will not be sports after school but an hour of tutoring and mentoring. Every student will be assigned a mentor.

“This school won’t be an alternative school,” said Williams. “Most kids want to have direction. There will be high expectations.”

More than 358 students applied for the 150 slots. There are more boys than girls but Williams said a fair representation of girls are part of the freshman class.

According to his resume, he was a principal and assistant superintendent in Philadelphia from 2009 to the present. That would make him after Vallas’ time in Philadelphia which ended in 2007.

Before that, he was executive director of an alternative education program in Virginia Beach, Virginia; a principal in Atlanta Georgia and a teacher in Georgia, Maryland and Phoenix, Arizona.

He is also a retired officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, according to the resume.

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BRIDGEPORT — Amid claims that both the school board chair and school board have conflicts of interest that prevented them from voting, renewal of the district’s $11.4 million school readiness grant is moving forward without local school board approval.

Board member Maria Pereira called it a conflict of interest for Board Chairman Kenneth Moales Jr., to vote on the issue because his family members manage 76 of some 1,597 preschool spaces that will be funded in 2013-14.

Moales, however, refused to relinquish the chair, claiming it was unnecessary. The meeting then degenerated into a series of calls for “rules of order,” people shouting over one another and eventually a 5-4 vote to adjourn.

Before that happened, however,  Tina Peloso-Ulreich, director of early childhood education and co-chair of the Bridgeport School Readiness Council, told the board that after consulting the state, she learned the school board because it receives about $2.5 million in funding for 468 of the slots, can’t vote on its distribution.

Instead the council voted, even though the school board acts as the fiduciary of the grant.

“The School Readiness Council makes the choices. We bring the recommendation to the state. Anyone who gets a grant, including myself, could not vote,” said Peloso-Ulreich.

School Readiness Councils were formed in the state’s poorest communities in 1997 to help distribute. The chief elected official and the superintendent of schools jointly appoint local council made up of community officials, parents, providers and city and school representatives.

“The grant belongs to the community,” said Peloso-Ulreich.

In some communities, the mayor is the one assigned as the fiduciary. In Bridgeport, the school board was given that role.

Lee Helmerich, school readiness coordinator, said the district is anticipating the same amount of funds as this year, but will fund slightly fewer slots because some are being converted from part-time to full-time.

“More people are going back to work and need the full time slots,” Helmerich said.

Also, next year, the Early Childhood Lab School at Housatonic Community College, has voluntarily reduced its slots to 20, said Helmerich.

The reimbursement rate of $4,500 to $8,346 per student, depending on the length of the school day, was deemed no longer sufficient, Helmerich said. The 15 slots given up were awarded to a new provider, Affordable and Loving Daycare.

Peloso-Ulreich acknowledged the grant has traditionally been approved by the board, but that a complaint made this year, led her to ask the state for clarification. She would not say who made the complaint.

During Monday’s school board meeting, Pereira asked Peloso-Ulreich and Helmerich, what steps the council takes to ensure that the children are in day cares that are financially sound.

There are or have been more than a dozen tax liens placed against Prayer Tabernacle Church of Love, the church run by Moales and now called the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit. In March, a foreclosure action was placed on 1243 Stratford Avenue, the site of one of the daycares, because of an unpaid water bill. Moales said the bill has since been paid.

Moales said there is “not a single lien on the child-care centers” but all to the church, located at 729 Union Avenue. He said those actions stem from his father, the late Bishop Moales, who died two years ago without a will, tying up the estate. He insisted the daycares, which have been in operation for 15 years, are financially sound.

They are also nationally accredited, which is something the state requires in funding school readiness slots.

According to Moales, Pereira called the early childhood office on Friday and advised them not to accept the Kingdom Little Ones grant applications. Moales said his sister, Keyna Moales Byrd, the site director of the daycare, was there to drop off paperwork for the application, and overheard the conversation. He called it an obstruction and his daycares have threatened to sue Pereira.

Pereira declined to comment on the matter.

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The University of Connecticut’s Susan Herbst didn’t break the top 10 for the country’s highest-paid public college presidents in 2012, but she came close.

A new survey conducted by the Chronicle of Higher Education puts Herbst’s salary and other compensation at $738,000.

The compensation includes a base salary of $500,000, plus $50,000 in deferred compensation that was paid out, another $150,000 in deferred compensation that will be paid out in 2016, and $38,000 in retirement benefits.

Although among the highest in the country, Herbst’s salary would have to quadruple to reach the level of Graham B. Spanier, the fired Penn State University president who left with a severance and deferred compensation package of $2.9 million.

Second on the list is Jay Gogue of Auburn University in Alabama, who still has his job and made $2.5 million in 2011-12. That included a base salary of $483,070 plus five years of deferred compensation.

The median base pay for public college presidents in 2012 was $373,800, according to the Chronicle, which is a lead trade publication. In all, the Chronicle looked at the salaries of 212 presidents at 191 public institutions.

Stephanie Reitz, a UConn spokeswoman, said the numbers for Herbst need clarification.

First, she said the figure is $718,000 not $738,000 and based on a one-time retention incentive payment of $125,000, Herbst will be eligible for in 2016, if she completes the full five years of her contract.

Reitz said the $150,000 figure cited by the Chronicle was a mistake that the publication has promised to correct. At $718,000, Herbst would be bumped down to 20th on the list.

Herbst, who has been at UConn for two years, put a plan in motion last year to increase the number of full-time faculty from 1,300 to 1,600 positions over four years. To do that, tuition will go up about 5.5 percent each of those years.

Herbst was not immediately available for comment on Monday.

http://chronicle.com/article/Executive-Compensation-at/139093/#id=22136_697

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BRIDGEPORT — The district has posted a flyer on its website inviting the public to community forums on the potential change to school start times. Hearings will be held at Central High, 6 p.m, Thursday, May 9; Harding High on Saturday, May 11, at 10 a.m., and Bassick on Tuesday May 14 at 6 p.m. .

Here are the details:

http://www.bridgeportedu.com/docs/2012-2013/BellTimeOptions2013-14(2).pdf

Here is the latest article on the proposals:

http://www.ctpost.com/default/article/District-flirts-with-changing-school-bus-times-4473435.php

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BRIDGEPORT – Parents and staff will get to sound off on the idea of creating a new locally funded charter school in the city by filling out a survey now on line on the Bridgeport Board of Education website.

Here is the link:

 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1EIJlIsbqiCCuio9wlVaTUMHthekjcgt5WhzK-hyjqXU/viewform?pli=1

The plan, outlined to the board of education this week, would put a Montessori school in the former Whitter School on the city’s West end, as soon as next year.

A public hearing on the plan is schedule for May 20 At Aqua.

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BRIDGEPORT – While teachers were being feted at the Holiday Inn on Wednesday and parents were holding a do-over election with a lot of outside group interest, district officials and a planning committee were holding a meeting at Dunbar School to talk about how they would turn around the failing school once it is in the Commissioner’s Network.

Three models were considered — the Six to Six Interdistrict School Model, the Classical Studies approach and the Jumoke Academy at Milner model. One, Jumoke, appears to be the favorite.

Jumoke is a charter school in Hartford, that recently also assumed control of Milner, a failing public school in Hartford under at $345,000 annual contract.

Michael Sharpe, Jumoke’s CEO came to Dunbar Wednesday with a number of staff to explain the model and answer questions before everyone was fed dinner.

Sandra Kase, chief administrative officer for the district, said she likes the Jumoke model because it can be done quickly and be customized to fit Bridgeport’s needs. Though Jumoke at Milner is very much a work in progress, Kase said she liked what she saw on her visit there, Jumoke at Milner has an extended school day and year and there are two adults in every classroom.

Dunbar, like Milner, would remain a district public school, not a charter school.

It’s unclear how much Jumoke operators would be paid if it was chosen to run Dunbar but Kase said the money would come from the extra dollars the district gets for Dunbar under the Commissioner’s Network.

In Hartford, Jumoke replaced the principal and most of the staff. It is uncertain what they would do at Dunbar. It would largely depend on the agreement with the district.

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Gregory W. Gray, a search committee’s pick to be the next president of the Board of Regents for Higher Education, said Friday in a phone interview that he will be a different type of leader than his predecessor, Robert Kennedy.

Kennedy left last fall after it was revealed he gave out nearly $300,000 in raises to staff without board approval. His benefits package, which included a six-week paid professional leave, use of a car, an annual performance bonus of up to $25,000, deferred compensation of $20,000 for each year of service, and an annual unvouchered accommodation account of $25,000.

 ”Integrity and trust are my number one priorities,” said Gray, who heads up the Riverside Community College District in California.

 His compensation includes a  $380,000 annual salary, use of a state vehicle and a relocation allowance, but no paid sabbatical.

Gray, who is a Pennsylvania native, called Connecticut a wonderful place to work. He said what attracted him to the position was the opportunity to help mold a new system which includes not only community colleges and state universities, but Charter Oak, an online degree program.  ”You can’t leave them out, he said, adding he is excited to work with all of them.

 The full Board of Regents is expected to act on the recommendation when it meets on May 16. Gray said he will be there. It is expected he will start the job July 1.

 Gray was one of three finalists and was not the first pick of the search committee. Jack Warner, a candidate from South Dakota, turned down the job earlier this week.