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We’ll have a full story about the new administrators approved by the Board of Education at some point tomorrow, but in the mean time, here’s a release sent over from Stamford Public Schools Spokeswoman Sharon Beadle:

Stamford, Conn.— Superintendent Stamford Public Schools Dr. Winnie Hamilton and the Stamford Board of Education announce the appointment of five administrators, effective July 1, 2013.

Lisa Saba-Price will become Principal of Newfield Elementary School, taking over for the retiring Miriam Arango. Saba-Price is currently Assistant Principal at Stillmeadow Elementary School, a position she has held since 2004. She has also served as Assistant Principal and Program Improvement Planner at Davenport Elementary School, as well as an elementary and middle school teacher in the district. She holds a Master’s of Arts degree in Elementary Education from Sacred Heart University and Sixth year degree from Southern Connecticut State University.

Jason Martin will become Principal of Rippowam Middle School replacing George Giberti.  Jan Rossman has been serving as Acting Principal since April 1, 2013. Martin is currently Assistant Principal at Westhill High School, a position he has held since 2010. He has high school and middle school teaching experience in Connecticut, New York, and Maryland, and served as High School Founding Fellow at KIPP NYC College Prep. Martin holds a Master’s of Teaching degree from Towson University and a Master’s of Science degree from Mercy College.

Carrie Chiappetta will be Director of School Improvement and Professional Development. In this role she will be responsible for directing the school improvement planning process, supporting the schools in fulfilling their school improvement goals, and establishing professional development plans. This position reports to the Assistant Superintendents. Chiappetta is currently Director for Math and Science. She holds a Master’s of Art degree from the University of Connecticut, a Master’s of Science degree in Education from the University of Bridgeport, and an Educational Specialist degree from Nova Southeastern University.

Mary Jennings will become Director of Early Childhood Development and Intervention. In this role she will work with the district administrative team, families and community-based stakeholders to prepare children to be successful in elementary school and beyond.  This position reports to the Assistant Superintendent-Elementary. Jennings is currently Director of Literacy and Social Studies K-12, a position she has held since 2007. Jennings has served as an elementary principal in Stamford and New Britain; she also was a middle school administrator in New Haven. She holds a Master’s Degree in Education with certification in Special Education from Beaver College.

R. Wayne Holland will become Director of Support Services and Special Programs. In this role he will be responsible for the development, implementation, oversight, and evaluation of all special education, psychology, speech pathology, and social work services, including supervision of Special Education staff and processes.  This position reports to the Executive Director of Student Support Services and Special Programs. Holland is currently director Special Education Services, a position he has held since 2005. Holland holds a Master’s Degree in Special Education from Wayne State University.

“I am very pleased and excited about the appointment of these five individuals in their new roles,” said Superintendent Winifred Hamilton. “We are fortunate to have such qualified candidates within our Stamford Public Schools, who are prepared to take on broader leadership responsibilities. I look forward to their success.”

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According to data provided by Stamford Public Schools, 40 percent of Stamford’s school children were absent from class last Friday when the Blizzard of ’13 pummeled the city.

There’s a full report in Tuesday’s Advocate, in which the story points out that “Absences were highest in the elementary schools, where just more than half the students stayed home for the day. In total, 47 percent of the youngest students never made it to school. That’s 4,054 students, equivalent to the total population of Toquam, Newfield, Northeast, Stark, Stillmeadow and Westover elementary schools — plus another 30 children.”

Here’s what the total absence tally looked like, school by school:

But it wasn’t just students that stayed home. According to the district’s Director of Research Judy Singer, there were 229 staff members absent Friday. That figure accounts for classroom teachers, speech pathologists, librarians, social workers and a few other varieties of educators, but does not include paraeducators, Singer noted.

That’s a pretty high number, average out at about 23 adults per school. On Monday, the number was still a bit higher than normal, at 178 absences, though it had shrunk significantly from last week. Singer pointed out that 95 percent of the staff members absent on Monday lived in towns other than Stamford, and factors such as bad roads, a lack of power, or the need to stay home with their own children who may have school cancelled likely contributed to the situation.

With the substitute rate for Stamford schools beginning at $90 a day, subs for Friday and Monday alone will cost the district a minimum of $36,630.

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There was a lot of confusion among parents this morning after Stamford Public Schools sent out an erroneous message, declaring there would be a delayed opening for the city’s schools, when in reality the district opted for a normal start time with an early dismissal.

“In an effort to expedite the delivery of our message, they inadvertently sent one that was in my draft file,” Stamford Public Schools Spokeswoman Sharon Beadle said during a phone conversation Friday morning. “It was just one of those days where everything that can go wrong will go wrong.”

After the wrong message was sent, Beadle said she “immediately sent out a clarifying voice message,” letting parents know schools would begin at their normal time, and operate under an early release schedule.

“The proper information had been posted on our Website at around 5:30 a.m. Winnie also Tweeted the proper information around the same time,” Beadle wrote in an email Friday morning.

But it takes a while for information to make the rounds to thousands of parents. One parent forwarded the second message to the Advocate, noting that he didn’t receive the message until 7:13 a.m. And he’s not the only one who didn’t get the proper information until way later than he should have. More than a dozen parents have chimed in on our Facebook page about the communication kerfuffle and its poor timing, including one woman named Beth St. James:

I get the call about early dismissal at 6:27. We leave for the bus at 6:25. We get up at 5:30. Even if the call did come at 6, it’s not really helpful. Then at 7:12, I get a call about the delayed opening–after the bus has come and gone. We declared a family snow day. Just not worth the risk.

And parents had to rely on the emails and phone calls coming through from Parent Link, since the district’s website went down due to the high traffic volume.

“There was like 16,000 hits in a short period of time, and it brought the website down,” Beadle explained Friday morning, noting that the district’s IT department is looking into the issue and assessing whether changes to the system need to be made.

We’re working on a story for Saturday’s paper about the confusion. Email maggie.gordon@scni.com or call Maggie at 203-964-2229 to weigh in an add your voice.

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A screenshot from The Bush Institute's website, which is providing a tool to compare students in districts around the country with their counterparts across the globe.

If you were to take the average Stamford student, and place him or her in a classroom in Switzerland, the pupil would outscore 32 percent of Swiss students in math and 54 percent in reading, according to a report released by the Bush Institute.

The Dallas-based institute developed a tool that allows parents, community members and educators to search for districts across the nation and see how they stack up against their local counterparts, as well as against school systems throughout the world. Using data from 2004 through 2009, the tool assesses that the average Stamford student would outperform 40 percent of students across 25 developed countries in math class, while outscoring 53 percent of those same students in math.

Nationally, the district’s students would do a bit better, landing in the middle of the pack: In math, the average Stamford student would outscore 50 percent of American children; in reading, the pupil would outscore 54 percent of her competitors.

But what about, say Canada?

Well, Stamford kids don’t stack up so well against our northern neighbors, according to the Bush Institute. Check out the picture on the right, which shows that Stamford students would find themselves just at the tip of the bottom third of students if they were to go face-to-face with Canadian math test takers. The reading results are a bit better, with Stamford students prepared to outscore 43 percent of Canadian students, but it still lands local students in the bottom half.

Stack Stamford against Finland and you’ll find the students outscoring 26 percent of Finnish math students, and 38 percent of Finnish reading students. And against Singapore, Stamford outperforms 23 percent of math students and 43 percent of reading students.

Wonder how other local districts would fare? Here’s a peek:

• Greenwich students would outscore 58 percent of Swiss math students and 78 percent of Swiss reading students.
• Darien students would outscore 71 percent of Swiss math students and 88 percent of Swiss reading students.
• New Canaan students would outscore 69 percent of Swiss math students and 90 percent of Swiss reading students.
• Norwalk students would outscore 31 percent of Swiss math students and 50 percent of Swiss reading students.
• Fairfield students would outscore 62 percent of Swiss math students and 78 percent of Swiss reading students.
• Bridgeport students would outscore 15 percent of Swiss math students and 29 percent of Swiss reading students.
• Danbury students would outscore 38 percent of Swiss math students and 51 percent of Swiss reading students.

Feel like doing some searching of your own? Here’s the link to the interactive search feature.

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On Tuesday night, Superintendent of Schools Winifred Hamilton presented a revised version of her 2013-2014 fiscal year operating budget request, which tacks on seven new kindergarten teachers in the city’s elementary schools.

During the meeting, Hamilton said she would add a kindergarten teacher at all but five elementary schools: Davenport, Hart, Toquam, Rogers and Westover. But she also said the goal is to reduce the class sizes to 20 or below, which leads me to think she misspoke, and in fact she will be adding classes at Rogers and Westover, but not at Northeast and Newfield.

Here’s what those additions would look like in terms of class sizes:

The addition of seven new kindergarten teachers would come at a cost of $476,000. Here’s a slide she showed in her presentation, which spells out all the 11th-hour additions she threw out at Tuesday night’s board meeting:

And here’s the list of reductions she shared, which would help offset the cost:

In total, she sliced about $400,00 from her previous budget. You can read about all the details here.

Study up! Parents and other community members only get one chance to weigh in on the budget recommendation, and it’s fast approaching. The public hearing for Hamilton’s budget will be held at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 31 at Westover Magnet Elementary School, on Stillwater Road.

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Stamford schools have put a huge focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) programs in recent years, due in large part to the GE Foundation’s Developing Futures grant, which funneled millions of dollars into the city’s schools to strengthen the programs. The reasoning is pretty simple: When today’s students become tomorrow’s workforce, they’re going to need STEM skills to be competitive in a technology-based world. GE Foundation Director of U.S. Education Kelli Wells summed up the need pretty succinctly during an interview last spring:

“We have engineering positions constantly that are open, and yes, we get applicants, but many only meet the basic skills required,” she said.

“For America to really remain great and remain competitive, we need to make sure that we have an educated workforce, and you get to that by starting to build that pipeline, by making sure kids in kindergarten through 12th grade are getting the highest quality education possible.”

It’s important to note that when Wells talked about the “workforce,” she didn’t mean line level jobs. STEM majors often find themselves well prepared for high-level positions in the new global marketplace. In fact, Forbes just released a top 10 list of the best-paying college majors — and it’s no surprise that STEM subjects top the list. According to Forbes:

At the top end of the spectrum, computer engineering majors earn an average of $70,400 upon graduation, trailed by chemical engineers at $66,400 and computer scientists at $64,400.

Those majors are then followed by aerospace and aeronatuical engineering majors who earn an average of $64,000 out of school, and mechanical engineering majors round out the top five with a salary of $62,900. Electrical and electronic engineers have the sixth highest salary, civil engineers come in seventh, finance come in eighth, construction science ninth and information science and systems majors round out the top 10 at $56,100.

It’s fitting that this report came out just a couple hours after I joined Congressman Jim Himes and Stamford Superintendent Winifred Hamilton as they explored STEM in action at Turn of River Middle School this morning. You can read more about the district’s STEM initiatives in Saturday’s Advocate.

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The last time the Board of Education reviewed a calendar option for the 2013-2014 academic year, they were looking for a September start to school. Not any more.

According to “Version F,” of the calendar, which is up for a vote Tuesday, the first day of school is now slated for Monday, Aug. 26, a little more than a week before Sept. 3, which was listed as the start date previously. Here’s a look at Version F:

There are a few other changes between this sketch and the last version reviewed by the board. For example, the earlier start date allowed the school board to build in seven inclement weather days, rather than the three built into the previous version. Seven sounds like a lot, but given the fact that the district used up every day in its arsenal by the beginning of November this year, “better safe than sorry” may be a sound policy for 2013.

According to the draft, the board and the administration still have not settled on where to find two professional development days in the calendar. During a recent meeting, there were a few options tossed around the table, like Monday, Dec. 23, which is currently set to be the first day of December vacation.

The Policy Committee of the Board of Education is set to discuss this calendar version at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the fifth floor conference room at Government Center (888 Washington Blvd.), then the full board is supposed to approve the committee’s version during the 7 p.m. regular meeting.

If you’re incredibly interested in this topic, there are two things you should know:

1.) They could make a lot of changes to this calendar during the committee meeting on Tuesday night, so don’t be surprised if the final version doesn’t look like this.

2.) You can voice your opinion on the calendar. While audience participation isn’t allowed at committee meetings, there is a scheduled “Time for the Public to be Heard” during every regular board meeting. Those who want to pipe up are allowed three minutes to express concerns near the beginning of the meeting.

What do you think of the calendar?

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Superintendent of Schools Winifred Hamilton revealed her operating budget request tonight during a 6 p.m. news conference. The total request is $245,389,259, which is a 3.66 percent increase over the current budget.

The budget will be discussed openly for the first time tonight during a 7 p.m. meeting of the school board’s fiscal committee, and we’ll have a full story in the paper Wednesday morning. But in the mean time, here’s a little bit about what the budget is going to look like:

The orange numbers I wrote in on the left rank how much the particular items affect the budget, from most to least, and the notes in purple show how much of the increase each item account for.

Overall, the largest driver mentioned here is the loss of the GE Developing Futures Grant, which calls for the addition of 11.6 positions back into the operating budget to maintain the services that were previously paid for by the grant.

Other notables include the need to add 13 teachers to the city’s elementary schools due to an expected 248-student enrollment increase, which will require the district to tinker with the number of classes at 11 of the city’s 12 elementary schools (It looks like Westover is the only school that will remain with its current staffing level, but we’ll have more on all that once we have a bit more time to examine these documents) and a $600,000 request to add 12 security guards across the elementary schools. That measure is likely to become the center of several conversations concerning the budget in coming weeks; a poll on the Advocate’s city blog shows that 72 percent of voters thought the guards will make the schools safer, while 28 percent felt they wouldn’t make a difference.