Reviews Enrollment, Academic Support Centers and Robotics Team Grant
Owen Fellows opened the September regular meeting of the Region 9 Board of Education with his student report. He began by announcing the semi-finalists and commended students for the National Merit Scholarship 2025 award. The awards are based on students’ academic achievements and PSAT scores.
The board joined Owen in congratulating Cade Fravel and Angela Humphrey as semifinalists. The commended students are Anthony Azzara, Alexandra Bardani, William Bardani, and Graham Ollendorff.
Kristian Pavel received the Peter Burton Hanson Humanitarian Award on On Sept. 11. The award is given annually to a Barlow senior dedicated to social justice, appreciating cultural differences, loving the arts, environmental concerns and volunteering. Hanson was a Barlow graduate of the class of 1987. He was killed with his wife and young daughter on the flight leaving Boston that crashed into the South Tower on 9/11.
The Barlow athletic department received the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) Michael’s Jewelers Cup in recognition of its dedication to sportsmanship.
This is Owen’s third year as the Barlow council representative to the board. Following the student report, the board recognized the art department’s participation in last year’s Memory Project.
Memory Project
The Memory Project is a youth arts organization that promotes intercultural understanding. Its goal is to use art to build cultural recognition. Students paint portraits as special memories for children with no mementos. Last year, Barlow was paired with children from an orphanage in India.
Teacher Convocation Awards
Dr. Jason McKinnon, superintendent, announced the awards presented during the teacher convocation. The ER9 Vicki Cram Spirit Award was presented to Matt Farina, a gifted and talented teacher at Redding Elementary School. John Read Middle School won the Convocation Cup. McKinnon recommends that parents follow ER9’s Instagram page at er9district to see interesting happenings in the schools.
Enrollment Update
Dr. Mario Almeida, Barlow head of school, provided the board with information on enrollment. There are currently 698 students at Barlow, of which 100 are special education students and 155 are Section 504 students. Section 504 students are those with disabilities who need services and accommodations to access instruction and to participate in school activities. There are 16 outplacement students, with six older than 18 and in transition programs.
Academic Support Centers
Barlow has three academic support centers: the academic resource center, the writing center, and the math center. Over the summer, the math center was revamped. Julie McTague, the department head for STEM, was able to rearrange classes to ensure that certified math teachers were available at the center at any time.
So far, 250 unique students have used the math center, ranging from freshman Algebra 1 to AP Calculus. Most of the students drop in for quiz and test preparation. Almeida is also working with the National Honor Society to have some of those students available to help, along with the certified teachers.
Personal Finance and Literacy
Alisha DiCorpo, the new assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, had been with the ER9 districts for 22 days as of the Sept. 17 regular meeting but had information to share. Her biggest news was that Barlow will offer a personal finance and financial literacy course. She is exploring different curricula that meet the state’s requirements.
Robotics Team Grant
The next item on the agenda was a $6,000 grant for the robotics team. It came from Connecticut’s manufacturing innovation fund. According to the state’s website, the fund was established “to support the advanced manufacturing sector’s growth and innovation. This funding is administered by the Department of Economic and Community Development to provide grants to support an array of initiatives.”
The grant is earmarked for registration. The $6,000 that was built into the budget for registration will now be used for supplies and equipment. While the robotics students did not apply for this grant, the team members work hard every year to earn grants and donations.
More Honors Classes
The curriculum committee has examined the classes of advanced French, advanced Spanish, and advanced English II. It was decided that the decisions represent changes for those classes to increase the difficulty of raising them to honors classes.
“We aligned to the actual standards, which are the foundational standards for all world languages and the Common Core State Standards,” according to DiCorpo. They looked at AP assessments and the SAT. ”The changes really are the depth,” she said. “We’re asking students to think about how we’re asking them to present material, read, and write at a much higher level, and we’re assessing differently than we have in the past.
“There’s additional material and additional units that were added to ramp up the amount of work that is represented in the new curriculum, and there’s a greater level of independence in this work,” she said.
DiCorpo wants to explore language, grammar, and style for the English II honors classes, using elevated literature from the 18th and 19th centuries. That elevated text complexity will make the course and, in the future, all English courses more rigorous. DiCorpo also plans to explore English Language Arts at the middle schools and the science of reading, incorporating hardcore knowledge as a pilot in the fourth and fifth grades.
