Wallingford Superintendent Menzo defends lacrosse

As published in the Record Journal, Friday April 13, 2012

By Russell Blair
Record-Journal staff

WALLINGFORD — School Superintendent Salvatore Menzo defended the inclusion of lacrosse in the 2012-13 school budget during a Board of Education budget workshop before the Town Council Thursday.

The school board received $614,000 less than what it had requested in Mayor William W. Dickinson Jr.’s budget proposal, but when it comes to possible cuts, the board has remained firm in its commitment to lacrosse. Republican Town Councilor Craig Fishbein was critical of adding the sport at the two high schools, at the expense of other items, in tough economic times. “When you get less than you ask for, and you promise that you’re adding lacrosse ... I have a problem,” he said. “The economy stinks. I think sometimes people don’t realize that.”

But Menzo said Wallingford Youth Lacrosse, the town’s youth club program, has shown that a high school program for both girls and boys would be sustainable. Members of the group were in the audience Thursday.

“I’m personally committed to lacrosse,” Menzo said. “They followed the process appropriately. We have a responsible to teach at all levels, some of the best lessons learned outside of the classroom.”

Adding junior varsity lacrosse for boys and girls at Lyman Hall and Sheehan would cost $81,058 in the first year. The second-year cost is expected to be $66,932.

Lyman Hall and Sheehan are the only schools in the Southern Connecticut Conference without lacrosse teams. An estimated140 students would be involved town wide.

Menzo said that the inclusion of lacrosse was not at the expense of staff jobs. The budget does call for the reduction of 11 teaching positions, but those jobs are being cut due to declining enrollment, he said.

Board of Education Chairwoman Roxane McKay, a Republican, said the school board supports the addition of the sport.

“All nine board members support this program,” she said. “There’s a lot of ways that people get educated. This is a component of education.”

McKay said the district is losing local students to private schools that have lacrosse programs.

Earlier Thursday, councilors expressed concern over the cafeteria budget, which projects a deficit of more than $200,000 being covered by a fund balance. The cafeterias are self-sustaining, but may require a subsidy from the school board beginning in the 2013-14 school year. Republican Vincent Cervoni asked Food Service Director Sharlene Wong to explain a trend of deficits in the cafeteria budget.

“Since 2008, we’ve had a downturn in the economy. We’ve had difficult times in terms of balancing revenues and expenditures,” Wong said, adding that state and federal mandates limit what foods can be sold, hurting a la carte sales. After a number of budget workshops, the school board sent Dickinson a proposed budget of $90,188,048, an increase of 3.91 percent, or $3.4 million. Dickinson countered with $89,573,916, a 3.2 percent increase representing $2.8 million in additional funding.

The council will continue budget workshops next week.

Menzo ‘inherits’ clean slate - Many retirements allowed him to build own team

As Published in the Record Journal Sunday June 13, 2010

By Samaia Hernandez
Record-Journal staff
shernandez@record-journal.com
(203) 317-2266

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WALLINGFORD — In his first year as superintendent of schools, Salvatore Menzo has found himself in a position many heads of school systems could only wish for: the ability to assemble, and not just inherit, his administration. Last June, former school superintendent Dale Wilson — a 36-year veteran of the system — was handing the baton over to the highly ambitious 38year-old Menzo, just one year removed from completing his doctorate in education at the University of Connecticut, who was hired by a then-Democrat- controlled Board of Education.

Wilson’s departure set in motion a wave of administrative retirements that have allowed Menzo to have a say in filling a total of nine management roles this school year, including the two in his three member Central Office team: assistant superintendents of personnel and instruction.

Though some internal candidates applied for several jobs, all but one were filled with professionals from outside the district, including Parker Farms Principal Michael O’Neill, who came all the way from Northern California. Cindy Lavallette, chairwoman of the English department at Lyman Hall High School, was the only district employee to be promoted in the process to assistant principal of a high school.

The turnover of management roles and out-of-town appointments speak to the district’s new direction. All of the leaders have some, if not ample, experience in a host of initiatives that Menzo charted this year, including federally mandated models for struggling students, assessing student performance and new technology for collecting and analyzing student performance data — all of which will be easier to set in place this fall under the new elementary school reconfiguration, according to school officials.

“All the positions we are filling are from retirements,” Menzo said. “We wanted to replace them with people that definitely have an understanding of where we’d like to go as a district, in terms of professional development, curriculum, instruction. We wanted people who had a breadth of experience.”

Wallingford, being a large suburban school district, has often appealed to seasoned out-of-towners, making it hard for some internal candidates to beat out the competition. And aligning a team of people who share the vision of the top leader is nothing new in the world of public education.

“I found as superintendent, and I think this is still the case, it’s a very attractive school system, so you tend to get people who have done a good job elsewhere,” said town-resident Joseph Cirasuolo, who served a 12-year term as Wallingford’s superintendent and hired more than a handful of administrators during that time. Cirasuolo is the executive director of the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents.

“Superintendents are trying to find the best people they can find,” he added. “Most of the people I hired were from out of town.”

Ellen Cohn wasn’t even in the market for a new position, let alone working for any single district; she was content consulting with systems across the state, including Wallingford, as they adopted new models such as Scientific Research- Based Interventions, which she helped pioneer in the state. But when Cohn, a consultant with the Capitol Region Education Council in Hartford and a trained social worker, learned that Martin Taylor, the assistant superintendent for instruction, was retiring, she jumped at the opportunity.

“I was a consultant in the district this year and I was very impressed with the open-mindedness of the staff. You don’t find that everywhere,” said Cohn, who was been working with teachers and principals on data team training across Wallingford’s 12 schools this year. “The other big appeal,” she said, “is Sal Menzo. I really like his vision. As an action-oriented person myself, I really like strategic planning.”

Board secretary Michael Votto, who was chairman when Menzo was hired, knows turnover is not uncommon at all in town. It just doesn’t usually happen as quickly as it did this year, he said. “I think a little bit of it is just plain coincidence,” Votto said. Since there were few internal applicants, the board and Menzo focused on finding people who were in line with new initiatives and district goals.

“There are two schools of thought,” said Chet Miller, a Republican member of the board. “Like a lot of people, I’d like to think that we’d promote from within, but there’s another school of thought that bringing outside ideas, perspectives, experiences can be good for a school system. I kind of go along with that latter school of thought.”

With pressure from the federal government and mandates including No Child Left Behind, it only makes sense for superintendents to assemble administrations of people who understand their goals and objectives, said Roch Girard, president of the Connecticut Federation of School Administrators, a roughly 1,000-member union of department and school heads. In the end, keeping up with all of the mandates will fall on administrators, he said. “Nothing is simple in education anymore,” Girard said. Menzo admits that with the retirement of almost 10 administrators, the district will not be able to replace the history it is losing, not to mention the rapport with parents, students and teachers, but he’s confident about taking the school system to the next level.

“It’s about the best fit for the school district,” Menzo said, “and moving the district forward.”