School Board Thanks Retirees, Approves Landon Salary

By James Lomuscio

UPDATE In its final meeting of the fiscal year before it meets again in August, Westport’s Board of Education tonight voted unanimously to maintain Schools Superintendent Elliott Landon’s salary at $287,899 for 2012-13.

Melissa Kay, Bedford Middle School principal who has taken a post at a school in Italy, addresses the Board of Education tonight as it thanked departing staff members. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com

The board a year ago had approved the Landon salary beginning July 1, 2012 when it extended his contract to 2014. (See WestportNow June 20, 2011) Landon, 72, has been superintendent since 1999.

Members also voted unanimously to increase the salaries of 50 nonunion personnel for next year by 2.95 percent, an increase that was higher than others since the nonunion employees do not have step increases, Donald O’Day, board chairman, said.

The board also unanimously approved a three-year, in part retroactive, contract agreed to in collective bargaining for the Westport Association of Education Secretaries.

It includes a 2 percent increase for 2011-12, no increase in 2012-13 and 2.5 percent in 2013-14. Marge Cion, human resources director, said that under the contract, each school will have a secretary in place 45 minutes before and after the school day.

In other matters, the school board discussed but took no action on Assistant Superintendent Nancy Harris’ report on the need for a 20 percent increase in facilities rental fees which have remained flat since 2004.

Currently, the school system generates $124,000 annually from renting out space, such as auditoriums and the Staples High School Field House, to only Westport civic and nonprofit groups.

Harris also proposed creating a new category for non-local civic organizations “that could use our largest facilities.”

Teachers union president Kathy Sharp thanks retiring teachers (l-r) Andrew (Drew) Strauss, Nancy Kovacic, and Rosalind Liljengren at tonight’s Board of Education meeting. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com

“Who knows? The Stamford Symphony might want to come here, but we don’t know because we haven’t opened our doors,” she said.

Harris stressed that the monies raised from rentals goes to “building related expenditures, direct costs like fuel and utilities.”

“We woudn’t buy textbooks with it,” she said, noting that the rental money is not a cumulative balance, but “must be zeroed out” to offset other costs.

Richard Lowenstein and Allen Bomes, who serve on the Representative Town Meeting’s (RTM) Finance Committee, praised the board for focusing on increasing rentals, saying that they had asked the school board to do so for the past several years during school budget hearings.

“I am very pleased you’re taking these steps,” said Lowenstein.

At the same time, he cautioned the school board to seek the advice of the town attorney in the event the school board wants to deny renting to a specific group, “to make sure it stands up in an ACLU, civil liberties issue.”

In other matters, school board member Elaine Whitney, who heads the board’s School Bus Parking Subcommittee with Mark Mathias, handed out and briefly discussed a May 30 subcommittee report.

It stated that the 32-acre, town-owned Baron’s South property “appears to be the best option of town-owned sites” to park the buses to offset an annual cost of $250,000 the school system now pays to park, fuel and service buses.

Schools Superintendent Elliott Landon thanks retiring school nurse Ellen Corey. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com

Whitney also took the opportunity to thank Board of Finance member Michael Rea for bringing the issue of such potential savings to the school board.

Also, at the start of tonight’s meeting Landon presented recognition awards to nine Board of Education employees, including teachers, administrators, a nurse, secretary and custodians who are retiring this year. 

Among those cited were Ellen Corey, a nurse for more than 30 years, most recently at Bedford Middle School, art teacher Rosalind Liljengren, who worked at the Saugatuck, Green’s Farms and Kings Highway elementary schools, and Andrew Strauss, who was hired as a chemistry teacher at Staples in 2002 after having taught for 36 years in New York.

“What has kept me here is that it is an incredibly good school that truly fosters academic growth,” said Strauss.

Also honored was Melissa Kay, the former principal of Coleytown Elementary School and Bedford Middle School. Though not retiring, Kay is leaving Westport to take a position at an Italian school 15 miles north of Rome.

“She made that school sound, warm and wonderful again,” Landon said about Kay’s tenure at Bedford.