After attending many Board of Education and committee meetings for the past three months, I was finally able to officially sit on as a full board member this past Wednesday night at the Board of Education meeting at 7pm at the Torrington High School. Prior to the meeting, a School Capacity Presentation Workshop was held where Director of Student and Professional Services William Joslyn explained the pros and cons of closing a school and/or reconfiguring the grade and middle schools. Ultimately, it appears as though the district is better served with the schools remaining where and how they are currently structured.

 Also at the meeting we elected new officers to the board. Ken Traub was elected Chairman, David Oliver was re-elected Vice Chairman, and Torrington Democratic Town Committee member Ellen Hoehne was elected Secretary. I look forward to working under this great leadership. We then recognized many of the teachers, schools, and students in our district for their varied accomplishments.

We also approved at the meeting the Online Learning Policy. I am incredibly excited about this new program as it offers credit recovery through supervised online instruction to high school students who have lost credits. I hope that after the demonstrated success of this program, we will be able to offer more online learning opportunities to more students. Currently, six states require a portion of their high school curriculum to be taught online. Also, more and more colleges and universities are offering online courses, including Yale, UCONN, and MIT to name a few. 

Vincent Merola
Board of Education