Volume 21, Number 21
www.towntimes.com
Friday, October 14, 2016
Firing of youth football coach leads to confusion By Mark Dionne Town Times
The Durham Middlefield Falcons football organization removed youth coach Todd Kennedy from his coaching position on Monday, Oct. 3. At a practice, Kennedy had made one of his players run laps for alleged bullying that took place at school. The team in question is the grades 4-6 Falcons. Initial reports of the incident from WTNH identified the team as a “Durham Middlefield Football team.” The story has been picked up by other
media sources, including the New York Daily News, Washington Post, and Yahoo Sports. The continued identification of the team with Durham and Middlefield, the towns that make up Regional School District 13, led to confusion over the involvement of the district. The school district does not run the Durham Middlefield Falcons, which is an independent organization, like the Coginchaug Soccer Club, and not affiliated with the schools. After receiving calls about
not affiliated with any district school. The former coach is not a current or former employee of Regional School District 13.” The incident has sparked discussions of the role of coaches, bullying, and discipline locally and across social media. the incident, RSD13 issued a statement to clarify the situation. According to the statement, the initial reporting “has caused viewers as well as other news stations and newspapers to assume that the coach in question
was an employee of Regional School District 13 and was terminated by our Board of Education.” The statement continues, “The Falcons football team is not a district team and is
Perhaps adding to the confusion, the removal of Kennedy occurred less than a year after Coginchaug Regional High School football coach Nick D’Angelo abruptly quit that post over questions of team discipline.
District student test results discussed by BOE Kindergarten concerns addressed at meeting
By Mark Dionne Town Times
Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Linda Berry presented student test results to the Board of Education last week, highlighting generally positive trends and results in Durham and Middlefield’s Regional School District 13, with a few areas of concern, like mathematics.
By Mark Dionne Town Times
The student test results took up most of the time at the latest meeting of Durham and Middlefield’s Board of Education (see page 1 article), but the board also discussed other topics including new kindergarten assistants and the reconfigured Brewster Elementary School.
The annual presentation covered PSAT, SAT, CMT, CAPT and SBAC tests, as well as AP courses and tests taken during the 2015-2016 school year. Berry examines this data to compare current results to past results, compare RSD13’s scores to scores from the group of similar school systems known as the DRG, and to follow individual grades vertically year to year to examine growth. The CMT/CAPT results placed 20152016 grades 5, 8, and 10 all above the DRG average. Grade 5 scored 12 out of 25 districts, grade 8 scored 10 out of 21, and grade 10 scored 2 out of 17. “This is the best we’ve done in five years,” Berry said. See Results, A11
Coginchaug Regional High School seniors, from left, Emily Leibiger, Sam Marteka and Lauren Donnelly are serving this year as liaisons to the Board of Education, updating the BOE on school happenings in athletics, the music department, and around the school. Donnelly recently told the BOE that the seniors had been looking forward to their class trip to Washington, D.C. since they were in kindergarten and were ‘absolutely ecstatic’ it had arrived. | Mark Dionne, Town Times
Addressing a concern brought by some kindergarten parents, Superintendent of Schools Kathryn Veronesi announced that the district will add 1.5 teaching assistants to cover kindergarten classroom time. Parents had complained that the classrooms were at times staffed by only a kindergarten teacher and pointed out that district policy stated that an aide would See Concerns, A10