Today’s Hour has a nice editorial about the Norwalk Museum.

The saga of the Norwalk Museum, located in the former City Hall on North Main Street, could make a miniseries for television with its many twists and turns.

The Friends of the Museum, a volunteer organization, has put forward an agreement to operate the museum, amending it to read, in conjunction with the curator, Susan Gunn.

The agreement drew a quick response from the attorney representing the Municipal Employees Association, of which Gunn is a member.

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Now that the contract issue is out of the way, Corda has released the official CAPT scores. What a shocker:

Five Norwalk elementary schools, all four middle schools, and all three high schools were classified as “In Need of Improvement” this
year under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Salvatore Corda, however, is cautiously encouraged by the NCLB results, which were
released by the state Department of Education Thursday.

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Today’s Hour reveals that a group of people are upset that NEON wants to modernize. Strangely the article doesn’t mention the politics behind all this concern. As usual, as in the usual suspects of Bobby Burgess and Bruce Morris are behind the scenes attempting to preserve their waning influence over the goings on at NEON. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Joe Mann the, executive director, wants to clean up, codify and streamline the organization. NEON needs to maximize every dollar spent to support its mission of reducing poverty and helping low-income families and residents become self-sufficient.

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The state is going to review the BOE agreement that Bruce Morris paying for a substitute for time he misses by some arbitrary discretion not mentioned. The state should rule that this is a dumb idea. Morris’ situation is not complicated. He “normally” works the school day 8-4 and for each hour of the school day he is not there he should not be paid. Corda and the BOE think that you can’t figure out an hourly wage from a non hourly employee, yet corporations have been doing this to “management” workers for decades. The fact that Morris allegedly works occasionally outside the hours of the school day, allegedly to meet with parents, is irrelevant. He does not get compensated for that time, he gets paid a salary. But when he is not within the school district, he is not there to perform his job.

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Well, well, well. The whole point of a planning commission is to foresee what kinds of commercial uses you want in Norwalk. That’s why its called planning. But having a vision and idea about what the future Norwalk should be like is going to be the political theater this year and so today’s papers outline the first mild political battle over the oil tank distribution business that was planned for 350 Ely avenue. Many have referred to it as a tank farm, which connotes the idea that somehow oil tanks will be grown or raised, or something like that. In reality, the business is more akin to a gas station except that the fuel is home heating oil, the kind of stuff that sits in hundreds of gallons tanks in most Norwalk homes. But I digress.

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Given that the BOE up to recently has been a spineless bowl of jello when it comes to providing oversight to Corda and company, the symbolic act of not granting contract extensions to Corda and Lang are somewhat significant. In football, a lack of extension would be management signaling that a coach needs to start looking for another job, and so we must to interpret the lack of extension in a similar way.

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More inept construction management on display yesterday as schools opened with varying degrees of construction chaos. What’s important here is not the details of the dust, wires, ceilings that were left “to be completed” but more Opdahl’s dismissive attitude about complaints aired. From The Hour:

At Nathan Hale Middle School, some of the renovated hallways appeared shiny and new with bright white drop ceilings and red, white and blue floor tiles while others were less inviting.

In the school’s sixth grade hallway, the drop ceiling was not yet installed, revealing wiring and lightbulbs encased in metal cages. Similarly, the floor tile was missing, leaving only a dusty concrete surface for students and teachers to walk on.

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Early this morning The Connecticut Post ran a story that started:

House speaker to back Caruso
Connecticut Post, CT - 3 hours ago
BRIDGEPORT Speaker of the House James Amann, D-Milford, will announce his support of Bridgeport mayoral candidate Christopher Caruso this afternoon. …

But now the page comes up empty. I have yet to recover the story from my cache. So will Amann support Caruso or why did the Post yank the story?

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The poverty report that;s making the rounds cites Norwalk and Bridgeport as the only two cities that had a drop in median income. Median Income, means that half of Norwalk has an income under $64,893 and half have an income over it. IN 2005 the Norwalk median income was $65,741.

According to the ACS, Connecticut retained its position as the wealthiest state in the union, with a median family income of $78,154. New Jersey and Maryland were second and third. But in the measure of household income, which can include non-family members such as roommates sharing apartments, Connecticut ranked third, at $63,422. Fairfield County’s median income was $76,671; New Haven County’s was $56,840.

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Now here’s a good idea from State Senator Gaffey-D Meriden. He sent out a press release announcing that he’s going to push for legislation requiring a more uniform school calendar, starting with school starts after labor day. Starting school after labor day makes total sense.

About three-fourths of the state’s public schools open before Labor Day, but many families find the early start “inefficient and particularly irksome,” Gaffey said in a press release.

More than 70 districts start classes today. Among them is Hartford, with its first pre-Labor Day start in more than a decade.

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