Testani marks busy first year
Fairfield superintendent seeks to preserve neighborhood schools model
“I think it’s important that we are advocates for our families to make sure that they receive what they want in their school community. This is their school, their town, their kids.”
Fairfield Superintendent of Schools Michael Testani
FAIRFIELD — A trio huddled around a first grade classroom table covered in plastic beads, gearing up for a science activity at Osborn Hill Elementary School.
Holding a folded straw for a warbler beak and a plastic cup for a duck beak, two of the students navigated the tabletop landscape for food in the form of plastic tubes lying in the mix. The third was Superintendent Michael Testani, who had just joined the table to catch a glimpse of the action.
“Which bird beak is going to be great for cleaning up the rocks?” asked first grade teacher Jill Miller as Testani gave the warbler beak a try.
School visits like those to Osborn Hill have been the norm for Testani, who recently completed his first full calendar year on the job since Fairfield Public Schools hired him to a three-year contract in 2022. Shoring up classroom curricula and supporting high-need students with adequate social and emotional services have been major components of the former Bridgeport superintendent’s first 12 months on the job, where familiarization with families has been key.
“I really admire the town,” he said.
“It has a lot to offer for children and families. It really is family oriented.”
As Testani has visited each of the district’s 17 schools to collect feedback from parents and teachers, he
said a common interest was clear — protect the tight-knit communities that distinguish Fairfield's neighborhood schools.
The 18 students inside the Osborn Hill classroom walk or commute from within the same threemile stretch of Fairfield as part of the district's neighborhood model, where each school has its own geographic zone that determines where a student attends. Parents have said the neighborhood school system drew them to Fairfield, but a controversial redistricting process, which consumed much of Testani's first year, has jeopardized its future.
“I think the one thing that parents were very vocal about, and it came through in every meeting and every opportunity, is that they love their schools, they love their school communities, the uniqueness about those communities,” he said. “And what's most important to them is making sure that their kids and the families can stay in those school communities so they can thrive.”
The Board of Education has spent months considering a series of redistricting scenarios that could relocate masses of students as part of a plan to comply with a 54-year-old racial imbalance law in Connecticut. The law requires schools to remain within 25 percentage points of the district-wide average of minority students — a mandate Fairfield has been struggling to follow since 2007.
Despite a looming deadline to find a solution by the next school year, board members have since tossed out the five redistricting options they had weighed and have directed Testani to notify the State Board of Education that FPS has “no viable options for redistricting” by that deadline. Testani said the school district is responsible for defending the model of education families value before the state, and he'd like the state board to be more “open minded” to the feedback.
The board has yet to deliver a response to the resolution in Fairfield, and Testani remains unsure of what to expect from it.
“I think it's important that we are advocates for our families to make sure that they receive what they want in their school community,” he said. “This is their school, their town, their kids.”
Testani, meanwhile, has to run one of the larger public school systems in Connecticut and its more than 9,000 students.
In the past year, Testani said FPS has added an assistant principal position to every school, widened its communications network with a move to the ParentSquare app and upgraded high school facilities, including Sturges Park, the high school gyms and a new kitchen at the Walter Fitzgerald Campus.
One of Testani's biggest challenges is one that faces educators everywhere — making sure students continue recovering from potential academic and mental health setbacks during the COVID-19 pandemic. He said social and emotional learning was one of the most significant areas of need he saw students facing in light of the pandemic's long-term effects when he took on the job last year.
“Having the challenges now of being a child and access to all the things that they have access to on their devices when it comes to social media and everything else, all those outside influences, and making sure they feel welcome, they feel supported, they feel good about themselves, I think that's just the greatest challenge for any superintendent right now,” he said.
FPS organized a speaker series earlier this year on youth mental health in partnership with the police and Human and Social Services Department to educate the public about anxiety, depression, suicide, substance abuse, eating disorders and social media-related issues facing adolescents. LGBTQ+, Hispanic and female students face the highest rates of depression among Fairfield teens, according to a survey that a youth prevention group conducted this year.
Fairfield's 2022-27 District Improvement Plan identifies a “multi-tiered support system” for social and emotional learning that school psychologists and social workers would develop in hopes of implementing it during the current school year. Testani said an ideal support system comes from any staffer in a school, whether that be a school counselor, psychologist, teacher, social worker, coach, music director or club facilitator.
The plan also states the district would invest in an evidence-based social and emotional learning program called "Move this World,” which Testani said would show students a series of videos with actors on topics that apply to students of varying grades, like social media and anxiety for middle school and the college application process at the high schools.
Testani said those initiatives are “still in the beginning stages,” but the intention is to create a versatile system of support for students of any and all identities.
The district has appeared to apply the “multi-tiered” strategy to its diversity initiatives under Testani. He said the district has no plans to hire a diversity, equity and inclusion director after the position was eliminated last school year in the current budget. He said the district plans to embed DEI into its curriculum, teaching practices and behavioral standards instead of placing the work on a singular staffer.
A dozen administrators and teachers participated in “coaching sessions” to start developing a plan to strengthen FPS staff's racial, ethnic and linguistic diversity, according to the District Improvement Plan. An educational consultant will also conduct focus groups at Fairfield's five public secondary schools to gauge the sense of belonging among students, staff, faculty and parents before creating a list of recommendations to promote equity and inclusion.
“The biggest thing is making sure that our kids, the expectations and the support is there for everyone, and if that message rings through — from our tier 1 instruction to our support staff to our intervention — that this is across the board, I think that's the true work of DEI,” he said. “It's not any one particular person on one particular focus. It's really creating a culture that everyone can thrive in.”
As Testani looks beyond his first year on the job, he said updated English Language Arts curriculum that will go into effect next fall pending board approval will align the district with teaching that reflects the science of how children learn how to read. Alongside a math curriculum that underwent revision last year, Testani said Fairfield schools are positioned to emerge from the pandemic as strongly as ever.
“You walk through at Osborn Hill to McKinley to Sherman, you just see good teachers doing good things — good teaching — and I think that, over time, will be the ultimate equalizer of what happened during the pandemic,” he said.