The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Debate arises over authority to name middle school
BOE vote to recommend dedicating facility to Beman family has officials crying foul
MIDDLETOWN — The Board of Education’s unanimous vote to recommend the new combined middle school be named after the Beman family is being criticized by some city officials as subverting the city charter.
By statute, the sole authority of naming any city facility rests entirely with the common council.
But a naming committee established by the school board was tasked with holding public forums to field suggestions on naming the new $87.4 million school, now under construction, which will eventually house both Woodrow Wilson Middle School seventh and eighthgraders and Keigwin Middle School sixthgraders.
The school board voted unanimously Oct. 2 to send a proposal to the council to name Wilson school after the Bemans. BemanDouglas Middle School and Mattabesset Middle School were the second and third highest votegetters.
Common Councilwoman Deborah Kleckowski said, about the naming authority, “It is imperative that the legislative process be followed.”
“As legislators and elected officials ... any elected body must follow their own rules, policies, state statutes and city ordinances. Otherwise, it’s anarchy and there’s no process,” she said.
“As legislators and elected officials ... any elected body must follow their own rules, policies, state statutes and city ordinances. Otherwise, it’s anarchy and there’s no process.” Common Councilwoman Deborah Kleckowski, about the naming authority
For example, in October 2016, the Common Council voted to rename the Remington Rand building on Johnson Street as the Robert M. Keating Historical Enterprise park in honor of its original use as a bicycle and motorcycle factory more than 100 years ago. The Remington name came from the typewriter company, which later occupied the facility.
Hope Kasper, a former councilwoman running for council in November, said that in the case of the new school, school board members acted inappropriately.
In her view, the council has to decide whether it even wants to entertain a name change when it eventually takes up the issue.
“The Board of Ed decided to do this on their own. If the process [as laid out by city charter] wasn’t followed, then it’s rejected, just based on process. They certainly did not follow the procedures,” Kasper said.
Kasper said the way the 2017 referendum was worded led voters to believe the Wilson name would be retained for the school. The Nov. 7, 2017 ballot question asked voters to approve the bond authorization for Woodrow Wilson Middle School.
If she were elected, Kasper said she would seek a legal opinion on whether a name change would have any bearing on funding that the voters approved locally. She also questions whether state funding would be affected if the name were changed.
“It isn’t something as simple as just changing a name,” Kasper said.
“If you don’t follow, to the letter, everything you do is null and void,” Common Council Minority Leader Sebastian N. Giuliano said of city charter.
The naming committee “is not a group the common council has to give any credence to, because it’s not a committee that was formed pursuant to charter,” he said.
Two things could have happened, as Kleckowski sees it.
“The Board of Ed could have done it among its own elected body,” or “the chairman could have gone to council and requested a naming committee be formed,” she said. Subsequently, an ordinance would have been crafted and the mayor would appoint individuals to the subcommittee.
“I’m sure the council would have approved, and it would have gone forward in the proper manner. There is no way for the council to accept this, because the ordinance says if it’s not followed, the recommendation is null and void,” she said.
Another complaint raised is that the naming committee did not follow state law, which says no more than twothirds of members of committees be comprised of any one party. At issue is that the school board allowed the two student members to cast votes, although they aren’t old enough to vote in an election.
“The statute says ‘members of the committee,’ and students were members of the committee,” said Drake, an attorney.
He reviewed both FOIA regulations and those set forth by his board, which say youth representatives are voting members.
“They obviously don’t have voter registration, so we counted them as unaffiliated, which is the same way I understand if you put someone on a committee and they’re just simply not registered to vote,” Drake said.
Drake was tasked with selecting members of the naming committee who were administrators, teachers, parents and students from Woodrow Wilson and Keigwin middle schools.
“I was appointing them for those reasons, not because of their political affiliations,” Drake said.
But Giuliano said, “The chairman of the board is a lawyer and a board member who does not grasp the concept of minors. Minors are under a blanket in capacity.”
“Minors are assumed incapable of doing anything unless the law makes an exception. It’s not the other way around. That’s pretty fundamental. That’s Law 101,” he added.
“It’s like you’re trying to ask them: Could you have followed one of these laws? One of them? They don’t seem to have a good answer for that,” Giuliano said of the school board.
“I get what they’re saying,” Drake said. “It puts us in a weird position, as an employer, where we have to turn around and ask our employees what their political affiliation is, because that’s not supposed to matter.
“It does get a little bit dicey when you have the chair of the Board of Education checking up on the political affiliation of school administrators,” Drake admitted.
In a letter Monday, he emailed council members, offering two precedents where the school board acted: the renaming of the high school auditorium after Santo Fragilio and the naming of the Farm Hill Elementary School stage after the late teacher Carole Crayton.
He said the Board of Education has had a longstanding policy, which predates the council’s ordinance by at least 19 years, saying the school board determines the need and appropriateness of naming a facility, Drake wrote.
“This whole fiasco could have been avoided, and who knows? It could have had the same outcome, but it wasn’t that way,” Kleckowski said.