All Eyes Forward: Erardi, Brumback Look to Build on Success

The Southington Board of Education rewarded Superintendent Joseph V. Erardi Jr. for his work last month with a new three-year contract and Town Manager Garry Brumback was extended three years earlier this month in a show of support from the Southington Town Council.

With the new contracts in hand, Southington’s hired top leaders are now working together to help provide community unity and improve both the school district and town infrastructure as Southington looks to build for the future.

“I take this as the highest form of praise; I’m humbled by it,” Brumback said. “What’s next is to continue to earn that support every day. From my perspective, it’s time to continue to develop excellence in what do and what currently on plate.”

One area where Brumback said he hopes to improve is within communication and partnership with the schools to combine resources. He said the town and Board of Education are already in discussions to merge and join IT departments and have already made changes to combine purchasing efforts.

In the coming years, Brumback said this effort would expand to look at personnel departments and other resources to make town government more responsive, effective and better all around.

Erardi said in an interview in early July that combining resources and efforts can also be done to enhance security and safety, not only within the school district but around the entire community as a whole. The combined efforts will help make Southington a safer place to live and assure incidents like that at Newtown don’t happen here.

“As far as I’m concerned, safety will remain a high-profile and premium conversation until the day I walk out the door,” said Erardi, who noted that he has received unending support from Brumback, Police Chief Jack Daly and the Southington Police Department. “The partnership piece has added value to the conversation.”

But both Brumback and Erardi aren’t solely focused on combining resources either. Both men have goals and new objectives moving forward.

On the town side, Brumback said he plans to meet with members of the council over the next several months to review objectives and set long-term goals for community. In the meantime, he intends to continue moving forward to improve infrastructure in town, including work of roads to reduce annual costs to a more manageable level.

“We will be keeping our eye on the ball and making sure we complete everything that we committed to when we asked the citizens for their trust,” he said. “$11 million is no small money. Once the major stuff is done, what we are hoping to do is create a sustainment plan so there is no level of intense investment again.”

On the school side, Erardi said the focus in the years to come will focus heavily on moving away from traditional teaching and learning and finding a more sustainable and effective way to develop tomorrow’s learners and teachers.

“We are moving towards a society that values technological learning,” he said. “This means completely eliminating purchase of textbooks. The new platform could be electronic devices or chrome books. We will continue with our 2020 Vision efforts.”

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