New Center For Global Leadership Classroom Unveiled

If you want a glimpse of what a 21st century technological leading-edge classroom looks like, the newly renovated  classroom is it. 

The Board of Education held its regular meeting in the classroom Monday night to showcase the academy's room to the public. 

Equipped with 29 state-of-the-art computers, modular work and study tables, ergonomic chairs, a smart board with dual screen capacity and a computerized world map clock that is normally found in the higher offices of government and scientific labs, this room is as far away as you can get from the traditional white-walled classroom that once uniformly defined the learning environment.

The Center for Global Leadership classroom is green; not just in the sense of the color of the walls and chairs, but green in the sense that it was designed with the intent of using as many environmental resources as possible.

From the carpet to the display boards, this room is outfitted, in large part, from recyclable materials. On the plan is the installation of lighting that will automatically dim and shut off if no one is in the room, saving on energy costs. 

How can the school afford a room like this? When it comes to finances, Superintendent  have said they are sensitive about costs to the taxpayer and conscious about the current economic climate. But as Polizzi previously told Patch, he and the board are not letting the economy stall their initiatives.

Instead, creative ways to bring money into the school district without cost to the taxpayer are forefront on their minds. An example of this is the district's goal of bringing back to district special needs children who were being sent to specialized programs outside of district at a tremendous cost to the taxpayer. 

As previously reported, the establishment of the  housed in the Berkley School and servicing children on the autistic spectrum from pre-K through second grade, and the Knight program, an alternative program that begins its day at 3 p.m. and services general education, special education and at-risk high school aged students, not only brings New Milford special needs students back to their home district, but saves the district hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses.   

Additionally, New Milford can now include children from other districts in these programs, creating a revenue source since tuition is collected from other school districts that send their students to New Milford's programs. 

Couple that with the New Milford Education Foundation, another resource developed to raise funds for scholarships and to enhance existing innovative programs, and it's evident that the district has viable monetary resources to draw upon independent from traditional revenue sources--the taxpayer.

It was reported at the meeting that over the course of the next few months, the Education Foundation will be speaking to the fundraisers that they will be coordinating.

The next meeting of the Board of Education will be a work session on Dec. 5 at 7 p.m. in the high school media center.