New Haven Independent

After getting approval to repair the sea wall at the Sound School, for an amount not to exceed $24,500, Simone was given permission to leave early to get home in time to pick his wife up for their seventh wedding anniversary. Thus the beaming, “May your marriage last even longer than the sea wall,” was the sentiment that accompanied him home from BOE headquarters, where the finance and administration committee met Monday night.

That permission was given by committee chair and BOE board member Rich Abbatiello. Abbatiello was flanked by two new faces, who are to become regulars on the committee. Michael Nast (on the left), one of the most recently appointed BOE members, has formally been asked to serve on this committee, and the BOE’s new chief operating officer, Will Clark, attended his first finance/administration meeting since taking over from Robin Golden after Labor Day.

Nast, a former high school principal, has an ongoing interest in curriculum, he said, and so he is “auditing,” to use his term, the board’s other key committee, on curriculum and instruction. Clark said his new job is exciting and that it was challenging to begin work just at the same time that the system’s kids are all starting school too. “I jumping in, right along with them,” he said.

Among the more intriguing items, large and small, discussed at the meeting, was a contract for $19,380 between the BOE and American Medical Response of Connecticut, the ambulance company. For that sum the company will provide standby ambulance services for a year at NHPS athletic events, especially football games. Sue Weisselberg, the coordinator of school construction, said the language of the contract called for ambulance coverage mainly at football games, both varsity and junior varsity, and at other key events such as major track meets.

“We’ve done this for years,” said Clark, indicating it was not in response to a flurry of concussions suffered by young football players nationwide. “It’s preventative and for health and safety,” he said. “It’s not reactive.”

Carolina Cudemus, the project manager for Troup Magnet School construction, was jealous of Simone’s early departure and said her anniversary is in two weeks, in case anyone was interested. She explained to Clark, Nast, and the other committee members the need for an amendment for an additional $170,964 to the budget for Troup, whose 1923 building is being renovated, the 26th capital project in the state’s largest school construction program. “New fire regulations,” Cudemus said, “require us now to have smoke detectors throughout the building be inside the duct work and the detectors wired directly to the fire department. This is a new regulation, unanticipated,” she said.

Her amendment was approved and she went home to two of her three boys, one of whom had just gone off to college. One of Cudemus’s colleagues reminded her that she had related how this son had once defended his mom - - there are not that many women in the general male domain of construction project management — against a friend who had made fun of Cudemus for wearing “combat boots.”

“My mother doesn’t wear combat boots, dummy,” the boy was quoted as saying. “She wears construction boots.”

Other items approved included $92,000 for a contract with the Honeywell Building Solutions company, of Rocky Hills, that remotely controls temperature and energy usage in all 50 school buildings, contributing to saving millions in energy costs for the system. Also approved was $19,180 for design changes for a replacement modular structure at the West Hills Valley Swing Space for the kids at Sheridan Magnet School. The modular project, managed by Ron Markiewicz (behind Cudemus), will be used for housing a health clinic and other facilities for at least two other schools, when their student populations are displaced in the next, and concluding phase, of the school construction program.