Wallingford board schedules special meeting, aims for July vote on single high school ed specs amid classroom-space dispute

The Wallingford Board of Education voted to schedule a special meeting to finish discussion of educational specifications (ed specs) for a proposed single high school and to place a final vote on the ed specs at the board’s July meeting.

The decision follows repeated debate over whether the new design should include shared teacher workspaces or dedicate classrooms to every teacher, and over outstanding site planning work and related costs. Board members said a special meeting would let them focus on the remaining issues without further delay.

Board members and members of the public told the board the choice on shared versus dedicated teacher classrooms is material to teacher morale and daily operations. Mary Beth Dylan, a Wallingford parent who addressed the board during public comment, said the ed specs as presented appeared to prioritize reimbursement rates and cost minimization over instructional space. “How can we spend billions of dollars to build a new state-of-the-art school claiming to bring so many educational improvements just to be designing our school at the bottom end of almost every subject area,” Dylan said.

The board received a written statement from board member Melanie Rosace, who said she opposes the inclusion of shared teacher workspaces as currently proposed and would support an alternative that reduces shared workspace square footage and adds five classrooms. Rosace’s statement was read into the record when she was unable to attend.

Superintendent Belizzi told the board that the district’s status on site identification had not changed since the last meeting. “We are at the same status as where we were at the last Board of Education meeting. And so, nothing new to report at this time,” Belizzi said after the board returned from executive session.

Board members discussed visiting other high schools—both new builds and renovated-to-new projects—to view layouts and programming in person before finalizing their decision. The district identified a short list of schools willing to host visits; board members discussed pairing up so visits would not constitute a full public meeting. Board members also noted that the vocational/technical (AST) program and its ed specs are a separate workstream and will be developed and voted on separately.

The special meeting will be scheduled before the July 28 regular meeting, when the board intends to place the final ed specs vote on the agenda. Several board members urged a quick resolution: one member said they did not want the discussion to prolong further and preferred a special meeting followed by a July vote. Others said they wanted at least some members to tour comparable schools before voting.

The board took the action to schedule the special meeting by formal motion and vote; the motion carried. No changes to the ed specs were adopted at the meeting; the vote to finalize the ed specs was deferred to the July regular meeting.