Republican incumbents Jen Dube and Kristen Giantonio retained their seats and were joined by fellow Republican John Sklenka. Democratic incumbent Karen Vibert retained her seat and was joined by newly elected Democrat Shelby Pons. All five will serve four-year terms. Elected to two-year terms were Republican newcomers Eric Carlson and Alison Wadowski, along with Democratic incumbents Chris Wilson and Thomas O’Brien. On Nov. 18, Dube was elected board chair, Giantonio was elected vice chair, and Wadowski was elected secretary. “I think it’s great that we won the BOE,” said Republican Town Committee Chair Jeffrey Caggiano, who recently ended a school board term himself. “The BOE has been led by Democrats for the past 38 out of 40 years. That’s a long time. We have a dedicated group of people that will lead for the kids.” The unusual division of board members into four-year and two-year terms in 2019 stemmed from a City Charter change back in 2013 to limit the board members to two four-year terms each, starting with the 2015 election. That in turn led to a concern that eventually all nine board members could be term limited at the same time, resulting in a whole new, totally inexperienced group coming on the board at once and facing a steep learning curve. So in 2018 the commission came up with the staggered term alternative, with alternate groups of board candidates coming up for election to four-year terms every two years. For that to work, this year some of the candidates had to run for a two-year term. The year brought big changes in administration too. On June 30 Susan Moreau retired as superintendent and was succeeded by Catherine Carbone, who had been deputy superintendent. “Dr. Kate Carbone is a very familiar face. She was the principal of Chippens Hill Middle School from 2006 until 2013, during which time Chippens Hill was named Middle School of the Year by the Connecticut Association of Schools,” Moreau said at that time. At the same time, Michael Dietter moved into the role of deputy superintendent, and Kimberly Culkin took over his former role as director of special services. Progress on renovating the old Memorial Boulevard School into an arts magnet for grades six through 12 continued in 2019, even as the project’s price rose from $54.8 million to $63 million. In December, the City Council and Board of Finance approved the price hike. Sixty percent of the cost will be paid by the state. Deputy Superintendent Michael Dietter, who chairs the school building committee, said the cost increase stems from “issues present in this building that is over 100 years old, and the costs that are associated with the removal and remediation of environmental issues.” However, the primary driver of the additional cost is a change in practice by the state’s Office of School Construction Grants and Review, he said. “They’re requiring that we remove all hot materials in the schools. Previous practice was to allow encapsulation, so we would do limited remediation and then we would encapsulate any environmental concerns that were there. We can no longer do that.” The new removal requirement “has driven up the cost because that material has to be taken out of the building and then replaced,” Dietter explained. “And then we have the additional oversight of the state Historical Preservation Council, which is asking that anything that is removed is replaced with something that replicates what was there.” Memorial Boulevard was the city’s high school when it opened in 1922. In 1967, it became a junior high school and then a middle school, until it closed at the end of the 2011-12 school year. The renovation is still its preconstruction phase. The architect, Farmington-based Quisenberry Arcari Malik, has estimated the new school could be open by August of 2022. In July, Mountain View Elementary School was the top winner in an online contest for a new playscape. Colgate, ShopRite, and TerraCycle, a recycling company that specializes in hard-to-recycle waste, ran the contest, in which the school that got the most online votes would win a colorful new playscape made from recycled materials, with a retail value of $55,000. “It really was a team effort with a lot of people in the community voting,” said Principal Mary Hawk said. “The police department, City Hall, everybody was emailing us and saying ‘we’re voting,’ so it’s really everybody’s playscape.” It was a big moment for Mountain View when the playscape was finally installed in October. The school’s previous 30-year-old, rusting playscape had been damaged by vandals and what was left had to be demolished in 2018, leaving mostly just a pile of dirt behind the school. Pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students had their own playscape, the PTO had been raising money for some smaller playground items, and ESPN volunteers had painted a number of colorful game areas on the blacktop over the summer. However, the older children didn’t have much in the way of equipment to play on until the contest prize arrived.