NPS Hires New Teachers and Administrators

Norwalk public schools have hired about 35 new teachers and several new administrators for the coming school year.


Despite millions of dollars in budget cuts, teaching positions remained largely unaffected and the Board of Education was busy over the summer hiring personnel lost due to retirements and attrition.

“At the end of the day, we had a lot of vacancies to fill,” said Superintendent of School Susan Marks, who presided over an orientation for new teachers last Friday.

Six of the seven assistant principal and high school housemaster positions have been hired. Damon Lewis, a former special education administrator from Stratford, is the new assistant principal at Ponus Ridge Middle School. At Norwalk High, Edward Singleton, who was an assistant principal at Hamden High School, was hired as one of the two new housemasters. A former literacy coach from Dolan Middle School in Stamford, Crystal Perry, is the new assistant principal at West Rocks Middle School.

In accordance with the district’s contract with the Norwalk Association of School Administrator’s, individuals who lost their jobs due to budget cuts were eligible for open administrator positions. Norwalk’s former director of elementary education, Carol Marinaccio, is a new housemaster at Norwalk High. Patti Mattera, most recently a literacy specialist for the district, returns to Columbus Magnet School (she used to be a teacher there) as the new assistant principal. Italia Negroni, former grants specialist, is the new assistant principal at Marvin Elementary School. One assistant principal position remains to be filled at Ponus.

Superintendent Marks says she is pleased with the new staff. “I’m very impressed by the quality of candidates. It was a very strong pool,” says Marks, noting in particular the qualifications of the new high school science teachers.

“We want the best and brightest,” said Bruce Mellion, president of the Norwalk Federation of Teachers. “We also want people who want to teach in a diverse setting.”

The hiring of new staff has implications for the district’s budget, said Steve Colarossi, chair of the Board of Education’s finance committee. New elementary teachers typically start at a lower salary than a senior teacher, which results in savings. However, high school teachers usually have more experience and have graduate degrees in their area of expertise, so there is less savings with them.

“We’ll need to look at the real numbers versus our projections,” said Colarossi.

Mellion said on Monday that teachers are still in the process of being hired. He is working closely with the school administration to monitor enrollment, which has been in flux throughout the summer, and class sizes. Class size, which determines the number of teachers the district needs, is determined by the teacher’s union contract. In Norwalk, for example, lower elementary classes are limited to 22 students, and upper elementary to 24.

“We’ll be watching the situation very closely over the first five days of school,” said Mellion.