People concerned about good government would be well advised to attend their local board of education meetings on a regular basis. These meetings are where spending on one of the largest items in a town’s budget should be analyzed and discussed. While some people like to go to annual budget meetings and complain about having not seen details of school budgets and spending, those details are available every month at Board of Education meetings.

Monday evening, the Woodbridge Board of Education met for its monthly meeting. I arrived late because of a Government Access Television commission meeting. When I arrived, school officials were providing information about the results of last year’s Connecticut Mastery Tests (CMTs). Woodbridge continues to do very well with the CMTs and the school administration continues to study the results to find the best ways of continuing to improve the quality of education provided to the students.

There were many important issues brought up during the discussion. How important are the CMTs, really? Is the school teaching too much or too little to the test? What is being done to make sure that students who far exceed the CMTs’ standards get sufficient challenges and educational opportunities? Where do other aspects, such as emotional intelligence, or traditional subject that are not on the CMTs fit in? Underlying all of this is the question about what the people of Woodbridge are really looking for in the town’s educational system.

The new committees are taking shape after May’s municipal elections. Of particular interest was a discussion about the finance committee. Thomas J. Handler has been selected the new chair of this committee, and Carl Lindskog, the former chair has decided to leave the finance committee.

There was a lively discussion about the responsibilities of the finance committee and the board as a whole. Concern was expressed that Mr. Handler is not as experienced in finance issues as Mr. Lindskog. However, board members believe it is more important to have a strong facilitator, like Mr. Handler that will involve all the members of the board as chair instead of a person with a strong finance background that may not be as effective in getting all the board members involved in their responsibilities to oversee the financial functioning of the school district.

Before I moved to Woodbridge, my father-in-law, a retired U.S. Treasury Agent, took part in a commission investigating issues with Amity High School. While I do not recall the details of the case, my recollection is that a major compounding factor was the failure of the Amity Board of Education at the time to properly review the monthly finances of the school. I do not want to see something similar happen with the Woodbridge Board of Education.

Currently, I do not expect something like this to happen. During the meeting many good probing questions were asked, including quite a few by the newly elected board member Steven J. Fleischman. Unfortunately, he appeared to be the only Republican member of the school board taking his job seriously. David Barkin left the meeting prior to the discussion of the financial reports, and the other two Republicans, Mark T. Livesay and Carl Lindskog not only failed to ask any questions or join in the discussion of the reports, but they abstained from voting on all three reports.

Perhaps they are taking their lead from the highest elected Republican official in our state, Gov. Rell who fails to take leadership or responsibility in addressing our states financial issues. Whatever the cause, they are not serving the people of Woodbridge well in their peevishness on issues of finance that the whole Board of Education needs to address.