3-26-10
By JIM KEVLIN : NORWICH
Superintendent of Schools Gerard O’Sullivan hadn’t been on the job more than a couple of weeks when he received a DINOI letter – that’s for “district in need of improvement.”
Norwich city schools, he was advised by the state Education Department, were failing. He had three years to turn it around, or steps – up to state seizure of the local schools –were possible. And in three years, he did.
Read on to find out specifics, but the can-do reaction – while resurrecting the curriculum, the Norwich City School District also built a $35 million addition to its complex on Midland Drive – shows the kind of attitude you find throughout the Chenango County seat.
Norwich was a Procter & Gamble town, but that Fortune 500 economic mainstay pulled out its local operations in 1994. Population dropped more than 15 percent to the current 6,900. Real estate followed, with home prices down 30 percent in the 1990s.
But that was then.
Today, two days of conversations with Norwich’s leaders find them energized, optimistic, still in love with their town and looking to the future with high expectations.
And with reason:
• Agro-Farma, which has been manufacturing Greek-style yogurt in South Edmeston for two years, is negotiating to buy the former P&G main plant at Wood’s Corners – 35,000 square feet on 88 acres – and to hire 350 people over the next couple of years.
• Mayor Joseph Maiurano had just returned from a meeting the other day with officials from SUNY Morrisville, which operates a satellite campus here. In the next five years, the university plans to build dorms locally and add nursing, culinary and law-enforcement programs, among others.
• GE’s Unison subsidiary is employing 350 manufacturing aerospace sensors and growing; Chentronics, another sensor manufacturer (sensors are like starters, but for airplanes) is also thriving in the industrial park.
• The sizeable green at Main and Broad – East Park and West Park – is in for a major upgrade, a project led by Norwich BID (business improvement district). Construction of a grandstand will begin in the next few weeks. The signature gazebo will be moved and reset at ground level, making it handicapped accessible.
• The Northeast Classic Car Museum’s collection – it includes a large collection of steam-run autos – brings people from all over the world; Israelis, in particular. This tourism draw dovetails with the many celebrations – from the Gus Macker 3-on-3 basketball tournament in May to the bluegrass festival in July and jazz festival in August.
• The downtown Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge is about to attract a Denny’s, according to the mayor, significant in that, even in the current climate, a national chain has found Norwich has sufficient economic activity to meet its economic parameters.
• One round of state Main Street grants is redoing the upper stories of downtown buildings, and City Hall – neatly ensconced in the old railroad depot – is seeking another round of grants to do some more.
Beyond the details, its hard to find anyone who isn’t bullish about the city, its quality of life and its prospects, from Mayor Maiurano to the patrons who each morning crowd into Millie’s Diner, purchased in the past month by Kristina Passafuime, a 10-year waitress there.
“We have stable companies who are looking for ways to stay here, to take care of their employees,” said Maureen Carpenter, president of the Chenango Chamber of Commerce for the past three years.
Like the rest of the region, the Iroquois Confederacy held sway here for centuries, until Yankee settlers from New England – the name comes from Norwich, Conn., and, before that, Norwich, England – move in after the American Revolution pacified the neighborhood.
Norwich was incorporated as a village in 1816 (and a city a century later). A year later, the Erie Canal opened, exciting local agitation in favor of a Chenango Canal. That canal opened in 1837, connecting Utica with Binghamton.
It grew as a manufacturing center and a transportation hub for agricultural products, until the Rev. Lafayette Moore’s founding of Norwich Pharmacal Co. in 1882. Its products – Pepto-Bismol among them – made it a target for P&G acquisition a century later.
Norwich makes an impression, from its central park, surrounded by historic buildings – from the 1837 stone Chenango County Courthouse at one end to the post office at the other.
The modern NBT Bank headquarters is a block to the south on Broad Street, a half-block from the five-story Eaton Building – P&G’s former office building, now Class A office space, 60 percent occupied – and the glassed-in SUNY campus. Like all Upstate downtowns, Norwich’s is challenged, it has kept alive its department store, McLaughlin’s.
To the north of the green is the mansion district, with imposing home ranging from Greek Revival to towered Italianates to quietly distinctive Colonial Revival examples. Chenango Memorial Hospital anchors the far end.
“What separates us it the people; they are the type of people willing to step up and volunteer,” said Pegi LoPresti, Norwich BID executive, who like Carpenter was born and raised here, went away to college, then returned to raise a family.
Back to the miracle on Midland Drive.
That letter from the state Education Department to O’Sullivan didn’t say, “You will do this. You will do that,” he recalled. It was more like, “Either I do it, or someone from Albany will be doing it. I decided I’d rather do it myself.”
Coming out of the Oneida BOCES, O’Sullivan had been immersed in “benchmarking” – measuring where you are and pegging yourself against that measure. Every school quarter, students are scored against the benchmarks, and the teachers are presented with a laundry list of results.
Since Norwich is big enough to have seven or eight classes in each grade, teachers can see how they and their students are stacking up, and figure out what’s going right in the top-scoring classes.
“I see you did great in double-digit long division,” O’Sullivan says in a for-example conversation between two teachers. “What are you doing that I can try?”
In making this happen, O’Sullivan had the help of another recent hire, curriculum director Irena Gerchman, and of two teachers – Kistin Giglio and Don Wenzel – detached to develop new curricula at the same time the benchmarking was being put in place.
In three years – three years where the school district was also planning for a $35 million plant upgrade; but that’s another story – Norwich schools were off the state’s DINOI list.
And – this is news anyone can use – O’Sullivan didn’t use the benchmarks punitively. Quite the opposite. He simply allowed his professional teachers to see the data, compare their data to their fellow teachers, and respond accordingly.
And it works. Spend a little time in Norwich: You won’t be surprised it did.
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