Submitted by Kathleen Stowe, BOE member 2017-2025
This week I finished my second term on the Board of Education. It has been an honor and a pleasure to serve all of you in the community. During my eight years, I met many wonderful people, became surprisingly knowledgeable about topics from building maintenance to curriculum, drank a lot of late night coffee, and engaged in many healthy debates. I listened to thousands of hours of public comment from parents, students, teachers, members of the community, and one fairly persistent bat (who hopefully doesn’t move to the new CMS). I learned how deeply important our school system is for our community and how impactful we can be for our students. Every hour was worth it when the primary constituents are our kids.
I believe that community service is a critical duty and I believe in leaving things better than we find it. I could write a short novel about the work we’ve done, but there are three areas where I truly feel we came together as a community for our students and have built a durable foundation for the future:
1. Back to School During COVID
Returning students to school during COVID was a massive effort filled with uncertainty. I am proud of the work that our bipartisan Board accomplished with Dr. Jones and her team during an extraordinarily difficult time for everyone, especially our students. We had one goal: to get kids safely back in school as soon as possible. We effectively created two schools—an in-person option and a remote school—and Greenwich was the first in the state to bring students back.
As a parent, I know how much that mattered.
2. Capital Projects
We are fortunate to have wonderful school facilities, but they require ongoing investment and we inherited a series of challenges largely stemming from aging infrastructure. As a Board, we worked hard to prioritize and fund those capital needs, and we’re now seeing the results of that work with our flagship project, Central Middle School, set to open this summer.
I look forward to continued investments, with projects underway at Julian Curtiss and Old Greenwich, to be followed by Riverside. Many of these buildings have been with us for 100 years and I hope we are literally building the foundations for the next 100.
3. Achievement Results
All of these efforts are about enabling academic opportunity for our students.
Through focused investment in curriculum, supported in part by federal funds that we obtained from COVID, setting clear guidance and direction and continued professional development for our educators, we have seen strong academic gains, including:
– 10 Schools of Distinction—the most of any district in the state
– #5 in the state for District Performance Index, outperforming Westport and Darien (despite very different scale and demographics)
– All-time highs in grades 3–8 for English and Math
– Double-digit gains in Science from 5th to 8th grade and 8th to 11th grade
(tested grades)
– 97.38% of students taking AP exams scored a 3, 4, or 5, across 2,906 AP exams.
When I started eight years ago, Greenwich had inconsistent results with frequent superintendent turnover. Together, we created an environment of stability, professionalized the team, and delivered strong academic outcomes for our students.
They say 90% of the job is showing up. In eight years on the Board of Education, I never missed a meeting.
Being present and engaged is an important example to set for our students. Thank you to my children, my husband, and my parents/grandparents, who made it possible for me to honor that commitment.
And on a fun note: one of my last votes on the Board of Education was to increase the number of nights we can light the stadium. It was unanimous. Go Cardinals.
Kathleen Stowe served on the Greenwich Board of Education from 2017-2025