This Cool School

The new Connecticut Board of Regents for Higher Education is advising the governor to appoint its interim president to the permanent position.

The regents voted Thursday to ask Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to appoint Robert A. Kennedy to the board presidency, a spot he has held on an interim basis since September.

Since Malloy had originally nominated Kennedy to that interim position, it’s expected he will easily approve the regents’ recommendation to make it permanent.

The regents oversee the state’s 12 community colleges, the online Charter Oak State College and the four regional state universities: Eastern, Western, Southern and Central Connecticut state universities.

About 95,000 students attend those schools.

Kennedy is a former president of the University of Maine.

The Central Dauphin School Board Monday night approved a $155.4 million preliminary budget for 2012-13 that could mean higher taxes, larger class sizes or furloughs of as many as 50 district employees.

While the preliminary budget calls for a property tax hike of 3.3 percent, the budget isnt due until June 30. The board passed its preliminary spending plan to meet the deadline to apply for a state exception on the size of the tax increase.

The exception, if approved by the state Department of Education, allows a district to raise taxes more than that allowed to offset increases in the districts contributions to employee retirements funds.

Central Dauphins state-mandated contribution to 1,600 employees retirement plans will increase from 8.65 percent to 12.22 percent next year an increase of about $2.5 million from $5.9 million to $8.5 million, district business manager Karen McConnell said. That is set by law in the school code. We have to pay it, she said.

We have to apply now, but we dont have to use it, board President Ford Thompson said. Once the state approves the increase, Thompson said, it can never go up. It can only go down.

The states tax-increase index for Central Dauphin next year is 1.7 percent. With the 1.6 percent exception added, a tax increase of 3.3 percent would add $54 to the school tax bill of the owner of property assessed at $117,000, the district average.

A 3.3 percent tax hike would bring Central Dauphins tax rate to 14.32 mills, or about $1,675 for the average assessment.

The school board launched the 2012-13 budget cycle in September with an $8 million difference between income and expenses. Furloughing 50 staff members would trim about $2.1 million, McConnell said. Another $250,000 to $300,000 savings would be realized by refinancing a bond issue at a lower interest rate.

McConnell said there are lots of pieces of the puzzle to be discussed at future meetings, which could result in an adjustment to the preliminary plan, including health care costs and how much the district receives from the state.

We have been super conscience about eliminating things that have direct impact on students, Thompson said.

Its fair to say that if our final budget includes staff furloughs, it will result in higher class sizes, he said. At this point, were not planning any closures for 2012-13, but we have 19 buildings and, in the future, we cant say what will happen.

Central Dauphin High School freshman Emily Traynor and her father, Ryan, offered the only public comments before the vote.

Ryan Traynor called on the board to educate the public about the dire state of the economy and to hold the line on taxes at our level, where we have some control.

Emily Traynor suggested eliminating the student email system and costly whiteboards.

Money doesnt necessarily equal quality, she said. We dont need to keep spending to get a better education.

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The Rubyz, national recording artists, bring their Christian-oriented popular music messages from their native Tennessee to St. Ambrose Parish, 929 Pearl Road, at 7 p.m. Jan. 13. Free.

Calling all shutterbugs: “Getting Better Photos: Composition Tips and Techniques” is 1-4 p.m. Jan. 14 at Wolf Creek Environmental Center, 6364 Deerview Lane, Medina. Learn the basics of photo composition. Techniques coveredinclude the art of seeing, cropping, hot spots, angles, backgrounds, lines, your own style, and breaking the rules. Bring some of your own photos on a flash stick or other media and receive some suggestions to make them even better. Ages 16 and up. Register by Jan. 13. Fee, $25 fee per person.

Chili, anyone? Medina Relay For Life kicks off its 2012 campaign with a chili cook-off 5-7 p.m. Jan. 14 at the Medina Performing Arts Center, 851 Weymouth Road. Admission is a $5 donation. The 2012 Medina Relay For Life cancer awareness and fundraising event is scheduled for June 9 at the Medina County Fairgrounds.

New Year, New You: Medina Community Recreation Center open house is 1-5 p.m. Jan. 15 at the MCRC, 855 Weymouth Road. Free admission with at least one canned/non-perishable food item per person. Free fitness demonstrations, health screenings, nutrition education, massage therapy and access to fitness rooms, basketball courts, track and swimming pool. Bring swimsuit, towl and lock. Information: (330) 721-6900. Sponsored by MCRC and Medina Hospital.

Dog Days . . . of winter? “K9 Kapers,” 3 p.m. Jan. 15 at Green Leaf Park, 1674 S. Medina Line Road, Sharon Center, provides dog owners with an opportunity to socialize their pets with other dogs. All dogs must have an accompanying adult and 8-foot leash (non-retractable). Participants must maintain control of their dogs at all times. A towel for muddy feet and a water bowl are recommended. Free.

Women may have come a long way in the high-tech field in the last 10 years, but there’s still a lot of room for growth, according to a group of female tech executives.

And Marissa Mayer, a vice president at Google, said we’re just not doing enough to get more women into the high-tech field.

“I think what we’re really playing is a numbers game, ” said Mayer, speaking as part of a panel at CNet’s Women in Technology panel at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week. “Right now, it’s a really great time to be a woman in technology — but there aren’t enough women in technology. I worry that a lot of times the conversation gets focused on what percentage of the pie is women. And the truth is the pie isn’t big enough.”

Part of the larger problem, she noted, is that the United States is not producing enough computer scientists.

“We’re not producing enough product designers. We need more people to keep up with all these gadgets, all this tech and these possibilities and the jobs of the future,” said Mayer. “We need a lot more people and if we grow that number, then the number of women, by nature, goes up.”

What we need, she added, is to push more high schools to get kids interested in computer science.

Mayer was quick to point out that when it comes to advanced placement exams, 200,000 students take the calculus test, but only 14,000 take the computer science one. That means 7% of the students who think they’re good at math take both the math exam and the computer science exam.

“If you talk to Google engineers, only 2% were exposed to computer science in high school,” added Mayer. “We really just need to get that number up. Imagine if we had 200,000 or 500,000 students graduating from high school every year who have taken computer science, as well as calculus.”

Cisco Systems CTO Padmasree Warrior, who also sat on the all-woman panel, said that while more women need to be working in high-tech, the industry is doing better than ever before.

“I think they’ve come a long way,” said Warrior. “I feel pretty good about where women are in tech. If you look at two of the largest tech companies today, IBM and HP, they have women CEOs and there are a lot of women in tech who have made progress in our lives…. I would like to see more women out on the floor [of CES] but in the past 10 years we have made a lot of progress.”

CNet Executive Editor Molly Wood hosted the panel, which also included Flickr founder Catarina Fake and Lindsey Turrentine, editor-in-chief of CNet Reviews.

in Computerworld’s IT Industry Topic Center.