09/17/11 Central Middle School Principal Shelly Somers Had Closed Her Private Educational Facility To Avoid CT License Revocation Hearing Part 2

You Wont Read This In The Greenwich Time
Greenwich Board Of Education Screw Up

Parents Are Not Informed Of Central Middle School Principal Shelly Somers' Checkered Past

Children Were At Risk

East Granby Day-care Expected To Close

EAST GRANBY — Cornflakes day- care center, which is facing license revocation this month, has scheduled a tag sale for Saturday at which virtually its entire inventory will be sold.

The business is expected to close by Dec. 15.

An advertisement for the embattled day-care center published Wednesday in a local shopper, The Yankee Flyer, stated: ``Moving sale: Day care center contents, supplies, toys, playground equipment, wood playscape, appliances, cubbies, tables, chairs, etc.'' The address for Cornflakes -- 121 Hartford Ave. -- then followed.

Another advertisement, published in the December issue of The Granby Drummer, a local monthly, offers for rent the 2,000-square-foot former train station that houses the day-care center. Cornflakes' owner told her landlord she would be out by Dec. 15, said Toni Shohan, the landlord.

Cornflakes owner Shelly Somers, reached by telephone at the center Thursday afternoon, confirmed the tag sale, but said she had no further comment. Somers, a former teacher, has operated the center for 11 years.

The state Department of Public Health, the licensing agency for day- care centers, received a telephone call from Somers on Tuesday afternoon in which she told officials she would be closing, said Janet G. Chisholm, policy manager for the health department's day-care licensing division. They have received no written confirmation, Chisholm said.

The license revocation hearing, scheduled for Dec. 18, stems from eight allegations concerning the care and supervision of children. Chisholm said the revocation hearing is still set to go forward.

Somers is facing license revocation because she allegedly left a toddler unsupervised in a parked van for at least 45 minutes in November 1994, failed to notify parents that a preschooler may have ingested Advil while in the center's care and misled state officials in order to retain her license, according to health department letters to Somers obtained by The Courant.....

UPDATE:

CMS principal taking leave during district investigation

Lisa Chamoff, CT Post Staff Writer

Updated 10:36 p.m., Thursday, October 6, 2011

The principal of Central Middle School is taking a leave of absence while the district investigates a report that she closed a day-care center she owned in Hartford County and surrendered her day-care license to the state 15 years ago after allegations were made concerning her care and supervision of children.

Shelley Somers, who was hired by the district in the fall of 2009 and took over as principal at CMS the following January, had operated Cornflakes Day Care Center on the East Granby/Granby town line for 11 years when she reached an agreement with the state Department of Health to sever ties with the facility and to not operate a facility within the state for five years.

...A reader brought the matter to the attention of Greenwich Time, providing a copy of a Hartford Courant story....

...."The Greenwich Public Schools take seriously its responsibility to assure that its school leaders are fit for that responsibility," district spokeswoman Kim Eves said in an email. "At this point, we have made no findings, but rather we are investigating the situation as reported to determine the facts and the response, if any, by the Greenwich Public Schools."

Eves said that when the district hired Somers in 2009, it followed the standard hiring processes, including interviews, site visits, fingerprinting, background and reference checks. Somers' experience and affiliation with the day-care center was not disclosed to or otherwise discovered by the Greenwich Public Schools during the interview and hiring process.

Internet searches were not part of the district's background checks at the time Somers was hired....

...Superintendent of Schools Roger Lulow took over this past August and wasn't involved in the hiring process for Somers, but he said it was likely that because no formal charges were filed or legal action was taken against Somers, the case did not come up in the background check the district performed before she was hired....

....Before she was hired by Greenwich Public Schools, Somers headed the School of Arts, Communication and Technology, one of five small, themed schools at the 1,600-student Beaufort High School in Beaufort, S.C. She started out as an English and Spanish teacher at the Humanities School of Beaufort in 1999, according to the local school district. Somers then moved to Battery Creek High School, also in Beaufort, to chair the English department in 2000. In 2003, she became assistant principal for Hilton Head Island High School, in Beaufort County, and later spent a year teaching English at Robert Smalls Middle School, also in the county, before accepting the job at Beaufort High School in 2006.

Somers took over for Roger Stenz, a veteran educator who came out of retirement earlier in 2009 to replace former CMS Principal Carol Walsh on an interim basis after she was promoted to an administrator job in the district's central office.

PLEASE ALSO SEE:

11/13/09 Supt. Appoints CMS Principal

Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Sidney A. Freund, has announced the
appointment of Ms. Shelley Somers as Principal for Central Middle School,
effective January 1, 2010. See attached for more information....

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