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07/06/2022 07:00 AMOver the last two years Clinton schools have been working with advanced manufacturers in town in an effort to provide students who may not necessarily be college bound with real world job experience. One of the people helping to spearhead those efforts has been Assistant Superintendent Marco Famiglietti.
Marco has been the assistant superintendent in Clinton since 2016, a job he enjoys. “It was time for me professionally to take the next step after enjoying being a middle school principal for 10 years,” says Marco.
“It’s the best of both worlds,” Marco says. “My job is to collaborate with our teachers to focus on teaching and learning so I work as an administrator, but it helps keep me close to my roots as a teacher.”
As part of his job Marco is focused on the curriculum in the schools. For the last two years, a major project for the schools has been working with the town’s Economic Development Commission (EDC) to partner with manufacturing businesses in town to provide options for kids who may want to pursue a career in the field.
Marco says that he was in a meeting with Superintendent Maryann O’Donnell, Bob Werner from the EDC, and members of the local manufacturing community in early 2020 where the business owners explained that while they had positions available, it was hard to find candidates to take those positions.
“At that time much of the focus was to explain what advanced manufacturing is all about and dispel some of the notions people have that manufacturing is just working in a dark, dirty warehouse,” says Marco.
Soon after that initial conversation is when the pandemic hit, which Marco says had an unexpected silver lining. Due to the pandemic, some recent grads postponed their next steps in education and got jobs in the manufacturing fields.
“Some of the advanced manufacturers had access to talent they never had before. What that allowed is for kids to get experience working in the field and seeing what it’s like.”
That allowed school officials to think about the high school’s role as something beyond just preparing students for college, he says.
“We want to make sure kids who want a career right out of high school have opportunities and that they realize it doesn’t have to be a linear path. They can do that for a year or two, and work towards a degree as well.”
Marco says school officials are now preparing to offer more direct manufacturing related curriculum chances at The Morgan School. Using grant money, the school was able to purchase equipment such as robotic arms, computer control devices, and other manufacturing tools.
“We had a vision that we wanted students to learn about equipment that is actually in use today,” Marco explains.
Even more exciting, starting next year Morgan will partner with Goodwin University, an East Hartford based school that Marco says “has a strong background in manufacturing.”
“We’ll be offering dual credits, just like A.P. classes, that way students can really get the best of both worlds,” says Marco. ‘We spent this semester reviewing our curriculum in the engineering department and incorporating with Goodwin,” he adds.
Working on the manufacturing initiative is just one part of Marco’s duties however. Marco also oversees the district’s talented and gifted program, the English as a second language program, and is the safe school’s climate coordinator. “Basically, anything that has to do with teaching and learning from K-grade 12,” Marco summarizes.
Marco acknowledges that it can be difficult juggling all of the different responsibilities. “In a small district like Clinton you need to wear different hats, and I’m constantly switching hats depending on what we’re working on. All of us roll up out sleeves and take care of what we need to do.”
His favorite part of the job is “having a concept and having it go from an abstract to reality and seeing its effects within the district.”
One example is the work being done to reach students who don’t speak English as their primary langauge. “That population has doubled since I came aboard six years ago,” says Marco. As a result, Marco says the schools now have bilingual teachers. “It’s great for our Spanish-speaking population...I’d love to do to it for Portuguese and Vietnamese speakers too but we don’t have the number of students for it right now,” says Marco.
In his spare time Marco says he enjoys playing music and that he even occasionally plays with other teachers in a faculty band. He also enjoys traveling and cooking.
Though he doesn’t live in Clinton, Marco can still see the close bonds that tether the community. “The sense of community and sense of family is really strong. ‘We are Morgan, we are family’ is the Morgan School motto but it really is the motto for all of Clinton Public Schools,” says Marco.
“I think it really represents the partnerships of the community. It’s the hallmark of what we do in Clinton,” say Marco.