Groton - Waterford Board of Education president Donald Blevins was elected chairman of the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education Friday during the organization's annual conference, held this year at the Mystic Marriott.

Blevins, who has served on the Waterford school board since 1999, wants to focus his one-year term on promoting the importance of public education during a time of diminishing revenues and tight municipal budgets.

"I want to speak for the necessity of free, public education," he said. "We have a public responsibility to maintain it."

Patrice McCarthy, a deputy director and general counsel at CABE, said Blevins will be "committed" and brings "significant experience" to the job.

Blevins noted many school boards across the state will in the next budget cycle have to mitigate zero-increase budgets and contractually obligated raises to school employees.

"Up to 80 percent of school budgets are salaries," he said. Blevins said he will also lobby Congress to enact changes to the No Child Left Behind Act, as Connecticut students must be at 89 percent proficiency on statewide mathematics and reading tests by 2011, a goal many schools will fall short of.

McCarthy said the increased standards will also coincide with the final year of increased federal funding through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

The conference, which welcomed 515 school board members, educators and school administrators from the around the state, generally focused on how to continue student achievement during lean economic times.

Bloomfield Superintendent of Schools and Waterford resident David Title, who Friday was named state Superintendent of the Year by the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents, said the need to "make hard choices" emerged as the prevailing mood of the conference.

"We have to think about what's best for the kids," he said. "But we are going to have to make some tough decisions. Some people are going to be upset."

Alan Taylor, the chairman of the State Board of Education, said school boards in Connecticut should continue to lobby state legislators to pass a law increasing the graduation requirements for high school students.

A bill introduced in January, but never voted on, would have required Connecticut students to take four years of mathematics, including Algebra II, as well as three years of science and two years of a foreign language.

The requirements, which would have been fully implemented by 2015, are already the standards for admission to the Connecticut State University system, Taylor said.

"We need to have these higher standards," he said.

s.chupaska@theday.com