Norwich — School Superintendent Kristen Stringfellow’s leadership of the school district through COVID-19 pandemic was not the only thing that earned her a glowing evaluation from the Board of Education.

School board Chairwoman Heather Romanski stressed that Stringfellow also spent part of that time doubling as the district’s finance director and without an assistant superintendent and curriculum director.

Stringfellow also led the effort to write an extensive new equity policy and plan, overhauled the district budget and wrote plans for incorporating millions of federal grant dollars into the district’s COVID-19 recovery plan — restoring music and sports to the district for the first time in a decade, being just one example.

Stringfellow also was credited with helping to improve relations with Norwich Free Academy along with new NFA Head of School Brian Kelly, and for improving communications with city government and the City Council.

The board rewarded Stringfellow with the standard one-year contract extension, added an unusual one-time $2,500 bonus for taking on added duties, a 2.3% raise, bringing her salary to $193,040 starting July 1, and five additional vacation days.

“It was not easy,” Romanski said during Tuesday’s discussion of Stringfellow’s evaluation. “There was no playbook that we were tweaking for what we did last year. You were writing it with your teams and your working groups as it was evolving. It seemed like just when we hit a stride we had to pivot again. And we kept moving forward.”

Romanski noted that Stringfellow worked nearly every weekend once school reopened for in-person learning, doing contact tracing of students and staff for potential exposures to the COVID-19 virus and assessing the learning model for the coming week based on COVID data.

“I’m grateful to work here,” Stringfellow told the board Tuesday. “It’s a wonderful, wonderful community. I have an incredible team, and so nothing ever happens by myself, ever.”

Board member Kevin Saythany praised Stringfellow especially for keeping the board and parents informed on COVID-19 cases, exposures and issues in the school community. Stringfellow issues letters to parents and staff of each school whenever a COVID-19 case was reported, listing the date of the positive test, the last time the person – student or staff – was in school and the number of close contacts advised to quarantine. During the height of the pandemic, several letters per week were issued.

Stringfellow provided monthly charts to the school board on COVID numbers per school, the numbers and percentages of students opting for remote learning and the school learning model for each coming week based on COVID data.

“Transparency is very big for the Board of Education,” Saythany said. “During COVID especially, when you were sending us data, just keeping us in the loop if parents had questions. It helped parents too, who wanted to know what the simple numbers were.”

Stringfellow credited her central office staff, including Executive Assistant Amber Rutigliano — “she has been on every, every call,” about contact tracing — Director of Student Services Jamie Bender, Assistant Superintendent Tamara Gloster and new Business Administrator Robert Sirpenski.

“We have great things planned for our kids,” Stringfellow said. “We have a great partnership with NFA. We’re really excited about the equity committee. … I’m happy to be a part of it. Thank you for your confidence in me and for your support.”

c.bessette@theday.com