WEST HARTFORD - Tears and applause for outgoing members of West Hartford's Board of Education Tuesday night were followed by a few snippy exchanges after new members were sworn in.

Lib Brassil Spinella, Clare Kindall, Elin Katz and Noagan Ma were welcomed to the board as newly-elected members and voted with the rest of the board on a chairman shortly thereafter. The two Republicans sitting on the board, Spinella and Mudge, ended up clashing over the nomination of Kindall with the rest of the members.

"She opted to put her son in a private school and that sends a wrong message to the community," said Mudge, who feels Kindall putting her son in a private school shows a lack of faith on her part in West Hartford's public school system.

Kindall shot back by saying she was "appalled" that her child was brought up and defended herself by saying she has worked hard for West Hartford schools. The rest of the board echoed the same sentiment and Kindall was voted as the new chairperson.

The nays came from Spinella and Mudge. Former chairperson Terry Schmitt will now be vice chair and two spots for financial examiner went to Mudge and Katz.

The first order of business was voting on setting a timetable to discuss the board's response to the Racial Imbalance Statute. Spinella and Mudge proposed setting the timetable and complained there is no date set for the report. Schmitt said they already asked the corporation counsel responsible for the report and said he'd like to wait and hear their response before bringing it up at the meeting. The motion failed and no deadline was set.

The board went on to grill Tim Dunn and Chip Ward on their status update for the newly-imposed $25 student fee in secondary schools. Beginning this year, students must pay a $25 fee to participate in certain clubs. Members of the board were first under the impression that the fee was to be levied on all student clubs, but that is not the case. Fees are only paid out to certain clubs.

Both Schmitt and Bruce Putterman questioned the fee, which was met with some protest by a couple of high school seniors.

Concerns expressed included at what point is the fee assessed, as well as what should happen if a student wants to dabble in various school activities - would he or she have to be force to pay the fee multiple times?

The fee was imposed to raise $50,000 to pay out stipends to teachers who run these extracurricular activities, but it could also make students more hesitant to join clubs in the first place, the board members said.

The Board of Education motioned to reduce the 2009-10 general fund appropriation to reflect the receipts of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) grants. It will reduce teacher salaries account by $2,293,500 and reduce the total 2009-10 appropriation for the fund to $121,388,323.

The Board of Education is receiving two new grants from the state via the ARRA that total the same amount.