Enrollment Roughly as Predicted for New Canaan’s Upcoming School Year

Enrollment as of 10 days before the start of school in New Canaan is up 44 students for Saxe Middle School, down 14 students in the town’s elementary schools and up 38 students for the district as a whole. Those figures, as of Aug. 17, which is 10 days before the Aug. 27 first day of school, were part of enrollment tables shown by district officials to the Board of Education at its meeting on Monday. Those numbers can change before the school year begins, said Gary Kass, director of human resources for the district, who presented the enrollment data to the Board of Education at its meeting on Monday.

District: With Enrollment ‘Bubble’ Headed for Saxe, an Urgent Need for More Classrooms

Though administrators at Saxe Middle School have been creative with using existing space to accommodate more students in recent years, projected enrollment is high enough that the district—and wider New Canaan community—needs to look at capital needs for the facility now, officials say, including temporary classrooms and new construction. With Saxe designed to accommodate a student population of 1,200, a five-year outlook that puts that figure steadily in the mid-1,300’s means that planning needs to happen right now, Board of Education Vice Chairman Scott Gress said at the group’s meeting on Monday night. “I think that the 800-pound gorilla in the room is: What do we do? Where do we go?” Gress said at the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. “We are moving and we’re putting things together and we’re creating the best opportunities in the short term, but we really need to think start to think and now about the future and is the future temporary classrooms or semi-permanent classrooms?