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Letter from Board of Ed to Public Schools Faculty, Staff and Administration 

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As this school year comes to a close, we want to celebrate and thank each of you for your extraordinary efforts these past fifteen months. We could never have imagined how much the world would change during this period of time or the countless ways you would adapt and evolve the educational experience to support our students. We are immensely proud of all that you have accomplished this year. Thanks to your compassion, professionalism, and courage, our students had the opportunity to spend almost all of their school days learning in person this year. Additionally, the strength of your relationships, your trust in one another, and your commitment to our students positioned us well to address these challenges with confidence and resolve. 

Guided by the district’s robust COVID operating plan, you reinvented and digitized daily plans and schedules, redesigned classrooms and lunchrooms, communicated with families regularly, and adjusted to a myriad of new teaching platforms, technologies, and building protocols.

Board of Education

Board of Education: Cutting $3.1MM Is Not Fully Funding Our School Budget 

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The New Canaan Board of Education (BOE) is an elected body whose mission, under state statute, is to govern the town’s public schools, including oversight and spending of town, state, and federal government-allocated funds. We proudly serve as representatives and advocates for the New Canaan community and prioritize the success of the district and its students. 

The Board of Finance cut the requested BOE budget by $3.1 million. In developing its budget, the BOE again fulfilled its promise to the community by providing a detailed annual forecast of the funding needed to continue providing high quality programming for New Canaan’s students. The BOE budgets for its anticipated needs to run the schools and meet its obligations to the community. The Board of Finance has attempted to rationalize this cut as a deferral of funding.

News

Op-Ed: A Reflection on 2020 

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As we close out the year 2020, we do so with an immense sense of pride for the New Canaan Public Schools. Thank you to our school administrators, teachers, and staff for your unwavering dedication to our students this year. Your courage, compassion, and wholehearted commitment have lifted up our students and our entire community during this time. Our students have benefited greatly from consistent in-person and remote learning, robust health and safety mitigation strategies, and a collective spirit that we will persevere and achieve great things through working together. 

Dr. Luizzi, together with his team of exceptional administrators, building principals, and department leaders, continue to lead fearlessly with a focus on delivering educational excellence to our students under extraordinarily challenging circumstances. 

Together with our administration, our unions have demonstrated the power of partnership and communication, and a commitment to continuous education for our students in a time of great need. This partnership should serve as a model for our state and our nation. 

Our teachers, counselors, and aides have gone above and beyond to educate and support our students across in-person, hybrid and remote formats, and have gracefully juggled, adapted, and transformed continuously this year.

Opinion

Letter: ‘Thanks and Praise’ for New Canaan Educators

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Letter to the Editor:

Traditionally, the first week of May is marked by a variety of in-school celebrations in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week. Students customarily thank our New Canaan teachers with homemade notes and handpicked spring flowers, and parents eagerly line up to volunteer to organize and sponsor thank-you breakfasts and luncheons. As we officially move to remote learning for the remainder of the school year, our teachers have never been more deserving of these thoughtful acts of gratitude. In the shadow of an unprecedented global pandemic, our dedicated teachers continue to work tirelessly to educate our students through distance learning. With short notice, their roles were redefined as they transitioned their classrooms to their homes, spent hours learning new online educational tools, and worked independently and in collaboration with their peers to establish innovative ways to connect and support students and families. Like all of us, they are also navigating a new way of life, caring for their own families, homeschooling their children, and worrying about the health and safety of loved ones.