News

Superintendent: School Administration ‘Open’ to Relocating to Town-Owned Facility

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Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi on Thursday told officials that the school administration is open to the idea of relocating its offices from leased commercial space on Locust Street to Waveny House, Irwin Park or possibly another town-owned facility, provided that the space is configured properly for administrative offices. Luizzi told members of the Town Building Evaluation & Use Committee during a special meeting that although the town paid to have the current Board of Education offices renovated about a year and half ago and that he and his staff are very happy with those renovations, “we are not tied to any physical location.”

“But it is important that wherever we are, it is structured to facilitate the work that we have to do,” Luizzi said at the meeting, held in Town Hall. He added that although Waveny park and Irwin Park “are the most beautiful places on Earth … it is about the work for us.”

“We are open to that discussion … but we need to discuss what the structure would look like, what it would be,” Luizzi said. “I have a concern… or at least I’ve seen … places that aren’t purposely designed for the work, where it looks like everyone is working out of a home office. And as the New Canaan Board of Education, I feel that the professional piece is important for us.”

Should the idea of relocating the school administration gain traction (for now it is just an idea for discussion, not a formal proposal), Luizzi said the main thing the town will need to consider is how much it would cost to renovate Waveny House in order to properly accommodate the Board of Education offices—and whether the cost of such renovations might exceed the cost of new construction elsewhere in town.

News

District Wants To Use ‘Outback’ Building for Alternative High School Program

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Officials from New Canaan Public Schools on Thursday discussed publicly for the first time a proposal that would see the long-vacant Outback building behind Town Hall used to house a new alternative special education program. During a meeting of the Town Building Evaluation and Use Committee, held at Town Hall, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi revealed that the school administration has for the past year been developing a new alternative special education program designed to bring out-placed students back in-district. The goal in developing the program, he said, is to improve special education in New Canaan and to realize potential operational savings. He told the committee—which is charged with reviewing the uses, physical condition and capital needs of more than 40 town-owned structures (not including school buildings)—that the former teen center would be an ideal location for such a program because it is the right size and centrally located in town. “[There] is the possibility of that building being used for students in the future—as a way to house a small alternative program that we are discussing at the Board of Ed, internally,” Luizzi told the committee members.

Government

ZBA Grants Height Relief for Addition on Lincoln Drive Home

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The Zoning Board of Appeals at its most recent meeting granted two variances allowing for the construction of an addition at 37 Lincoln Drive. Homeowners Robert and Catherine Pangrossi are planning to construct a 2.5-story addition, as well as a second floor addition over an existing garage and a rear wood deck, at their 1966-built Colonial. But they needed a variance for the height of the dormers, which will be about 33 feet in the rear of the house, due to a slope on the property, as opposed to the maximum allowable height of 30 feet. They also requested a setback variance of the ZBA because the addition, as planned, will encroach very slightly into a side yard setback. Robert Pangrossi, who came before the board Oct.

News

School Staff: With Smarter Balanced, It’s Near-Impossible to ‘Teach to the Test’ [CORRECTION]

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School curriculum leaders told members of the Board of Education on Monday that when it comes to the new Smarter Balanced assessments that are replacing the now-outdated Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) and the Connecticut Academic Performance Test (CAPT), there really is no way to “teach to the test.”

“It’s probably very close to impossible to teach to this test—because of the adaptive nature of it,” Sarah Broas, English language arts coordinator for grades 5-8, said in a response to a question from school board member Maria Naughton during the group’s regular meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. “But it is also because of all the standards that are wrapped up in the test.”

Broas was one of about a dozen curriculum leaders at the meeting who have been working as a team to address the district’s standardized testing needs. The meeting included a detailed overview of how the district is doing all five of the state assessments, including the CMT (Science), CAPT (Science) and CT/SAT, as well as the new Smarter Balanced, which was first administered to students in 2014 as a pilot or “field test.”

The Smarter Balanced test was developed to be more closely aligned with the Common Core Standards adopted by Connecticut and 44 other states in 2010. It is administered in grades 3 through 8 and currently covers language arts and math. A new science test is scheduled for launch next year and will replace the CMT/CAPT science tests. A key difference between the Smarter Balanced test and the CMT/CAPT (Science), besides the grades in which it is administered, is that Smarter Balanced was designed from the get-go to be taken on a computer.

News

ZBA Green Lights Small Addition in Harrison Avenue Development

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The Zoning Board of Appeals at its most recent meeting granted a variance allowing Don Corbo of Darien to build a small addition at 138 Harrison Ave.—one of six units in the development, consisting of three two-family homes near Main Street. Corbo, managing partner of Harrison Avenue Development, told members of the ZBA at their Oct. 2 meeting that he is converting the homes—purchased this summer for $4.2 million— from rentals to condominiums, and thus is seeking to renovate and update them. “This particular unit is the smallest and least attractive of the units,” he said during the meeting, held at Town Hall. “Right now it has only one room on the first floor which serves as a living room, dining room and kitchen.”

The plan, he said, is to build a small addition that will allow for a separate kitchen area on the ground floor and a master bedroom on the second floor.