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Jeanne McDonagh Retires from NCHS, Leaving an Art Legacy

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After 32 years of dedicated service, art teacher Jeanne McDonagh is retiring at the end of this school year. Known for completing numerous projects not just within the high school but throughout the whole community, McDonagh once hosted a photo exchange with Afghan girls who forbidden from taking photos by the Taliban, filmed videos for the entrance of the Glass House and created a mural for the school cafeteria. 

“I started to put up anything that was posted in the newspaper about what we are doing in the arts on a bulletin board outside my classroom,” she said. “There is no room on the board because we just keep adding what we have shared with the community and connecting with them on a lot of different levels.”

Seven of McDonagh’s students have earned National Scholastic Art Awards and she has been honored by the New Canaan Museum & Historical Society as one of 19 local women to have made a major difference in New Canaan. 

“I always say ‘yes’ when someone asks if I want to be involved in something,” she said. “It opens up a world and you learn, you do, and you work. The results are always very surprising.”

McDonagh started her career in art as a teacher in New York City. 

“I walked into the classroom and thought these kids were so lovely and polite,” she said.

Cynthia Rivera

Podcast: NCHS School Counseling Chair Cynthia Rivera

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This week on 0684-Radi0, our free podcast (subscribe here in the iTunes Store), we talk to Cynthia Rivera, department chair of school counseling at New Canaan High School, about the highly unusual and stressful college search, application and admissions processes for the class of 2021. Scheduled to graduate next Tuesday, the seniors had just started preparing for the big college push—with searches, test prep and scheduling—when the pandemic hit in march of their junior year, throwing everything into uncertainty for the students and for the counselors who stood by helping them navigate an important and suddenly extra difficult time. 

Here are recent episodes of 0684-Radi0:

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Board of Ed Votes 6-2 in Favor of New School Start Times Schedule; Plan To Take Effect Next April

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The Board of Education on Monday voted 6-2 to change to a school start times schedule that will see elementary schools start first in the morning (at 7:50 a.m.), followed by grades seven through 12 (8:30 a.m.) and then grades five and six (9:15 a.m.). Dubbed “Scenario A” by New Canaan Public Schools officials, the schedule would take effect next April. The Board had also been considering a “Scenario B,” which would have seen grades five and six start first (7:45 a.m.), follows by grades seven through 12 (8:30 a.m.) and the elementary schools last (9:15 a.m.). Saying additional school buses could be hired on a trial basis, Board member Dionna Carlson urged the elected body to either adopt Scenario A on the condition that the district “solve for” an elementary school start time no earlier than 8 a.m., or else adopt Scenario B.

“We need to sharpen our pencils—7:50 is nice but 8 o’clock is not an unreasonable request and I think that because we have these local schools, you could add a few more buses in the early tier and then those buses would be done getting those kids back quicker than they normally would be if it was a Saxe or high school drop off at the end of the day,” Carlson said during the meeting, held both in persona and via videoconference. “The research that I read about elementary start times is when you are looking at giving high schoolers more sleep, don’t ever do it at expense of the younger kids,” she added.

Barbara Rucci

School Start Times: Referendum on Board of Ed Budget Fails [UPDATED]

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A referendum vote Wednesday that, had its petitioners succeeded, would have decreased Board of Education spending by about $460,000, failed to draw enough electors to carry, officials say. Just 1,914 total ballots were cast in a referendum vote designed to strip the school board of funds earmarked for costs associated with changes to school start times in New Canaan, according to Town Clerk Claudia Weber. 

For the effort to succeed, a total of 2,046 cast ballots—that’s 15% of the electorate in the latest registry list—needed to be marked “Yes” on following question (and needed to be a majority of those voting), according to Weber: “Shall the action taken by the Town Council at its March 31, 2021 meeting, which did not reduce the Board of Education budget by $463,337, be overruled and returned to the Board of Finance for reconsideration?”

Of those who did cast ballots, 808 voted “Yes” (including 58 absentees) while 1,106 voted “No” (including 38 absentees), according to Weber. The $460,000 figure largely reflects the amount of money needed for additional buses in order to introduce a new start times schedule that would take effect in the middle of the 2021-22 academic year. In it, all three elementary schools would start at 7:45 a.m., fifth and sixth grades at 9:30 a.m. and seventh through twelfth grades at 8:30 a.m.

Proponents have pointed to scientific data regarding the negative effects of a lack of sleep for adolescents. Opponents have said the planned changes will negatively affect elementary school kids.

Board of Education

Superintendent: District Shortens Quarantining Period for Families Traveling Out-of-State for Sports Tournaments

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New Canaan Public Schools officials say they’ve updated a quarantining requirement that affects many sports-oriented families. 

Until this week, if a family traveled out-of-state for more than 24 hours for a sports tournament, they’d be required to quarantine for a minimum of seven days after testing negative for COVID-19 virus on their return, or 10 days without a test-out, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi told members of the Board of Education said during the elected body’s meeting last week. Luizzi said during the meeting, held May 3 via videoconference, that he and others were seeking approval from health officials to update the change the requirement so that kids involved in sports could return to school faster. 

In email to the school community Tuesday, Luizzi said district officials now are allowing students to return to in-person learning with a negative PCR test after returning to Connecticut. “Having raised two daughters who are both student-athletes, I know the challenges this particular DPH/CDC guideline may have caused, and I’m thrilled to be making this welcome adjustment to our protocols,” he said in the email. The Connecticut Department of Public Health’s guidance is based on that of the CDC, and is more strict than rules that apply to other types of travel, Luizzi said during the Board of Ed meeting. “When I asked them about why—why this is different from any other kind of travel—what they said was the expectation that when students and families go to tournaments, they’re going to be spending most of their time off the field, together with multiple households in the same setting,” Luizzi said.