Board of Education

Board of Ed Unanimously Re-Elects Phil Hogan as Chair

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The Board of Education on Monday unanimously re-elected Phil Hogan as its chair. The school board also voted 9-0 to elect Raquel Harrison as vice chair and unanimously re-elected Erica Schwedel as secretary. In nominating Hogan for the year-long role, Board of Ed member Lara Gay-Kelly noted that he “has served in numerous leadership roles including twice as vice chair and chair of the facilities committee” since coming onto the elected body in 2021. “Having served alongside him this year as vice chair, I have had the opportunity to witness firsthand the thoughtfulness, preparation and leadership he brings to the role,” Gay-Kelly said during the Board of Ed’s regular meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. She continued: “He takes it seriously and he loves what he’s doing.

Board of Education

District: NCPS Students Performed ‘Exceptionally Well’ on State Assessments

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New Canaan Public Schools fifth- and eighth-graders performed “exceptionally well” this spring on state-mandated tests in English, math and science, district officials said this week. Reviewing the Next Generation Science Standards assessment or NGSS—an online test for students in grades 5, 8 and 11 that requires analysis of data, studying of patterns, examination of cause-and-effect and practical use of life, physical and earth-and-space sciences—Dr. Jill Correnty, deputy superintendent of schools, told the Board of Education that NCPS fifth-graders “were first in the DRG [district reference group] and first in the state with 88.6%” of students meeting or exceeding achievement levels. “And our eighth-graders were third in the DRG and third in the state by a very small percentage,” Correnty told the school board at its regular meeting, held Monday in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School and via videoconference. 

Here’s a chart reviewing the DRG comparison:

 

The update on NGSS came during Correnty’s grades three through eight assessment report to the Board of Ed. She reviewed the three state tests that 1,800-plus NCPS students enrolled in those grades who typically take the tests each year starting after April break, in five sessions. “State testing should not be the sole measure of our student achievement,” she said.

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NCHS ‘Senior Internship Program’ Seeks Host Sites [Q&A]

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New Canaan High School’s hugely popular program that places students in local and area businesses and organizations for an internship for the last few weeks of their senior year is seeking host sites. The Senior Internship Program or ‘SIP’ is set to run next May 18 to June 18. 

We connected with the SIP coordinator, Kelly Delmazio, to get some information on the program and for prospective host businesses and organizations. Here’s our exchange. ***

New Canaanite: How many students are expected to participate in this academic year’s Senior Internship Program? 

Kelly Delmazio: Just over 300 seniors. 

If the program doesn’t run until next May-June, what is the reason you are seeking to lock down host sites now? 

Although the internships don’t begin until May, we start recruiting host sites in the fall so we can have a strong variety of opportunities ready for students when they complete their applications in early December. At that point, students are able to read through the available internship opportunities and identify those that align with their interests.

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NCPS Adds Kindergarten Section at West, First Grade at South As School Year Gets Underway

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Despite a last-minute resignation in the World Language Department, New Canaan Public Schools managed to fill all certified positions in the district prior to the start of the academic year, officials say. Filling that final position was “a huge accomplishment,” Darlene Pianka, director of human resources for NCPS, told members of the Board of Education during a special meeting held Aug. 24 in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. “And it was accomplished by the people who work with us that know people and refer them and say, ‘You should come and work in New Canaan,’ and that is exactly what happened,” Pianka said. The comments came during a staffing update to the nine-member school board.

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‘Teen Pause’ Club Gives NCHS Students a Much-Needed Place to Decompress

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When Scarlett Stewart arrived at New Canaan High School as a ninth grader, she found herself struggling with anxiety that she didn’t know how to manage. A competitive dancer who practiced four hours per day on top of her NCHS workload, Stewart “felt like I was taking on too much.”

“And I’ll be honest, my grades dropped because I didn’t know how to handle dance and school,” she told NewCanaanite.com during a recent interview at New Canaan Library. “And that just caused even more stress.” 

Together with classmates Kaitlyn Knowles and Lux Roscoe, Stewart—now a rising senior—decided to launch the school club “Teen Pause” (here on Instagram) after an especially difficult event during the 2024-25 school year. 

Referring to a fellow student’s untimely death, she said, “My sophomore year, we had a tragedy at NCHS, and that showed us that there are people here really struggling with mental health. It’s not just anxiety, it can be depression, it can be any kind of issue. After my sophomore year, my friends and I said ‘Why can’t we do something to help?’ It feels like it [mental health] isn’t really talked about much, and people just brush it off.”

Knowles, Roscoe, and Stewart held meetings last summer to talk about how the new club could help “and we had to find a teacher to be our club advisor,” Stewart said. 

They chose Kerry Hamara, an NCHS math teacher, and registered the club at the beginning of their junior year.