Thanks to generous parents, New Canaan High School soon will have see its water fountains retro-fitted to include eco-friendly refilling stations.
The Board of Education on Monday night formally accepted a $5,000 gift from the NCHS Parent Faculty Association that will see district staffers install the stations within about two months, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi said.
An installed bottle filling station/water fountain.
“Kids do not really use water fountains any more,” Luizzi said at the school board’s regular meeting, held in the Wagner Room at NCHS. “They are not drinking out of them. They are buying plastic water bottles, drinking those and then putting them in the garbage—sometimes the recycling bin—so what the hope would be here is that by retrofitting the existing stations to these water refilling stations and water fountains, we could encourage students to bring water bottles into school and refill them up this way with the station.”
He added: “It’s a great move. It’s responsible. It’s green. It hopefully cuts down on some of the recycled bottles and encourages students to drink water—all good things.”
The school board voted 8-0 in favor of accepting the gift.
Luizzi said that Bill Egan, in his first year as principal at the high school, may have brought the idea for the refilling stations from his prior district.
Board of Ed Vice Chair Scott Gress said the stations are common college campuses and that “the sustainability aspect of it is an important one to call out.”
“It’s important for us to pay attention to and to pursue any chance we get,” he said.
The original water fountains will remain in place when the new refilling stations are installed, Luizzi said.
The school board’s secretary, Dionna Carlson, said she had two kids at the high school who came home excited about the prospect of the refilling stations when Egan polled students about introducing them.
“So thank you,” Carlson said. “I think it’s a wonderful idea, and again thank you to the PFA for providing the funding for this—yet another example of our parents being generous and picking up the slack for the taxpayers.”