The New Canaan Board of Education has recently proposed a school budget which incorporates changed school start times costing in excess of $900,000 on an annual basis, and then escalating annually even if enrollment decreases.
This proposal will allow New Canaan High School and Saxe Middle School students to start school approximately an hour later than today, and will require 500 Elementary students to start 30 minutes earlier than today, and 950 Elementary students to start 80 minutes earlier than today.
Changes are projected to start in January 2022.
Much focus has been on this issue for the last year’s coinciding with a national initiative to delay High School start times, in line with CDC guidance related to developmental changes in children starting around age 11 for girls and around age 13 for boys. Little focus or study has been paid nationally, or in New Canaan, on the impact to our youngest learners by making substantial start time changes to prioritize older students.
The question for New Canaan residents is if the BOE proposal is a good incremental investment for the town, or if the town should do as it did last year and cap the school budget at a lower total than requested, and ask the BOE to prioritize within that budget.
The projected number of students in New Canaan next year is 1,452 Elementary Students, 665 in Saxe 5-6, 662 in Saxe 7-8 and 1,317 in High School. Despite the much-heralded exodus from New York City, this number of students is budgeted to be down 80 compared with this year. To improve start times for older students we are moving more students to suboptimal starting times than benefit from improved start times (i.e. 2,117 vs 1,979 students).
No peer schools in Connecticut are starting Elementary students at 7:45 – actually they average starting at 8:45, with South School today the earliest at 8:15. When looking at approximately 220 similar schools to New Canaan’s nationally (i.e. top public Elementary schools in each state – many with similar Blue-Ribbon standards) the average start time is 8:21. Of those 220 schools only 8% start earlier than 7:45 and all are located in the South, where the climate (both weather and sunrise) is very different from Connecticut, and just 3% start at 7:45 (of which 1 is in New England). Lastly the top 10 ranked Elementary school states (of which CT is ranked 3rd) have an average start time of 8:28 (CT average is 8:41). In short, the BOE proposed Elementary school start time is well out of the local and national norms measured in many ways.
Today the Saxe 5-6 (and West Pre-K) start time (8:15 and 9:05) fits well with the Elementary school start times (8:15 or 9:05) helping families with multiple children – of which New Canaan has many. The change in Elementary start times (to 7:45 and Saxe 5-6 to 9:15) will take this away and create significant logistical challenges especially for working parents, with the youngest children, who need to be home or arrange for suitable care due to the age of these children. A mid-year implementation is especially challenging for such parents, as they need to ensure help is in place for very different times of day depending on if the first or second half of the school year.
Residents are attracted to New Canaan for many reasons, including the schools (we have a high percentage of under-18 residents, people per household, and homes with above average number of bedrooms) which reflect this. While I don’t have the data, I expect many long-term residents with kids move to New Canaan when their children are young, and as such high-quality Elementary schooling is very important in initially drawing needed new residents to town.
We are coming up to the 1-year anniversary since the pandemic changed our lives, and for many resulting in a material negative and continuing financial impact on family incomes. We still do not know when this will all end, what it will cost us personally or as a society, and when we can get back to a more normal way of living. The costs of this proposal are substantial and annual, and will escalate even further if we look to electrify the busses, as is being discussed nationally. These costs are also discretionary as the BOE has not prioritized this bussing expense previously within its existing substantial budget. Lastly the proposal from the BOE, while addressing students from 7th to 12th grade, appears to have come at the complete expense of our youngest students and their families.
I would encourage residents to look at the proposal from the BOE and provide your feedback to the Town Council, Board of Finance and Selectmen as they look to set spending budgets for next year – budgets are about hard choices and one needs to be made about this.
BoE is out of control. Period. Town folks have their eyes glazed over with the aura of NC schools. The school budget is 61% of the town budget.
And that is for lesser students as well. And anecdotally, without naming names, some of the established high school teachers are not even teaching as one would expect of the teachers.
If we cannot control a local budget properly, how can we expect larger and more complex state and federal budgets to be efficient. Its a lost cause.
Giacomo, Thank you for so eloquently taking a National view. I would like to point out that the current scenario which was the least favored (by a significant amount) was selected because of its original budget which was $400K and a budget opportunity in the last budget process. After due diligence, which still does not include a proper bus contract RFP, the cost has more than doubled nearing $1M. This comes close to the $1.2M option that was much more favored by the parents across grades but was deemed too expensive. In fact, Brendan Hayes made a point in a public session to say that $1.2M would never be approved – so how is it that we are basically there. After much pressing the cost for enabling all children go to school between 8 and 9 was shared during a PTC call – $1.7M. This represents just 2% of the total BoE budget and the net is less than 1%. Are we saying we can’t find in our large budget the net to provide sleep equity for all children.
Just last night in the communication about school closure it was said again that our children’s well being at not to get to school at any cost is front and center for our administration. Then why on Earth are we forcing nearly 50% of our students to be at a great disadvantage for sleep and family time which contributes tremendously to the mental health and well being of our children. Little has also been communicated to 5/6 grade parents who will be seeing a great disruption.
The change is proposed to be in February of 2020. This has significant ramifications for after school care facilities (of which we have little), parental ability to plan for the year. Little has been considered about the effect of local businesses that provide after school programs. Many of the businesses support more than New Canaan. Our mid year change would throw an entire ecosystem of programs out of whack. Dance programs are 1 year long, rowing that supports our NC crew program (with learn to row programs as young as 5th grade) and hockey programs serve many towns, music programs would be in the same position. How many families will not participate in programs in the Fall if they can’t provide consistency? This is not only a detriment to the students (primarily our 5/6 grades) but to these businesses that have suffered greatly this year. And what about those businesses who depend on high school students (and parents for babysitting) for a workforce?
There is much to cause pause about moving forward with this scenario and the timing of implementation. The Board should not be afraid to walk it back and do the right thing.