Alyssa MacKenzie

Q&A: Residents Launch ‘New Canaan Pride 2021’ for June

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Dozens of rainbow flag signs and window clings featuring the hashtag #NewCanaanPRIDE are appearing on residential and commercial properties throughout town—the result of a local grassroots effort to mark Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer or LGBTQ Pride Month here in New Canaan. New Canaan’s Hilary Ormond, Julia Stewart, Marley Thackray, Tami Wilkinson, D.J. Kornell, Alyssa MacKenzie, Shona Goldenberg and an organizing committee of 10 others have launched a “New Canaan Pride” Facebook page that has swelled to 360 members in just two weeks, and have sold dozens of the signs (to cover the cost of producing them). In all, more than 150 lawn signs and 75 window clings have been sold. We put some questions to Stewart to learn about how the idea to bring Pride Month to New Canaan started, how it’s being received and what the organizing group plans. New Canaanite: Tell us about “New Canaan Pride 2021.”

Alicia Meyer

COVID-19: School Parents Concerned About New Canaan Families Extending Vacations During Week of ‘Remote Learning’

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Many New Canaan parents are concerned that some families are undermining efforts to keep the public schools safe by extending their vacations this week instead of learning from home as a post-holiday safeguard against the spread of COVID-19 virus, officials said Thursday. Theoretically, this week of school was designated for district-wide remote learning to give New Canaan families time, after returning from travel, to get tested and for COVID symptoms to surface, according to Health & Human Services Commissioner Alicia Meyer. Yet “unfortunately, a lot of people took it as an opportunity to extend their vacations,” Meyer said during the appointed body’s regular meeting. “At Thanksgiving, New Canaan Public Schools were requiring that kids who travel be tested when they got back to Connecticut, after they travel,” Meyer said during the meeting, held via videoconference. “But now, after Christmas, the requirement is just within the 72 hours of travel, so before they left their destination.”

She continued, “I have been getting a lot of emails from people concerned that kids are still on vacation right now, are going to be tested in Florida or Turks-and-Caicos or wherever they are, another day of vacation, fly home, crowded customs hall, and then roll right back into school, because they were tested before they left the vacation destination.”

“People just are concerned about this,” she added.