Board of Education

Op-Ed: The Town Has Spoken, Government Must Act Accordingly

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To the Editor, NewCanaanite.com:

We are back in the midst of town budget season. 

The Board of Education has approved a budget for the 2020-2021 school year that will support New Canaan Public Schools’ continued excellence. The budget calls for a 1.47% increase and would represent a compound annual growth rate over the four years ending next year of just 1.88%—below inflation. The increase is the lowest proposed for next year among any of our nearby peer towns. New Canaan’s per-pupil spending is also lower than other towns, including Darien, and yet our school system is top in the state and among the best in the country. 

Next year’s BOE budget also reflects an important investment in the health and wellness of our kids—a change to school start and end times to align with physician recommendations and over two years of BOE work to develop the optimal solution. There are many opinions on start times, but the BOE has been deeply driven solely by what is best for New Canaan kids at all ages. Although this change comes with a cost, it is manageable, particularly due to the significant and sustainable cost savings that NCPS have been able to realize.

Board of Education

‘It Is Beyond Time’: Councilmen Urge Board of Ed To Reach Decision on Drug-Sniffing Dogs in Schools

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The Board of Education has put off a decision on allowing drug-sniffing dogs in schools for too long, according to a longtime and prominent member of New Canaan’s legislative body. Advocates have been urging district officials to give access to a New Canaan Police Department K-9 dog for years, Town Councilman Steve Karl said Wednesday night. “And I understand that there are two sides of this, but you have to come to some sort of decision and compromise at some point,” Karl said during the Town Council’s regular meeting, held at Town Hall. “The citizens of this town want this done. They do.

News

Board of Ed Backs $92.8 Million Spending Plan; Final Recommended School Start Time Schedule Still To Come

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The Board of Education on Tuesday night voted 6-1 to recommend an approximately $92.8 million spending plan for next fiscal year. The budget brought forward by Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi and endorsed by the school board during its regular meeting represents a 1.47% increase over current spending—within Board of Finance guidelines. 

It includes about $950,000 needed for new transportation costs that would come with a revised school start times schedule, though it is unclear which of two equally expensive start time scenarios the Board of Ed ultimately will recommend. 

The first scenario, studied and discussed extensively for months, would see the three elementary schools start together at 7:45 a.m., followed by the seventh and eighth grades at Saxe Middle School and all of New Canaan High School at 8:30 a.m. with the fifth and sixth grades at Saxe starting together at 9:15 a.m.

Major advantages of that schedule include starting school late enough that adolescents get sufficient sleep, district officials have said, citing established medical data and recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics. It also would see all three elementary schools get onto the same start and end time schedule and avoid having those young kids in school late into the afternoon, when anecdotal evidence says they tire out, officials have said. Yet based on strong feedback from the community, including families with kids in elementary school, Board of Ed Chair Katrina Parkhill said the elected body may consider another scenario that “flips” the first and last “tiers.” In other words, the fifth and sixth grades would start at 7:45 a.m. while the elementary schools would all start at 9:15 a.m., she said. “This scenario may more appropriately balance schedules, in response to family and community needs,” Parkhill said during the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at NCHS.

News

‘I Am Being Put in a Very Difficult Position’: Board of Ed Divided on Proposed School Start Times Scenario

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Board of Education members are divided as to whether they have enough feedback and information on a revised school start times schedule to recommend this month that hundreds of thousands of dollars in spending for additional buses be included in a proposed budget for next fiscal year. No one disagrees that starting grades seven through 12 at 8:30 a.m. as opposed to 7:30 a.m. would benefit students in important ways—established medical research recommends later start times for adolescents. 

Under a favored scenario that district officials have developed, New Canaan’s elementary schools would start at 7:45 a.m., though because morning buses could start their routes from the geographically distributed neighborhood schools rather than New Canaan High School, the first student wouldn’t need to be picked up until 7:06 a.m. (currently 6:27 a.m.) when it’s sufficiently light outside that flashlights aren’t needed. 

Yet that proposed new schedule also forces a bus usage system that’s far less efficient than the one New Canaan Public Schools now employs, and it would require about six or seven additional buses—at a clip of $100,000 in additional annual spending, per bus—to make the favored start times scenario work. Board of Ed member Dionna Carlson at the elected body’s Dec. 16 meeting called it “a very expensive option that will go up 3% every year, in perpetuity.”

A similar start times scenario garnered low levels of support in surveys conducted earlier this year, she said, and there are unanswered questions about just how it will affect students seeking extra help from teachers, among other concerns. To include funding for the busing system as part of the school board’s Jan.

Board of Education

‘They Did Not Find Anything’: Lunch Ladies Didn’t Steal from Charge Accounts, Analysis Concludes

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A months-long forensic audit of New Canaan Public Schools students’ charge accounts found no evidence that the lunch ladies charged last year with stealing cash from cafeterias also depleted those funds, district officials said Monday. An audit designed to match transactions in point-of-sale systems in the Saxe Middle School and New Canaan High School cafeterias to supporting documentation and “reconcile cash receipts received from parents electronically to the proper recording in the students’ accounts” turned up no non-valid transactions, according to Dr. Jo-Ann Keating, the district’s director of finance and operations. 

Quoting from a report from Joe Centofanti, a partner at PKF O’Connor Davies accounting and advisory firm, Keating told members of the Board of Education at their regular meeting, “ ‘It is important to note’—they always note this—‘that the testing done was performed on a sample basis and not all transactions were tested.’ Obviously, they sampled—they don’t do every single transaction. ‘However, based upon the results of the sampling, it was determined that it was not necessary to go and select additional transactions for testing.’ ”

“In other words, they did not find anything,” Keating said at the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at NCHS. “So we were very pleased with that.”

Performed at the request of the Audit Committee and with support from the district, the forensic study was launched months after two lunch ladies were accused of stealing nearly $500,000 in cash over a period of several years. The police investigation into sisters Joanne Pascarelli and Marie Wilson had started in the fall of 2017.