Board of Ed Favors Plan To Start New Canaan High School Nearly One Hour Later

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With inconclusive survey results and established health data in hand, nearly all members of the Board of Education said Monday night that the district should pursue a new school start time schedule that allows teens to get more sleep. Though the Board took no formal vote at its regular meeting, seven of eight members present said the district should devote further study to an option that would see New Canaan High School start at 8:20 a.m.—50 minutes later than the current 7:30 a.m. start time. “I think that based on the research that has been done, based on the feedback that we have, it’s worth figuring out whether there is a viable option to have our teenagers go to school later,” Board of Ed Chairman Brendan Hayes said at well-attended meeting, held in the Wagner Room at NCHS. “And the likely [outcome] from that, although I think [it’s] also beneficial for our younger students, is for them to go to school earlier.”

Under the proposed new start time schedule, all of Saxe Middle School would start at 9:05 a.m. (currently 7:30 a.m. for seventh and eighth grades, 8:20 a.m. for fifth and sixth) and the elementary schools at 7:45 a.m. (currently 8:20 a.m. for South School, 9:05 a.m. for East and West). The additional buses needed to realize that system would see New Canaan pay an additional $300,000 to $450,000 annually, officials have said.

Board of Education

School Start Times: Board of Ed Debates Whether To Include Expensive ‘Two-Tiered’ Busing System in Survey

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Board of Education members on Monday night debated whether to remove an expensive option to start school times later from a survey of the school and wider community that is to go out next week. It would cost an estimated $1.2 million to $1.4 million annually beyond what New Canaan currently pays for its “three-tiered” busing system (about $3.2 million per year) to switch to a “two-tiered” option that would require more buses to get kids to school. 

Whereas the public schools currently start between 7:30 and 9 a.m., the two-tiered option—the most expensive presented by a consultant in November—would see all of Saxe Middle School and New Canaan High School start at 8:15 a.m. while all three elementary schools would start at 9:10 a.m.

Noting that the district doesn’t yet know what its spending request for fiscal year 2021 will be, Board of Ed Chairman Brendan Hayes said that if “we think we are going to reallocate $1 million of our budget into a two-tier system and we decide that it’s in the best interests of students to remove that $1 million from two or three programs—and we think because of all the work that we have done, with the administration, that that is the absolute best thing that we can do for all of the students in New Canaan—then that is what it is.”

“That is what we should bring forward,” he said during the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. “We may decide that we want to increase the budget by that incremental $1.3 million and we can explain to everybody in town why we are doing that, why it is the absolute best thing for all the kids in town,” Hayes added. “And it may be the Town Council and Board of Finance disagree with us and say, ‘You’ve to cut $1.3 million.’ OK, then we are not making that change.

Around Town

Historic Preservation: New Canaan Family’s ‘Ponus Ridge Chapel’ Project Underway

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A closely followed historic preservation project is underway on Ponus Ridge. 

The new owners of the “Ponus Ridge Chapel,” a 1911-built structure located a few hundred feet north of Davenport Ridge Road, have had the interior of the long-neglected building cleaned and its main floor replaced. Once a community hub that functioned as gathering place for important events—church services, Sunday School, group dinners, fairs, christenings, weddings, holiday parties, meetings and the very first Walter Schalk dance classes—the Chapel hasn’t been used in some 50 years, according to town records. In December, after clearing legal hurdles that had dragged on for years, the Chapel’s next-door neighbors Brendan and Ainsley Hayes—owners of their own antique house—finally acquired the property and immediately set about a restoration project that local preservationists long have supported. After taking ownership of the property, they found a “ton of rot inside” the Chapel, Brendan Hayes told NewCanaanite.com when asked for an update. “The wood was all rotted and destroyed, including the framing, so that was fixed,” he said.

Brendan Hayes

Board of Ed Chair Defends Spoken Word Poet Performance at NCHS

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The chairman of the Board of Education on Monday voiced his support for a spoken word poetry presentation and workshop at New Canaan High School that’s generated some questions and criticism. Held last month, the presentation from Carlos Andrés Goméz was designed to help participants learn about and experience spoken word poetry, district officials have said, and most of the feedback from students and staff has been positive. Yet some viewed the presentation as political and slanted, promoting Board of Ed Chairman Brendan Hayes to say that he “spent some time looking at the situation and the poems that he put forth and presented and I didn’t see any political issues at all.”

Goméz’s presentation was designed to “focus on the issue of empathy and mutual respect and really just understanding various perspectives,” Hayes said during the Board’s regular meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. “I saw an effort to teach kids and present in an impactful way what empathy means, what mutual respect means and I think that is very important for us to teach whether that’s part of this ‘emotional intelligence’ initiative specifically or not and I think it gets kids talking about their various interests and their various concerns and probably in a way they would not necessarily do had that speaker not come to school and given that presentation. So I think that is the type of thing that we should be doing.”

Though no video recording of the presentation exists—district officials said that’s because of copyright restrictions—Board of Ed member Maria Naughton said “it was a little edgy,” with poems addressing “controversial topics” such as “toxic masculinity” and racial profiling.

News

‘It Has Started To Fail’: $2.2 Million South School Roof Replacement Drives Board of Ed’s Capital Budget Request 

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The estimated $2.2 million replacement of the roof at South School is driving the superintendent of schools’ overall $4.1 million capital request for next fiscal year. 

The project had been scheduled three years ago, yet the Board of Finance at the time asked whether the district could defer it, “so we did,” according to the Dr. Bryan Luizzi. “We really feel you cannot defer it any more,” he told members of the Board of Education during their regular meeting Monday night, in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. “We are spending a lot of time with rain problems after storms and water incursion is an issue. And so we need to keep up with it, or other problems happen and we want to avoid those.”

The comments came as Luizzi proposed an approximately $92 million operating budget for fiscal year 2020, a 2.55 percent increase over current spending. The Board of Ed is to vote on the proposed budgets next week, at which point it goes to municipal bodies for discussion and approval, with a final vote in April. 

The South School roof replacement should be able to get done in a single summer starting when school lets out, Luizzi said.