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.

Dionna Carlson

District: Proposed New School Start Times Schedule Wouldn’t Require Kids To Wait in the Dark for the Bus

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Though New Canaan’s youngest students would start school first—instead of last, as they do now—under a new schedule that district officials are considering, those kids wouldn’t need to be picked up by buses until after it’s light outside, officials said last week. Because buses could head out in the morning from each of the three geographically distributed elementary schools—that is, closer to students’ homes than they do now, in picking up New Canaan High School kids—a 7:45 a.m. start time at East, South and West would mean the very first student wouldn’t need to be picked up until 7:06 a.m., according to new estimates from the district. Though such a system would require additional buses and brings with it several practical challenges (see below), it also would allow NCHS to start at a sufficiently late morning time with respect to adolescent health, officials said Friday during a special Board of Education meeting. Under the proposed system, seventh- and eighth-graders at Saxe Middle School would start with NCHS at 8:30 a.m., while the fifth and sixth grades at Saxe would start together at 9:15 a.m. 

The schedule would see elementary schools run through 2:15 p.m., while the high school and seventh and eighth grades finished at 3 p.m. and fifth and sixth grades at 3:45 p.m., meaning all levels would have a 6.5-hour school day, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi said at the meaning, held in a conference room at the district’s administrative offices. The potential new start time schedule—what Luizzi called a “prototype,” developed much work from Roy Walder, transportation coordinator for New Canaan Public Schools—follows multiple surveys and workshops involving the schools and wider community, and is built around an anchor assumption that grades seven-and-up start at 8:30 a.m., as recommended by pediatricians.

Board of Education

Enrollment in New Canaan Public Schools Up 59 Students This Year

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Enrollment in New Canaan Public Schools increased by 59 students this year, and the district now has 4,172 students from kindergarten to twelfth grade, officials said Monday. The figure is 108 students higher than projections made by a Marlborough-Mass.-based educational organization, NCPS Director of Human Resources Darlene Pianka said during the Board of Education’s regular meeting. 

Among grade levels, the three elementary schools saw the highest year-over-year increase, up 21 students from the 2018-19 academic year, and were 72 students higher than projections, Pianka said during a presentation on enrollment, New England School Development Council projections and district staffing levels. “Overall, according to our demographer, we are in a period of stable but slightly decreasing enrollment at the middle and elementary schools, with some small growth at the high school level, in general,” Pianka said at the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. “I think that we can say this is all good information and positive in terms of our enrollment and the fact that we do have a lot of new students, which you are aware of from our budget season last year. And moving forward the complexity of this will be with the NESDEC projections and our best info to estimate what our enrollment will become and to plan for that accordingly.”

Board of Ed Vice Chair Dionna Carlson that, despite the increase of nearly 60 students in the district, the Board of Ed added just 1.85 full-time equivalents to the staff for this academic year.

Bill Egan

New Rule: No Cellphone Use in NCHS Classrooms

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Starting this year, New Canaan High School students are not permitted to use cellphones in class during the day, Principal Bill Egan said Monday night. In the past, the decision on cellphone use had been left up to individual teachers’ discretion, but the feedback from those educators has been that it’s simply “not a great thing for anyone,” Egan told members of the Board of Education during their regular meeting. “The cellphones are a distraction, so we want them out of the classroom,” Egan said at the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at NCHS. “So they will not be there during the class. They will have cellphone cradles that we will put them in.

News

District: 116 More Students Than Projected Enrolled in New Canaan Public Schools

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When the academic year starts next week, New Canaan Public Schools are expecting to see 116 more students K-12 than had been projected, district officials reported Monday. 

The above-projected figure of 4,180 total students reflects higher-than-projected registration across all levels, with the elementary schools 79 students over projections, Saxe Middle School 18 and New Canaan High School 19, according to Darlene Pianka, the district’s director of human resources. The overall figure does not include pre-kindergarten. “Big numbers,” Pianka said during the Board of Education’s regular meeting, held in the Wagner Room at NCHS. The figures show that “there is clearly demand for New Canaan Public Schools,” Board Chairman Brendan Hayes said. “This is great news, I mean seeing 116 students overall greater than what we predicted is pretty amazing and remarkable,” he added.