Dionna Carlson

Superintendent Proposes 1.47% Increase in Spending That Includes Busing Costs for New Start Times Schedule

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The superintendent of schools on Monday night proposed a spending plan for next fiscal year of nearly $92.8 million. Dr. Bryan Luizzi’s operating budget includes about $950,000 for the additional buses and attendant staffing that would be needed for a revised start times schedule for New Canaan Public Schools. 

It represents a 1.47% increase over current spending, meeting the town’s 1.5% budget guidance. The increased cost for a new start times schedule is offset by an anticipated reduction of about $1.9 million in spending on district employee benefits, Luizzi told members of the Board of Education in presenting his proposed budget during their regular meeting. Reduced projections for healthcare costs next year stem from “significantly improved performance” and other factors, Luizzi said at the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. 

Though Luizzi did not go into granular depth on the large reduction in benefits spending, saying the district’s insurance consultant would appear before the Board Jan. 13, he noted that factors include fewer retiree and active participants, increased reimbursements on prescription drugs (about $100,000), well-negotiated benefits in partnership with faculty and staff, and a re-allocation of profits from food services.

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.

Amy Zinser

‘It’s a Disgrace’: Parents Speak Out on Proposed Earlier Start Time for Elementary Schools

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Pushing the start of elementary school back to 7:45 a.m. would cost local families with two working parents important time together, create problems with respect to childcare and otherwise harm New Canaan’s youngest students, parents said Monday night. When the Board of Education recommended in June that the district pursue a new schedule that also would push the start of New Canaan High School back to 8:20 a.m., it wasn’t clear that the elected body was ruling out a more expensive option that would see all of Saxe Middle School and NCHS start at 8:15 a.m. and all three elementary schools at 9:10 a.m., according to Jennifer Dalipi, mother to one child at South School and one at Saxe. “That was obviously the one that most beneficial to all of our students, no matter their age,” Dalipi told the Board at its regular meeting, held in the Wagner Room at the high school. Saying it’s understood that a scenario where New Canaan buses its public schoolchildren in two tiers rather than three would be more expensive (because it would require more buses), Dalipi said she still “cannot fathom that our children’s health, the wellbeing from our tiniest 5-year-old, to be made to get up earlier, in the dark, and get to school, we cannot find the solution.”

“So shame on us as a community if we cannot make it happen. Our high schoolers should not suffer for the little ones, and the little ones should not suffer for the older ones.

Government

Town Approves Less Costly Contract for Emergency Outcall Services

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The Board of Selectmen on Tuesday approved a yearlong contract with a Washington, D.C.-based company that provides outcall services used by local emergency response officials. The contract with Blackboard Connect had risen to a cost of about $17,500 per year and municipal officials after getting quotes from different vendors were able to negotiate it down to half that rate, according to Chris Kaiser, director of Information Technology for the town. “We kind of realized and recognized that it was a little overpayment for services,” Kaiser told the selectmen at their regular meeting, held in Town Hall. First Selectman Kevin Moynihan and Selectmen Kit Devereaux and Nick Williams voted 3-0 in favor of the $8,750 contract. 

At the moment, police, firefighters, EMTs and the New Canaan Office of Emergency Management have used the system to issue calls to those who have volunteered their contact information. The technology can be used in more ways and various types of outreach, Kaiser said, including for surveys or in reaching employees at times when Town Hall may be closed.