ABC House of New Canaan

‘A Chance To Unpack’: NCHS Grad Jelani Alladin, Fellow ABC Scholars To Host Webinar Series

By |

Jelani Alladin reflected in a new way on how his experience as an ABC House of New Canaan scholar could benefit others in the wake of George Floyd’s May 25 killing. The 27-year-old, a 2010 New Canaan High School graduate who works as a Broadway, TV and film actor—he starred in Disney’s “Frozen” and will be in the upcoming “The Walking Dead: The World Beyond”—said he found people around him wanting “to increase their awareness of the issues, increase their knowledge of history.”

“I have started a long journey communicating with very different types of people,” Alladin told NewCanaanite.com. “For me, the Broadway community is having big reckoning with race, as are other institutions, and I saw that New Canaan began to have that.”

Alladin last month joined fellow NCHS alumni in calling for the Board of Education to hire more people of color, further expand curriculum to address systemic racism and inequity, and hold twice-yearly events to educate students and faculty on racial justice. (The Board is debating now whether to adopt new district-wide goals on equity, diversity and inclusion.) 

“Many of us are searching for answers of how to be anti-racist, how to be an ally, how to dismantle systemic racism and how to check their own privilege,” Alladin said. “And I want people to be able to answer that beyond reading a book and beyond watching a movie.”

Together with fellow ABC scholars Daryl Cummings and Devaun Bovell, Alladin starting Thursday will host a free multi-part Webinar designed to improve inclusivity by unpacking the experience of the students in New Canaan.

News

New Canaan Public Schools Alumni Call for More Diverse Faculty, Expanded Curriculum To Address Racial Injustice

By |

Saying they represent more than 650 present and past students and parents, New Canaan Public Schools alumni last week called for the district to hire more people of color, expand curriculum to address systemic racism and inequity, and hold twice-yearly events to educate both students and faculty on racial justice. Addressing the Board of Education during the public comment period at the elected body’s June 15 meeting, the alumni also called for the public schools to interview at least one candidate of color for every faculty and administrative position available. 

Valentina Zamora, a rising senior at New Canaan High School, said those who signed a June 7 letter to the district—it now has more than 700 signatories—also are calling for the hiring of a new director of diversity and inclusion for the district “to oversee the development of diverse curriculum and programming” as well as a restorative justice counselor “who will be responsible for re-framing the settlement of conflicts and discipline within the New Canaan Public Schools community.”

“Looking back at the 2019-2020 school year, where 417 white teachers and 20 nonwhite teachers were employed, we hope to see 25% faculty of color employed in academic disciplines by 2025,” Valentina Zamora said during the meeting, held via videoconference. “Along with this, we recommend that New Canaan Public Schools reports and publishes demographics of all faculty hired each fiscal year to show progress toward this goal.”

The comments came on the heels of a peaceful protest in New Canaan that drew thousands of participants, calling for an end to police brutality and racism in the wake of the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Local police and government officials joined in the protest here, and nationally Floyd’s death has galvanized advocates for change in law enforcement and beyond. Fatou Niang, who organized the New Canaan protest together with her sons, told Board members that in talking to them about what’s happening “the first thing that they told me was it was impossible to go through the public [school] system, and not come out racist.”

“And that shocked me, that kids going through the New Canaan system can think like that,” said Niang, who addressed the Board on the same topic as the alumni group though not as part of the same presentation.

Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

By |

A northern New Canaan family on Thursday made a gruesome discovery: A raccoon saddled with a “body-gripping” Conibear-brand trap lay drowned at the bottom of its swimming pool. The trap had not been set by the Hunters Creek Lane family and the raccoon’s front foot had been broken by it, according to Officer Allyson Halm of the New Canaan Police Department’s Animal Control section. ***

The town on Aug. 9 issued a permit for a New Canaan homeowner to demolish a greenhouse and bomb shelter on the property. Purchased in March, the 4-acre property at 734 Oenoke Ridge Road includes a 1770-built Colonial, tax records show.

Around Town

‘The Potential of Life’: New Canaan High School, ABC House Alumnus Is Cast in ‘Frozen’ Musical on Broadway

By |

Jelani Alladin nearly quit the stage after his first gig, playing the Cat in the Hat in the New Canaan High School Theatre’s production of “Seussical” in the fall of his sophomore year. An ABC House of New Canaan student from Brooklyn who had met his elective requirement the prior spring by playing lacrosse—and was, in his own words, “terrible at” it—Alladin already was active in NCHS choir and Madrigals. Yet the teen found himself unable to gauge whether musical theater was something in which he truly excelled. “I thought, ‘That was a lot of work’ and ‘I don’t know if I want to do that,’ ” Alladin, a 2010 NCHS graduate who is now 24, recalled on Tuesday evening. He said as much to his friend Brooke Singman’s mother, Roberta, as the two approached each other in the long hallway behind the NCHS auditorium after “Seussical” had closed.