Around Town

Did You Hear … ?

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Town officials on Tuesday night approved plans for a new business’s sign and awning at 31 Vitti St.—known for two years as the home of Eclectic, which recently closed (locals may recall chef Robert Milano’s delicious cheesesteak, which recently made our Top-10 New Canaan Sandwiches list). With a planned launch about two weeks away, the new business at 31 Vitti, Good2Gourmet, according to its website, will offer convenient home delivery and curbside pickup from foods on its “tantalizing menu providing maxim flavors with minimum sodium and no additives.” Led by a renowned chef and founded by a mother of four, Good2Gourmet has joined the New Canaan Chamber of Commerce and defines its mission as providing “a variety of healthy and delicious dishes for the entire family.” Read more about the company here. ***

The male Maltese mix found on the night of June 15 on Lakeview Avenue is up for adoption as of Wednesday, June 24 through New Canaan Animal Control. He’s about two years old and Officer Maryann Kleinschmitt said she’s calling him ‘Finnegan.’ “Finn for short,” Kleinschmitt told NewCanaanite.com. “He is so cute.”

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The New Canaan Board of Education on Monday night bid farewell to two administrators who earned high praise at their final school board meetings.

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Schools Hire Dr. Jo-Ann Keating as Director of Finance and Operations; Nancy Harris To Retire

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New Canaan Public Schools is hiring as its new director of finance and operations a woman with decades of experience in the field across multiple districts, officials said Monday. Dr. Jo-Ann Keating, who worked most recently in Weston, will take over the role in July from Nancy Harris, who is retiring, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi said in a bulletin that also is published on the district’s website. The search committee for Harris’s successor “found Dr. Keating’s integrity, financial and budget skills, collaborative management style, and extensive experience in school performance and operations to be particularly well suited to the Director of Finance and Operations position for the New Canaan Public Schools,” Luizzi said. “Committee members were especially impressed by Dr. Keating’s proven ability to manage multiple complex projects simultaneously, and her depth of knowledge and experience related to all aspects of the Director of Finance and Operations role.”

Finance director in Weston since 2006, Keating had worked as business manager for Ridgefield Public Schools and Wolcott Public Schools, and from 1989 through 1993 had been CFO for the Town of Naugatuck, Luizzi said. She holds a doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Hartford, a master’s organizational management from Central Connecticut University, and a bachelor’s in accounting from Post College.

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Schools: Out-of-District Tuition Costs To Exceed Budget

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District officials say they’re projected to spend nearly $600,000 more than budgeted this fiscal year on out-of-district tuition—a line item that can refer, in part, to when public schools pay for the education elsewhere of kids with disabilities. New Canaan Public Schools regularly sees 14 to 18 students “out-placed” each year, Assistant Superintendent of Pupil and Family Services Darlene Pianka said at Monday night’s Board of Education meeting. This year, four additional students around whom the district “had issues of concern around safety” have been “placed in therapeutic settings,” Pianka said. “And in addition to those four students, there have been a number of students in the late summer and in the early fall that the district has been in mediation with over unilateral placements that students’ parents have made—some for other than educational purposes, and others just in their requests for placement that the district disagreed with,” Pianka said at the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. According to data supplied by the district at the meeting, $2.7 million had been budgeted for out-of-district tuition this year, and that’s about $579,851 short of what the schools now are expecting to spend.

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Nonprofit Foundation Planned to Support Saxe Auditorium Renovation, Wider Visual and Performing Arts Community

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The group that’s overseeing the renovation of the Saxe Middle School auditorium plans to create a nonprofit foundation that will accept donations to offset the cost of the capital project itself, as well as to serve the longer-term interests of New Canaan’s visual and performing arts community, officials say. The Saxe Auditorium Building Committee is tapping SLAM Construction Services of Glastonbury (already on the South School windows project) as an owner’s rep, is targeting early-2015 for draft plans of the renovation and is looking at work completed during the summer of 2016, members said Tuesday at the regular meeting of the Board of Selectmen. “What we need to do first is get a decent scope of the work that we think fits with what is economically viable and fills the needs,” committee member Jim Beall said at the meeting, held in the Training Room of the New Canaan Police Department. The selectmen voted 3-0 to approve a $67,240 contract that will bring in SLAM as the owner’s rep and for project feasibility and scope development services. First Selectman Rob Mallozzi commended the building committee for its sensible approach to the project.

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Concerned about ‘Unintended Consequences,’ District Puts Off Decision on New Facilities Rental Rates

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Though created in a spirit of putting New Canaan’s youth and community first, a proposal that the district is weighing now—essentially, a change in how groups that use the schools’ gyms and auditoriums are categorized and, by extension, how much they’ll be charged—requires more discussion because it may have unintended consequences, officials say. For example, Board of Education members said Monday night, businesses such as The Walter Schalk School of Dance—that not only serve the community through their offerings but also support New Canaan by giving back—would be hit hard enough by a proposed rate hike that they conceivably could leave the town altogether. “It’s almost like we are saying, ‘We don’t want you,’ with these kinds of rates,” school board Secretary Dionna Carlson said during the group’s meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. “I don’t think any of us realized when we were doing this, what we might be doing to some of these groups,” she said. Rentals of school spaces that include gyms, auditoriums, cafeterias and classrooms last academic year ran at a loss of more than $11,000, the district reported.