2020-21 Academic Year: District’s Phased Plan Calls For All Students To Be in Public Schools in Early-October

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If health data supports it, New Canaan Public Schools will aim to allow students to attend all classes in-person in early October, district officials said Monday. School will look different at that time, officials said during a regular meeting of the Board of Education, held via videoconference. For example, Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi said, those in school will be wearing masks and observing physical distancing, hallways will be marked one-way, classrooms will be assigned designated bathrooms, visitors will be prohibited and all assemblies will be held virtually. Though Fairfield County has what health officials are calling “low community spread” of COVID-19 virus—meaning the state is allowing local districts to fully reopen with in-person learning—the first several weeks of the upcoming academic year will be spent re-acclimating students and parents, as well as teachers and faculty, to the changed environment, officials said. Available here in a continuously updated operations guide, the four-phase plan is geared toward the school community’s “on-boarding and reengagement,” Luizzi said.

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Board of Ed Debates Adoption of Proposed Goals on ‘Equity, Diversity and Inclusion’

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The New Canaan Board of Education last week debated whether to adopt formal goals for the upcoming school year designed to address issues of race through staff training, changes to curriculum and parent education, among other areas. 

Draft goals discussed at the Board’s July 13 meeting (they can be found here, under Goal 4-2, and embedded below as a PDF) include creation of what would be the districts’ first “statement on equity, diversity and inclusion,” as well as an update on Social Studies curriculum and identification of “additional opportunities in other content areas to increase content on diversity and inclusion K-12.”

Some Board members voiced support for adopting the goals, while others said they were concerned about introducing the changes during an academic year that likely will include some form of distance learning amid the COVID-19 pandemic that strains the “bandwidth” of educators and where spending on schools is tight. Sheri West said she strongly supported the new goals and that it’s “crucial that at this moment in history, that we as a Board, as educational leaders in our district that we communicate the importance of these values and really truly that they are at the cornerstone of what we do—our values and our belief system and our actions.”

“I especially like the addition of the professional development and of the parent education,” West said during the 3.5-hour meeting, held via videoconference. “One thing I would like added is I believe in order for us to execute on these goals, we are going to need budget dollars to bring in an expert consultant. I don’t think this is work that we can do alone. I think many districts have already or are hiring DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] leaders for their districts.

Around Town

Local Organizations and COVID-19: LiveGirl

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For today’s Q&A with a local organization, we talk to New Canaan’s Sheri West, CEO and founder of LiveGirl. West shares with us some of the key spring and summer dates for LiveGirl, which also plans to mail more than 500 copies of its “Camp LiveGirl” activity book this summer. 

Here’s our interview. 

New Canaanite: You have a staff at LiveGirl. One of the things that we are hearing from nonprofits is that part of what is really hard right now is their revenue streams are eroding or disappearing altogether, at least for the spring. How are you all faring at LiveGirl? Sheri West: We have two full-time employees and we were fortunate to qualify for a payroll protection loan, though Bankwell, so we are very fortunate.

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Podcast: Sheri and Olivia West of ‘LiveGirl’

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This week on 0684-Radi0, our free weekly podcast (subscribe here in the iTunes Store), we talk to Sheri and Olivia West, the mother-daughter team behind nonprofit organization LiveGirl, and its terrific new podcast, “Confident.” This week’s installment is sponsored by Pryority Wellness, a holistic wellness center devoted to helping you maintain a lifestyle of optimal health, offering individual programs and services, such as wellness assessments & coaching, massage & energy therapies, pilates, meditation and more. For more information, visit Pryority Wellness at 45 Grove Street, above Halo Fitness or contact them at 203-594-1552 to book an appointment. Discover your path to wellness at Pryority. Here are recent episodes of 0684-Radi0:

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.