East School

Free Range Kids with Lenore Skenazy

By |

Free Range Kids
Wednesday, September 14th at 7:00 PM, Saxe Middle School Auditorium

After her newspaper column “Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone” landed her on NPR, Fox News, and everywhere in between, Lenore wrote Free-Range Kids, the book-turned-movement. She has been profiled in The New Yorker, hosted the reality show “World’s Worst Mom,” and has lectured everywhere from Disney to Microsoft to schools across the country. She will join us in New Canaan to share, through her unique lens, why and how we can let our kids go and help them grow. For more information visit www.newcanaancares.org/event/freerangekids/

Board of Selectmen

New Sidewalks Planned for Gower Road by South School

By |

Town officials on Tuesday approved an approximately $20,000 contract for the design of new sidewalks that will make New Canaan’s most walkable elementary school even more walkable. As it is, sidewalks that run from both ends and on each side of Gower Road near South School terminate just at the edge of school property. 

The existing sidewalks on Gower “actually stretch from South Avenue to the entrance to South School and then from Old Stamford Road eastward to South School, as well,” Public Works Director Tiger Mann told members of the Board of Selectmen at their regular meeting, held via videoconference. “There is nothing that traverses across South School’s property. There is a walkway along South School into the property but nothing along the right-of-way.” 

The town asked Bridgeport-based Cabezas DeAngelis for a proposal for survey and design services “for these stretches of sidewalk to connect the two together,” Mann said. The total contract for those services comes to $19,800, including a contingency fee.

Brendan Hayes

Solar Panels To Be Installed on South School Roof This Summer

By |

Officials are moving forward with the first phase of a plan to install solar panels on the roofs of New Canaan’s public schools. 

New Canaan Public Schools Director of Finance and Operations Dr. Jo-Ann Keating told the Board of Education at its regular meeting July 15 that a revised contract with the party providing the panels had been finalized. The revised contract is “about 73% less than our current rate that we pay per kilowatt hour,” Keating said at the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. “The panel system is going to cover about 80% of our demand requirement, so we’ll still be going out to the grid for about 20% of what we need,” she added. The revised contract follows months of progress in bringing the sustainable power source to New Canaan Public Schools. At the Board’s April 22 meeting, Keating said that solar panels are to be installed on the roof of South School this summer, with a plan for installation on East and West schools and Saxe Middle Schools over the next three years.

Amy Murphy Carroll

Board of Finance Approves Bonding for Estimated $2 Million Roof Replacement at South School

By |

The Board of Finance on Tuesday voted unanimously in support of nearly $2.2 in bonding for the replacement of the roof at South School—a project that’s expected to take place this summer and to be completed by the start of next academic year. As Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi had outlined during the budget season just passed, the 20-year-old roof has reached the end of its useful life and has started to fail, with water coming in through the ceiling in places following heavy rain. The project, which is expected to come in at about $2 million, went out to bid in January and will be completed by North Haven-based Greenwood Industries Inc., New Canaan Public Schools Director of Finance and Operations Dr. Jo-Ann Keating said. The overall $2,046,000 figure is less than the nearly $2.2 million that town funding bodies approved in the capital budget for fiscal year 2020—it represents $1.6 million with a 20% contingency and $100,000 in soft costs, according to Keating. The town will only bond what is spent, officials said.

Around Town

Touched by Tragedy, Local Band Creates Music Event Benefitting ‘Sandy Hook Promise’

By |

New Canaan resident Sloan Alexander will never forget the morning his daughter entered his bedroom a few days after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, telling him and his wife, Sara Bakker, that she feared getting shot. “We were both just very taken aback,” he recalled on a recent afternoon. “She knew what was going on and she knew what had happened. That moment has always struck me. I start to tear up when I think about it.”

Since that morning in December 2012, Alexander has seen his children come up through local schools practicing lockdown drills that he never had to, and has searched for ways to support an organization to which he feels profoundly connected, Sandy Hook Promise.