East School

Free Range Kids with Lenore Skenazy

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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/

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Documents: Town Pursuing Installation of Cell Tower Behind West School

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More than five years after neighbors and parents voiced objections to a similar plan, town officials are once again considering the installation of a cell tower behind West School. The town has been working with a Danbury-based wireless infrastructure company to site a tower at 769 Ponus Ridge, the 47.4-acre parcel where West School is located, documents show. 

According to the public packet for Tuesday’s Board of Selectmen meeting, the town is considering two sites east of the Aquarion-owned water tank back of West School for a 125-foot-high “monopine” tower. Both “Option A” and “Option B” are due east of the school, with the latter very close to the Winfield Lane cul-de-sac. 

Homeland Towers is scheduled to discuss the plans before the Board of Selectmen at its regular meeting at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, according to the meeting agenda. 

Town officials through the past two administrations have worked to address a lack of cellular coverage in large areas of the town. 

The idea of siting a cell tower in the woods behind West School isn’t new. The New Canaan Utilities Commission—which First Selectman Kevin Moynihan rendered “dormant” four-plus years ago, over the objections of then-Selectman Kit Devereaux—in 2017 concluded following years of work and research that West School was “ideally situated” for boosting cell coverage in the western, northwestern and even southern parts of town, to the bottom of Frogtown Road. Specifically, the Utilities Commission said at the time that hired consultants (the same Homeland Towers) had found a point east of the water tank that’s at a good elevation for a tower that will cover a wider area.

Allyson Halm

New Canaan Animal Control: Leave Fawns Found in Yards, Woods Alone

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The head of the New Canaan Police Department’s Animal Control section is urging residents to leave the fawns they’re finding on lawns, in the woods and other areas of their properties alone for 24 hours after spotting the newborn deer. The mothers of fawns are typically “in calling distance and will return within seven to eight hours,” Officer Allyson Halm said. “Fawns are hard-wired to lay perfectly still and are odorless which protects them against predators,” she said. Animal Control has been fielding phone calls daily from residents about fawns being left alone. On Monday, as West School prepared for its Field Day activities, officials there found a fawn curled up by a backstop, Halm said.

Blankets of Hope

‘You Are Loved’: West School Students Participate in ‘Blankets of Hope’ Community Service

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Students at West School this month participated in a community service activity that saw the kids learn about and write notes of encouragement to those suffering from homelessness. The K-4 students underwent what West School Principal Jan Murphy called a “kindness workshop” administered by Blankets of Hope, a nonprofit organization. “The students felt proud to be able to do something to help our community,” Murphy told NewCanaanite.com in an email when asked about the activity. Through donations from West School parents, each student was provided with a blanket to donate to a chosen charity—Malta House in Norwalk, which provides housing for expectant and new mothers and their babies. The students tied handwritten notes of encouragement to each of the 540-plus blankets delivered. The outside of one card reads, “You Are Loved.”

“The project was a school-wide effort to continue our focus on empathy and being good citizens,” Murphy said. 

The kids’ letters were “colorful and thoughtful,” she said.

Brendan Hayes

Solar Panels To Be Installed on South School Roof This Summer

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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.