For New Canaan High School Principal Bill Egan, there’s no better day than the first day of school.
Newly arrived freshmen and returning students “bring life back into the building,” Egan told members of the Board of Education during their regular meeting Tuesday night.
This academic year, NCHS welcomed nearly 1,270 students—including 52 who are new to New Canaan— who brought “ the energy only they could bring,” Egan said during a report on school openings.
“I want to thank you,” he told the Board during the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at NCHS. “It truly is an honor and privilege to be a New Canaan High School principal. There is no better job in the world than being a high school principal. It is truly something different each and every day. I think we’re blessed to have the best kids in the state of Connecticut, the best community in the state of Connecticut. And really the best faculty in the state, and they all work hard to meet the needs of each and every one of our kids. So I want to thank you for allowing me to be principal. We had a successful opening to the school year. We started off the week with convocation and professional learning. for our faculty. It sets the tone of unity and purpose for the upcoming year. Our focus is on building relationships, which lie at the center of all learning and teaching.”
Each of the five New Canaan Public Schools principals provided an update to the school board. They thanked teachers, faculty and staff as well as parent groups, custodial maintenance staff, administrative assistants, tech team, food service crew, administrators, the district’s transportation team and others.
Egan noted during his remarks that on Oct. 11, tenth- and eleventh-grade students will take the PSAT in school, “the results of which will help prepare our kids for the SAT.”
“Ninth-grade students will participate in community building activities, and twelfth-grade students will be able to use the day for individually based college activities, including working on applications, reviewing essays, interviewing skills and/or visiting other schools,” Egan said.
“In addition to getting started with academics, our school community is vibrant and active, with both athletics and theater underway,” Egan said. “As always, we look forward to our annual Open House next week. It’s always great to have parents back in the building and visiting with our teachers. Our Club Fair will kick off in the first week of October to showcase the other exciting opportunities for students at NCHS to get involved with. The planetarium continues to get renovated and we’re eagerly looking to use the space and give our students the most state-of-the-art facility for our students. The library is going to also continue to expand its innovation space for collaboration and student production. It will hopefully be ready in the coming weeks.”
Saxe Middle School
David Gusitsch, principal of Saxe Middle School, said last week’s launch of the school year was “one of the best in recent memory.”
“And I certainly could not be more proud of our staff and students—and I dare say our parents—for encouraging them to walk or ride or bike or take the bus, because morning drop-offs have gone pretty smoothly,” he said. “Knock on wood, not going to jinx it, but arrival and dismissal has gone very well in comparison to recent years so we’re really grateful for that.”
Saxe welcomed 45 new students this year, he said.
“With the help of our ever supportive PTC, we’re able to welcome everybody back in spirited style with our ‘Welcome Back’ events, our school spirit branding and bannering, our amazing spirit wear that they make available for our students and our staff members,” Gusitsch said.
“And they’re also instrumental in our ongoing evolution around our campus through grants and our upcoming ‘Celebrate Saxe’ campaign,” he continued. “And the transformational outdoor learning spaces, which we held our inaugural event this morning. And we welcomed over 60 people for our 5th grade ‘Welcome Back Coffee.’ And even despite the rising temperatures, it was comfortable out there with some shade. We had a great time breaking in that space out there. It was wonderful to see it come to fruition after all the planning and the support of the work along the way. So it was a pretty surreal moment. It was really neat to see it in action.”
Gusitsch said he visited each classroom across all grade levels and disciplines and saw “the foundation of the positive relationships in action.”
“The interactive and kinesthetic teaching approaches, the collaborative group work, and I believe there’s even been some meaningful homework that’s been assigned at this point, so getting kids back into the routine, which has been nice,” Gusitsch said.
“In terms of our overall focus, in addition to upholding the highest level of academic excellence, which is expected here, we’ve kept our focus on educating the whole child in the well-rounded experience that they get while at Saxe Middle School and balancing each of the learning domains,” he said, adding that educators at the middle school “affectionately refer to our middle school students as being ‘under construction.’ ”
“And we certainly take great pride in being part of that work site,” he said. “Following up on our focus of ‘Connecting’ last year, and for good reason, ‘Caring’ and ‘Community’ in years prior, we chose ‘United’ as our focus this year,” Gusitsch said. “It brings all of our work together. And we’re certainly excited to be united in our work with our students, our families, our school, our community, you all as the Board, as well as united our work with one another at Saxe Middle School.”
East School
East School Principal Kris Woleck said the Little Brook Road elementary school’s opening was “wonderful.” East has 15 new certified staff members who attended new teacher orientations, she said—including seven new classroom teachers, two new special area teachers, two special education teachers, one speech language pathologist and a new school psychologist.
“They joined our new nurse, our new head custodian, and a new special education administrative assistant, so we have lots of positivity, lots of enthusiasm, lots of new ideas at East School this year, and we’re very excited for that,” Woleck said.
The school welcomed 28 new students in grades one through four, and they were given a ‘New to East’ visit when the building was quiet in order to get oriented, with help from some returning fourth-graders “who came and met with them as student ambassadors to give them the tour and tell them a little bit about what makes this school so great,” Woleck said.
With 570 total students, the school now has 30 sections and “I’m very happy to say we’ve been able to repurpose space in some really great ways there,” Woleck said.
“We have a space now that is a new science area for our students,” she said. “We were able to repurpose some space there. That area is just awaiting some new cabinets and countertops later in the year, but our science teacher is very excited, at some proximity she has now to some outdoor spaces that she looks forward to using with science classes. We have a music suite now that’s been subdivided to allow our general music classes to have their space and also a small area for lessons for our strings teacher to have his small group lessons there.”
Woleck thanked the custodial staff for preparing the building so well, especially given that East underwent construction inside and out during the summer.
“We just applaud their commitment to making sure that our building is ready for the opening, and it looks fabulous,” Woleck said.
East School’s motto remains “Work Hard, Be Kind,” and it’s being complemented this year with “Together We SOAR,” where SOAR stands for Safe, On Task, Appropriate, and Respectful.
“And that’s how we communicate to students about those expectations in our building,” Woleck said. “But we’re coupling that with that we’re together very intentionally this year to emphasize the collaborative work that we do throughout the building. So when we say ‘Together we SOAR,’ we mean together, meaning that collaboration, general education teachers with special education teachers, with EL staff that we have in the building to ensure that instruction is differentiated for all of our learners.”
“Together” also means collaboration among literacy and math specialists and classroom teachers, she said.
“We also mean ‘Together’ in a sense of collaboration that we are emphasizing between students in the classroom as they learn those social skills to be able to work together with their classmates to solve social situations that may come up,” she said.
Woleck added, “And finally, when we say ‘Together’ we mean together partnering with families to build those homeschool connections that further support student learning and growth in our building. And that includes our upcoming open houses as well.”
South School
South School Principal Matt Kascak said the school “had a wonderful first week,” welcoming 506 students, including 21 new students across grades one through four.
“I always get called ‘mom’ by at least one kindergartner,” he told the Board, drawing laughter from the room. “It’s cool. It happened again this year. And I also get called ‘Mrs. Kascak’ a lot.”
The school also welcomed three new certified staff members, five non-certified staff members, three graduate teaching interns and a new school nurse.
“We’re very happy to be able to say we are fully staffed,” Kascak said.
Griffin Knowles and Griffin Stewart on the first day of school at South School, Aug. 29, 2023. Photo courtesy of Julia Stewart
New this year thanks to the South School PTC is a new playground structure that will be installed during the week of Sept. 25.
“The structure is called Global Motion, which you might have guessed from the name, is shaped like a globe,” Kascak said. “And it has two levels. It’s a net climber that will allow students to climb, rotate, and explore this fun filled structure. Like the globe, it also rotates using a patented progressive resistance, which makes it easy to turn at slower speeds. It’s not like those ones that, when we were kids, that we would get so fast that somebody would go flying. But this is two stories. It allows for a lot of children to be on it at the same time which some structures don’t.”
Its developmental benefits include “building and strengthening sensory skills, motor skills, cognitive skills, problem solving and strategic thinking skills, and of course social and emotional skills,” he added.
“And the structure can also be used as a teaching tool about how the earth rotates on its axis around the sun,” Kascak said.
The South School community is also working on developing more outdoor learning stations, he said.
“We are excited at what may be possible from the ideas that we’ve already brainstormed among ourselves and with the town, the town’s Parks and Rec Department and a landscape architect,” he said.
The popular South School garden was “prolific” this summer, producing “fabulous produce” thanks to parent volunteers, school kids and others.
“In addition to working with the New Canaan Food Pantry, the garden team has established a new partnership with an organization called Food Rescue U.S. and have made regular donations throughout the summer to local communities in need of fresh food,” Kascak said. “It expands the footprint outside of New Canaan, reaching to Wilton, Stamford and Norwalk, to where we are donating food. And of course, New Canaan is still number one on the list, allowing for food to be donated to the [New Canaan] Food Pantry’s biweekly collection.”
This summer, South School donated 55 pounds of fresh produce to various organizations, he said.
“I would be remiss if I did not convey a very public thank you to the parents who head up this committee,” he said. “They work very hard throughout the year, from spring right until the fall, October. All of our children participated last year in planting seedlings for the garden, and then before we left in May and June, they got to go out and plant their seedlings in the garden, and watch them start to grow, germinate, and grow in their classrooms, and then go on out to the garden to plant, and now they’re going to get the opportunity to harvest their work.”
West School
West School Principal Jan Murphy said that Aug. 29 “was probably one of the smoothest openings I’ve ever had at West School.”
“Sometimes we say that, and then we remember that kindergarten wasn’t there that day, because they take a little longer to learn things,” she said. “But the second day, on Wednesday, when the kindergarten kiddos came, it was equally as smooth. It went really smoothly. So, knock on wood, as we all do, it was a great first week at West School, I will say.”
Kindergartners came on the first day of school with their parents, and the next day on the bus, Murphy said.
“We had PTC volunteers on our bus platform greeting all the kindergarten students as they came in,” she said. “So they really knew a lot of familiar faces, and knew exactly what to do when they got here. Our goal always for the first year of school, the first two days of school, is for every child to go home excited, upbeat, and motivated to be back at school.”
West has about 501 total students this year, including the pre-K program, and 20 new students in grades one through four, Murphy said.
The Ponus Ridge elementary school also welcomed 12 new certified staff members, “the most I’ve ever had at West,” Murphy said.
Two of those are pre-K, there’s also a new pre-K director, two teachers in grade one, one in grade three and two in grade four, among others.
“What’s happened with that group is they’ve formed a really nice cohort together,” Murphy said. “And we’ve been meeting with them and sort of guiding them. And it’s nice because they’re not the only new teacher in the building. So they are getting to know one another and really feeling included in the process.”
The school is working on its “Entrance Project” this year, and West now has “a water feature in the front.”
“It’s kind of like a little bit of a zen garden, so it’s really nice,” Murphy said. “I invite you all to come and look at it and take a look and have a seat and relax. So that was completed by the first day of school. And then following that, our PTC generously provided all of our staff with a teacher appreciation luncheon on Friday.”
Another smaller project that West has undertaken in order to help parents who get lost in the building is called “Room Tagz,” Murphy said.
“There are personalized room tags that hang in front of every certified teacher’s classroom so that if a parent’s looking down the hallway, they can see the exact name of the teacher so that they can find a way in the building,” she said. “So that’s our project for this year.”
Plans also call for a “directory” in the front lobby of West so that visitors can easily identify where the various grades are located.
“We are also beginning to look at the needs in our front playground,” Murphy said. “It’s sort of starting to age out. So we’re starting to get just a small group of people together to take a look at those needs and sort of create a vision for that space in the front.”
The staff at West also is working on what they’re calling “Shared Commitments,” Murphy said.
“After COVID, a lot of the routines and transitions were changed, and so we really felt like we really needed to reconnect and reset those shared commitments,” she said. “So the staff, faculty—and we will be sharing this with parents at our PTC Coffee next week—decided on, Setting up some new, clear expectations for students. And so, students have been practicing those for this week. And everyone in the school is committed to implementing these expectations, and we’re very proud of those this year.”
This year, West also chose a book to be used as a mentor text for students for the school’s community growth and school climate goals, called “The Invisible Boy.”
“It’s about a young boy at school who feels invisible because sometimes he feels left out,” Murphy said. “And then a new boy comes to school and then in the beginning of the story, he’s actually black and white. The illustrator makes him black and white. And then as he starts to befriend this boy, and be kind to this boy, he starts to feel more and more included. So, it’s a great story about making others feel special, making others feel included, and it ties in really nicely with our school climate goal.”
Murphy gave a special shout-out “to all of the people at West—secretaries, custodians, our maintenance department—because if it weren’t for the efforts of every single person, we would not have had such a smooth opening.”
“It takes a lot of coordination and a lot to go into it,” she said.
“As all of my colleagues before me have said, it is a privilege to work in this district, to work with your children, to work with such a phenomenal Board of Education, to work with the administrative team, so thank you for allowing me to be here tonight,” Murphy said.