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VIDEO: New Canaan High School Class of 2015 Graduates

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New Canaan High School Class of 2015 Graduation
Uploaded by Michael Dinan on 2015-06-19. After graduating from Princeton with a bachelor’s degree in English, and with honors from NYU School of Law, Stephen Vehslage worked his way toward a successful law practice, working primarily in civil litigation and white-collar criminal defense. All seemed to be going well to those who surrounded him, but inside, Vehslage had serious doubts the path he’d charted for himself was the right one. After some intense soul-searching, Vehslage decided that it was time to change course and go back to school, to become a teacher. Vehslage is now a 15-year veteran of New Canaan High School but his first year was anything but smooth, he told hundreds of Class of 2015 seniors and their families and friends on Thursday, in a keynote address during graduation ceremonies.

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District Schedules Info Sessions This Week on New Standardized Tests

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Saying they want to ensure that parents have a chance to ask questions about new standardized testing that will debut this spring, district officials have scheduled three informational sessions this week. The sessions—scheduled as follows—will center on the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium or “SBAC” test that soon will be given to grades three through eight and also grade 11, said Board of Education Chairman Hazel Hobbs:

March 23: Board of Education Meeting – All parents and community members welcome. Special presentation on Assessment at all grade levels. 7 p.m. Wagner Room, NCHS;
March 24: Meeting for parents of New Canaan High School students. Presentation for NCHS parents—1:30 p.m. in the Wagner Room, NCHS;
March 25: Meeting for parents of Saxe Middle School students.

Around Town

Beverly Greenberg, 92: Cherished New Canaan Colleague, Volunteer, Friend and ‘Aunt Bev’

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For me, she will always be ‘Aunt Bev.’ Though not related by blood, Beverly Greenberg was as close to my family growing up as anyone. She passed away Friday at age 92. A small service at Hoyt Funeral Home is planned for Tuesday with a wider community service to come in the spring. Known to generations of New Canaanites as an administrative assistant at Center School, Bev was amazingly active in the community for decades.

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East School Parents Fund $35,000 in New Playground Equipment for Kindergarten, First Grade

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Thanks to the generosity of East School parents, kindergarteners and first-graders on Little Brook Road as soon as April will enjoy new playground equipment that’s designed both to provide fun and stimulate the senses. The Board of Education at its regular meeting Monday night voted 8-0 to accept a $35,000 gift from the East School PTC that will go toward a rollerslide, grab bar, hand hold/leg lift and other equipment from Delano, Minn.-based playground design firm Landscape Structures. The figure includes the relocation in the playground of a popular “fire truck” and introduction of new woodchips that will be needed for the site, according to PTC Co-President Patty Zoccolillo and East School Principal Kris Woleck. Weather-permitting, the new gear will go in over April Break, Zoccolillo said. “I just wanted to mention once again the incredible generosity of our parent body,” she told the school board at the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School.

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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.