News

‘He Has Educated Hundreds’: Police Sgt. Jason Kim To Leave School Resource Officer Role at NCHS

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The popular policeman based since September 2012 at New Canaan High School will move on from the ‘school resource officer’ role following his recent promotion, officials say. Sgt. Jason Kim has been assigned as a youth officer in the New Canaan Police Department’s Investigative Section, and a search for his successor as SRO is underway, according to Police Chief Leon Krolikowski. Interviews with officers who have expressed interest in succeeding Kim in the highly visible, important SRO job will commence next week and a new person could be in place at 11 Farm Road by the first week of November. “He’s done a great job,” Krolikowski said of Kim.

News

‘A Significant Achievement’: New Canaan Students’ Test Scores in Latin Exceed National Average

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In his 21 years of teaching Latin at New Canaan High School, Dave Harvey has never had a regular level class beat the national average on the National Latin Exam. Until now. This year, Harvey’s Latin II class of 23 underclassmen scored 5.2 percent above the national average which is a 26 out of 40 or a 65 percent. “All Latin students in New Canaan Public Schools take the exam starting in at least seventh grade and it progresses in difficulty from year to year,” Harvey said from amid fiesta-style decorations and a Mexican food feast in his classroom, Room 114, during a party to mark the achievement. As Harvey pared his class for the exam over a 12-week period, he proposed a challenge: if the students’ average is above the national average, then he would throw his class a party.

Government

School Cafeterias Score High in Health Inspections; ‘Risk Factor’ Violations at NCHS, Saxe and West

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Each of New Canaan’s six public school cafeterias scored at least 95 points out of a possible 100 in recent unannounced inspections by the New Canaan Health Department. Three of the cafs were cited for more serious “risk factor” violations during inspections conducted by Sanitarian and Restaurant/Food Inspector Carla DeLucia—one each at the high school, middle school and West School. East School earned a perfect 100. The overall scores were:

East: 100
South: 99
West: 97
Saxe: 98
NCHS: 95

Here are the details, noted by the sanitarian, at the most recent inspection for each school—risk factor violations are noted with an asterisk:

East (Jan. 11)—zero violations

South (Jan.

News

‘It’s Beyond Our Control’: No Ready Solution To Morning Traffic Back-Up from NCHS Parking Lot

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Town officials, after receiving a resident’s complaint about traffic backed up on Old Stamford Road at Farm Road in the mornings, reached this conclusion: There’s no feasible solution to the problem, short of an expensive New Canaan High School parking lot redesign for which no one has an appetite. Police sent a shift out to investigate the complaint and what the officers discovered is that “it’s not a timing of the light issue,” Capt. John DiFederico said during the Police Commission’s Nov. 18 meeting. “What the issue is, is that there is a very short period of time—maybe 15 minutes—when there is so much volume going into the high school that it backs up all the way down Farm Road so there are cars that cannot turn from Old Stamford Road onto Farm,” DiFederico said at the meeting, held in the Training Room at the New Canaan Police Department. “It has nothing really to do with the light and it has nothing to do with us—it’s just a poorly designed high school parking lot which makes ingress of vehicles so difficult for those 15 minutes.”

A big part of the problem, Police Capt. Vincent DeMaio said, is that the lot is designed so that kids park at the far side—to the right of the access road as you come in—so that they then must cross the road in order to get to the building, which holds up traffic.