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.
New Canaan Public Schools officials said Monday that overall enrollment expected to rise in the 2019-20 academic year, with kindergarten seeing a particularly large increase. The district as of now is expecting to get 306 kindergarteners in the fall, up from 233 last October and also up from the 247 that previously had been projected, according to Director of Human Resources Darlene Pianka.
Kindergarten enrollments haven’t been that high for “at least six years,” Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi said at the Board of Education’s regular meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. “If that holds and if trends continue, I would anticipate that that will become the largest grade in our district for the foreseeable future,” he said. Overall, 61 more students are enrolled in New Canaan Public Schools for the upcoming academic year than projected last year when the Board put together its spending plan. First-grade enrollments exceed projections by 16 students, and total high school enrollments by 15, according to the data cited by Pianka.
In conjunction with New Canaan Library’s 11th annual Literary Luncheon, featuring Jennifer Egan speaking on her bestselling book Manhattan Beach, the Library invites all to enjoy a lively evening of music and dancing with musical performance by the Michael Louis Smith Septet. The event takes place on Wednesday, November 14 at 6:30 p.m. in the evening; please register
Get on your dancing shoes and get ready for an evening of delightful music! The Library is pleased to present the Michael-Louis Smith Septet, performing selections of music popular in New York City during the time period of Jennifer Egan’s novel, Manhattan Beach (1934 to 1944). The selected repertoire, some of which was directly referenced in the novel, will consist of late period swing and early bebop compositions by musicians and composers such as Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Lester Young, Sydney Bechet, Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker. Michael-Louis Smith is a guitarist, composer and educator.
Greg Macedo, longtime principal of Saxe Middle School, will retire after this academic year, he said in a blogpost. An educator for nearly four decades who has worked in the New Canaan Public Schools district for 25 years, Macedo said he reached the decision with his wife to relocate to the Delaware shoreline. “I will leave knowing that the support and guidance from the parent community, of which I will always be grateful, will continue to ensure that our middle school will thrive, even beyond its present state,” Macedo said in the post, whose contents also were emailed to parents. “I can honestly say that I have been able to live the life of a ‘life-long learner’ because I’ve been blessed to have had professional colleagues that are ‘life-long teachers.’ ”
Macedo in recent years earned praise from Board of Education members for making dozens of accommodations prior to a recent renovation and expansion in order to keep Saxe, built for 1,200 students, operating while it consistently saw 1,300-plus students enrolled. Even so, Macedo noted as the town weighed whether to fund the estimated $18.6 million project that those accommodations were made “on the backs of our neediest programs,” as several Special Ed classes had been pushed into converted closets and alcoves due to space deficiencies.
Noting that all but about .6 percent of a proposed 3.5 percent spending increase for next year is related to contractual wage increases or healthcare costs, members of the Board of Education on Monday night voted 8-1 to back a $90.7 million budget for next fiscal year. In backing the very same proposed budget that Superintendent of Schools Dr. Bryan Luizzi had presented to the school board two weeks ago, the spending plan is higher than what town finance officials had set and recently underscored as a “strong guideline” of 2 percent for municipal departments. Yet that “edict,” school board member Brendan Hayes said, represents “an arbitrary number.”
“It just doesn’t really factor in the realities of both macroeconomics or the financial realities of the New Canaan Public Schools budget,” Hayes said at the meeting, held in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School. At about 1.9 percent year-over-year, wage increases in the district are far lower than national averages, Hayes said, and given that about 2.9 percent of the overall proposed increase is tied to the wages and healthcare of those who work for New Canaan Public Schools, a reduction to 2 percent would require cuts to programs, he said. “So I just personally don’t really understand that 2 percent because it’s not explained, whereas I look at this budget and the thought that has gone into it, which frankly is—beyond this year—it’s the culmination of a decade or more of work and programs in the schools,” he said.
