Government

Saxe Building Proposal: Where Candidates Stand

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What follows are candidates’ responses to a public call from dozens of taxpayers to answer this question: Will you support the full project to renovate and expand Saxe Middle School? See PDF at the bottom of this article for details on the proposed $18.6 million building project. We will update this article with new responses as they come in from candidates for the Board of Selectmen, Board of Education and Town Council. Board of Selectmen

Rob Mallozzi, Republican incumbent seeking re-election for first selectman: “It didn’t take an email that I saw [Monday] to get my position out there. I think it’s very important, as a leader of this town, to telegraph my feelings and I appreciate the fact that there is a group that wanted to know people’s positions before the election.

News

Letter: Board of Ed Urges New Canaan To Support Saxe Building Project

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The Board of Education has been closely following the Saxe Building Committee’s (SBC) work throughout their process of analyzing the educational space needs at Saxe, recommending changes to meet those needs and designing the improvements deemed critical. The Board of Education fully supports the SBC’s recommended project to renovate the Saxe Auditorium and visual performing arts/music area and to expand the current building to add a net of 12 new classrooms.

Why Saxe Needs More Space

Built in 1957, Saxe Middle School was last renovated from 1997 to 1999 to accommodate 1200 students. Since this time (15-plus years), Saxe’s enrollment has increased. Current enrollment is at 1,327 students, up from the 1,292 students enrolled at this time last year. The latest projections anticipate that enrollment at Saxe will steadily increase over the next few years, peaking in 2024 at 1,376 students, and remaining stable at around 1,350 afterwards.

News

‘On the Backs of Our Neediest Programs’: Seeing Saxe Middle School with Principal Greg Macedo

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Greg Macedo walked a hallway toward the northwest corner of Saxe Middle School on a recent weekday morning, in what’s known as the “8th Grade Wing,” part of a 1997 expansion of the brick building at Farm and South. There, a freestanding office partition that stands five feet high—a bit shorter than the average height of a 13-year-old boy—“separates” the hallway from a 150-square-foot area never meant to serve as a classroom. Yet—in a far-reaching knock-on effect that has seen rising enrollment, new programming and state-mandated classes push “regular” classrooms into what had been designed as Special Education spaces—the now-1,328 students at a school built to accommodate 1,200 at most, have forced Macedo, Saxe’s principal, to push Special Ed programming into what had been office spaces for teachers, storage rooms and hallways. “We have balanced the space problems on the backs of our neediest programs,” said Macedo, looking over this makeshift classroom, cordoned off five years ago and including the assorted bouncy balls, mats, bean bags and trampolines that provide physical stimulation for kids on the autism spectrum. “Kids would not feel like they are in a classroom here,” he said, speaking from a similarly carved-out hallway space one floor up.

News

Letter: Future of Saxe Expansion Is Future of New Canaan

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As a parent of two children at West School after having recently relocated from Manhattan, my wife and I are very focused on the Saxe Middle School expansion not only for the future of the New Canaan school system, but also for the appeal of New Canaan to new families. We would not have moved to New Canaan but for the strength of the public schools. The Saxe project has been well researched by the Building Committee and has been thoroughly vetted with multiple alternatives considered. The recommended expansion is logical, cost effective (relative to only renovating the auditorium and enlarging the school at a later date) and imperative for the future of Saxe and the town. The recommendation is not a “Cadillac expansion” but only meets “most” of the school’s needs.

Government

‘That Is Not Sustainable’: Finance Board Member Flags Town Spending, Scope of Saxe Proposal

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New Canaan cannot sustain recent spending rates and, as the town addresses major capital needs such as at Saxe Middle School, hard decisions must be made lest the town burden taxpayers unduly or completely drain its coffers, a member of the Board of Finance said Tuesday. The educational system in New Canaan “did a fabulous job of educating my daughter and could not be more supportive,” finance board member George Blauvelt said during the group’s special meeting at Town Hall, “but we are looking at a series of really tough tradeoffs.”

“If we go forward with the Saxe program as currently proposed, then what in the town don’t we do? What will other constituents in the town—who are also residents in the town and taxpayers in the town—what don’t they get if we go forward with this?”

The comments come as a Board of Education-backed proposal to build a 2-story, 12-classroom addition at Saxe while renovating the auditorium and expanding music rooms—last estimated at about $17.1 million, though an updated figure is expected—makes its way to the finance board and other town bodies for approval. Board of Finance members stopped short of rejecting the full proposal, though more than one of them echoed Blauvelt that further study and discussion is needed—such as around enrollment projections—before funds are committed beyond renovating the Saxe auditorium (widely accepted as an absolute need). First Selectman Rob Mallozzi, who serves as the finance board’s chairman, framed the discussion as a way to share the group’s thinking with Board of Ed members—some of whom were in attendance, in addition to the superintendent of schools.