Date: Fri 22-May-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

edink-school-Fairfield-Hills

Full Text:

Ed Ink: A New School In Our Future

The echoes of construction still hang in the air at Newtown High School and

Hawley School. Those listening carefully this week could hear them mixing with

the first serious murmurs of more major school construction to come.

This week, the committee studying the need for space in the Newtown school

system issued a report that recommends the town create a new school on the

Fairfield Hills campus for fifth and sixth graders. Evidence of the need is

compelling.

Citing enrollment projections by FOCUS Consulting Associates and by the state

Department of Education, the committee concluded that all of Newtown's

schools, except the recently expanded high school and Hawley School, will

exceed their respective student population capacities by the year 2003. The

elementary school in Sandy Hook, the area of town where much of Newtown's

residential housing boom has taken place, is quickly running out of space, as

is Newtown Middle School. Projections show that the middle school population

is expected to surge 60 percent over its 1995-96 enrollment of 895 to 1,433 in

the 2004-05 school year. All five local pre-schools are currently operating at

capacity with long waiting lists, and realtors report that most of the

families moving into town have one or more school-aged children.

It will be hard for Newtown to ignore the figures presented by the space study

committee, unless we are willing simply to push more and more desks into

existing classrooms, thereby pushing teacher focus and student concentration

out the door.

The selection of the Watertown Hall site at Fairfield Hills, recently acquired

by the town from the state, as a prime location for a new school also makes

sense. The Fairfield Hills site is centrally located, not far from the current

middle school, and it even has space for playing fields. The pitfalls inherent

in the renovation of Watertown Hall will apply to whatever the town decides to

do with the building. Perhaps the inevitable investigation into possible uses

for the building can now proceed with a school specifically in mind.

Newtown is growing. Even greater effort to control growth through stricter

regulations and more conservative development policies will not do much to

change that. People are making more money, mortgage interest rates are low,

and open land is still available for development. Plus Newtown is still a

great place to raise a family. As long as those incentives remain in place, we

can expect to hear the echoes of school construction well into the future.