Leadership Needed On Fairfield Hills
To the Editor,
I want to thank the Public Building Committee for Fairfield Hills for going on record and saying they think ...
Borough officials Jay Maher and Joan Crick celebrated the completion of a sidewalk improvement project along Main Street Monday with a short ribbon-cutting cere...
The Newtown Rotary Club hopes its effort to bring technology to the nation of Ghana will help people like this woman and child.
Harvey Sellner visited Ghana thi...
Please Slow Down!
To the Editor,
On Wednesday, November 24, my two daughters left for high school, leaving a little earlier than usual because there was heavy f...
Pecks Lane
Police report an accident between a town truck and a Bethel motorist about 7:45 am November 29 at the northerly intersection of Pecks Lane and S...
By Steve Bigham
The Newtown High School cheerleading squad is adding a bit of muscle to its roster this winter with the addition of three male members.
All thre...
Another Good Adaptation For The Stage
By June April
NEW HAVEN — Try Footloose for an early holiday gift with your teenager. It’s not jus...
Signed Meeting House Prints Available
Local artist Ruth Newquist signs a print of her Newtown Meeting House painting for Donald Studley, president of the Herita...
Dec 3-5: Antiquarius: The Antiques Show, Greenwich Civic Center, Harding Rd, Old Greenwich, Fri-Sat 11 am-6 pm ###walking tour 13:51 A11/P11 show preview Sat, 1...
Newtown schools have degraded over the 3+ decades I've lived here as the concentrated social experiment curricula driven by the state and small but loud groups. Yet we continue to dig into our pockets while we witness the downward spiral.
Unfortunately as voter turnout continues to decline the chances of it increasing also decline. The LC and BOF already know that the budget will be approved by virtue of the low turnout so why try to make smart decisions? The so-called referendum is essentially just a rubber stamp. They will continue to increase the budget by 2-5% every year because it's low enough to not cause a pushback under the cover of "inflation" and "maintaining the schools." Sending the budget to vote with 9% turnout is meaningless and a waste of resources on April 23rd.
I have seen Mr. Pisani repeatedly assert in the pages of the Bee that Newtown schools are "testing at a failing 64.9%". I'd be curious if he could elaborate on this statistic, as I have been unable to verify it independently. Which test exactly is our school system failing? How do our schools compare to other towns? How does our score compare to historical measures? It's very hard to draw conclusions from a single data point, so here are a few more data points to think about for context: Newtown is consistently ranked among the top 20 school districts in CT by the US News and World Report and Niche, which consider a range of performance metrics in their rankings; on average, Newtown students perform similar to, if not better than, students in neighboring school districts on standardized math and reading tests; the only data point on the CT Department of Education District Report Card where Newtown "fails" -- that is, falls behind the state average -- is access to art instruction. I'm glad the council member has acknowledged in this letter what taxpayers in high-performing (and high-spending) school districts like Darien, New Canaan, and Westport already know: "School funding does impact student achievement." Please keep that in mind when you vote this week!