NHS Recognizes Midyear Grads
By Laurie Borst
On the evening of January 31, the lecture hall at Newtown High School was adorned with blue and gold balloons and s...
Rotary Names Students Of The Month For January
 Newtown Rotary honored the Students of the Month for January at a recent meeting to a packed house of Rotarians...
Sandy Hook Resident Sally Lynn MacDonald
Is One Clever Lady
By Shannon Hicks
It has been a funny little journey for Sally Lynn MacDonald, a Sandy Hook resident...
Bubblemania At
Town Hall, Sun.
Newtown Junior Women’s Club will present a performance of Bubblemania — a family fun show for all ages â&...
Frank Cone, Jr
Employed By Sikorsky
Aircraft Many Years
Frank Cone, Jr, of Church Creek, Md., formerly of Sandy Hook and Fairfield, died suddenly Jan...
*American Idol title holder TAYLOR HICKS (no relation) will headline his first Connecticut concert on April 6. Tickets for that Foxwoods Fox Theater show will b...
Post Prom: Life’s A Beach!
The next Post Prom meeting will be held on Wednesday, February 7, at 7 pm, at Newtown High School.
Volunteers are needed...
Tierney Carey
(St. Michael
’s College swimming & diving) – Sophomore Tierney Carey was named the Eastern College Athletic Con...
‘Conflict In Darfur’ At The Library, Feb. 13
Global Voice, the student global advocacy group at Newtown High School, will make a special...
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!