School Board Approves

High School Space Needs Panel

By Larissa Lytwyn

Addressing Newtown High School’s steadily increasing population, currently at 1,600 students and rising, the school board created a High School Space Needs Study Committee [formerly the High School Expansion/Academy Study Committee] at its first meeting of the new year, January 6.

  In a formal charge presented to the board, Superintendent of Schools Evan Pitkoff detailed the committee’s purpose to “investigate the current capacity of the high school vis-à-vis the projected pupil enrollment figures.”

According to the charge, members will “brainstorm ideas, explore options, obtain information, and discuss all relevant findings” culminating in a series of recommendations that could best accommodate Newtown High School’s space needs. 

“The name change more clearly represents what is delineated on the charge,” Dr Pitkoff explained. “We are definitely open to ideas.”

Conclusions would be thoroughly documented and be made, according to the charge, with “careful consideration” of educational, financial, logistics/transportation, health and safety implications, and practical implications regarding the division of students from Newtown High School.

The board also approved a motion by member Tom Gissen to include “land use feasibility” to the list of considerations.

“When I lived in Ridgefield there was a proposal to build a new school that ultimately wasn’t able to be completed because of zoning infractions,” he said. “The design had already been created and everything. So it’s important to remember that zoning issues are taken into consideration throughout the process.”

Members from town organizations including Legislative Council, Board of Finance, and the Public Building and Sites Commission, as well as teachers, administrators, parents, and members of the community, are expected to comprise the committee. The Board of Education plans to appoint members to the panel at its next meeting on January 20. Mr Gissen will represent the school board on the committee.

Dr Pitkoff expects the committee to begin meeting next month “around February 2.”