Full Text:

The Kids Just Keep Coming To Newtown

(with photos)

BY STEVE BIGHAM

Kids -- they're everywhere these days.

Youngsters, especially in the 6-12 year old age group, are moving in to

Newtown with their parents at record numbers. The children are filling up the

schools and flooding both Dickinson and Treadwell parks. This summer, 1,350

children signed up for the Parks & Recreation summer camps, an all-time high.

Both parks are packed.

"Each year we've been going up 50, 60, 70 kids, but this year we went up 130.

More kids are moving into town. It's that simple," explained P&R director

Barbara Kasbarian. "This age group is the age where people start moving in."

The Parks & Rec Department is seeing record numbers in all its programs,

according to Mrs Kasbarian. And this past winter saw a record number of kids,

1,100, sign up for the P&R youth basketball program.

For some reason, families with elementary school aged children are the ones

moving into town, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by the Board of Education

either. It has proposed the construction of a new fifth- and sixth-grade

elementary school to be completed by the year 2001. The bulge in the

population is expected to move its way toward the middle school, causing an

overcrowded situation within three years, school board members say.

A study committee, created by the Board of Education and made up of Newtown

residents, recently recommended that a new school be built. According to its

members, there were several factors which prompted them to recommend a new

school be built. First, the town's overwhelming increase in approved lots and

building permits, not to mention the rise in the actual number of homes being

built, about 200 annually.

The committee also found a significant increase in the local birth rate and

found that, on a monthly average, 10 more kids were moving in to Newtown than

were moving out.