NCPS News - January 2026
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Dear NCPS Community,
I hope your new year is off to a wonderful start, and I wish you all good things in the year ahead. For this month’s newsletter, I’m writing to share three quick updates: transportation, phone-free schools, and the proposed 2026–27 budget.
Transportation Update
Over the break, we completed an update to our transportation system. By now, you should have received an email with updated bus numbers, stop locations, and times. If your information didn’t change, great. If it did, please review the new details with your child in preparation for our rollout on Tuesday, January 20, 2026. Updates are also posted on the NCPS Transportation webpage.
Phone-Free Schools
As we move into the second semester, New Canaan High School will begin implementing a new cell phone policy. This approach prohibits cell phone use throughout the school day, with designated phone-use areas in the library and cafeteria. The second semester will serve as a transition period, and we will become fully phone-free at NCHS, just as we already are in grades K–8, starting in fall 2026. During the transition, we’ll be meeting with students, parents, and faculty to clarify the purpose and goals of this initiative and to shape, together, the strategies that will make it successful.
Superintendent’s Proposed 2026–27 Budget
On January 5th, I shared my proposed budget with the Board of Education at its regularly scheduled meeting. The proposal balances excellence with efficiency, supports current efforts, and invests in continuous improvement. Overall, it requests a 3.94% increase, and approximately 85% of that increase is directly related to salaries and benefits for our 800+ faculty and staff.
This year also presents a new planning challenge. Using two independent demographers, our kindergarten enrollment projections for next year range from 270 to 417 students. In response, we are planning to establish a separate non-lapsing account (funds that carry forward if unused) to ensure we can add kindergarten sections if, and as, needed. We’ll discuss this more in the months ahead as our actual enrollment picture becomes clearer.
If you’d like to learn more about the budget, Board meetings are livestreamed and recorded on YouTube, and local coverage has provided helpful summaries as well (newcanaanite.com and CT Insider).
As you can see, 2026 is already off to a strong start. Happy New Year!
Onward!
Bryan
📅 Tuesday, January 20th
In order to ensure the utmost safety of our students, there will be some changes implemented in our bus routes. What is changing?
Reverting to Previous Routes: We have recreated the bus routes used during the 2024-2025 school year. These routes were thoroughly vetted during our transition to new school start times, and serve as our standard.
Better Schedules: Bus numbers, along with stop times and locations, have been carefully reviewed and reassigned as needed to ensure runs are efficient. Some buses, stops, and timings will change based upon this analysis, while others will remain the same.
Next Steps: Please look for an email from January 7th (1/7) with updated information about your child’s bus, location, and timing for AM and PM routes, to begin on Jan. 20.
Please reach out to the transportation department directly at 203-594-4039 with any questions or concerns.
As we continue our work with our NCPS Portrait of a Graduate, we're taking time this month to highlight our competency focus of Curiosity — the drive to explore, inquire, and deepen understanding. Throughout our district, students show curiosity every day across multiple disciplines. In our NCHS art studios, they take creative risks as they experiment with printmaking, clay, and AP art investigations. In science courses, curiosity fuels inquiry as students observe natural phenomena, ask meaningful questions, and use those questions to guide their learning. In the humanities, American Studies students follow their curiosity beyond the classroom as they explore local trails to better understand Thoreau’s experiences. Families can nurture this skill by asking students what new topics spark their interest and how they’ve embraced new experiences in and out of school.
Kindergarteners at South put their decoding skills into action this week with a hands-on CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) word hunt in the hallways. Armed with magnifying glasses, students explored beyond the classroom to find and read CVC words, writing each one in their journals once they cracked the code. This interactive activity kept them moving, focused, and excited about their reading and writing work—an especially effective approach for young learners who benefit from learning through exploration. A highlight of the day was when Assistant Principal Mrs. McCormack stopped by to join the fun, making the experience even more memorable for our budding readers.
As a way to recognize South educating students for 75 years, staff, students, and alumni came together to perform a winter-wonderful holiday sing-along. Friends of all ages gathered at the South bus platform to sing some December classics side by side, staying warm with the delicious hot cocoa and cookies being given out by the South PTC!
As a way to practice emotional intelligence both inside and outside of the classroom, West second graders lit up the school with kind notes. Together, our second graders learned that spreading empathetic communication can truly help in brightening someone's day. With the messages being displayed for all students and staff to see, the notes act as a reminder that our words have a big impact in our lives by encouraging kindness and positivity.
Before the start of the holiday break, East students and staff came together to celebrate the winter festivities with some wonderful songs! East staff dressed up in their best wintery outfits to perform for our East Eagles, including songs like "Frosty the Snowman", "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer", "I Have a Little Dreidel", and other holiday classics. This event spread cheer to everyone in the school, bringing students and staff together to enjoy the winter spirit.
📅 Thursday, January 15th | 9:30-10:30am
To get our future kindergarteners ready to start their academic journey, and to prepare parents for this exciting next step, we will be holding an informational meeting at East School.