Two years ago in October 2024, the NESDEC reported to the New Canaan Board of Education a projection that the incoming kindergarten class would increase from 272 in 2024 to 416 in 2026, an increase of 53%.
This was followed up by a study in the summer of 2025 suggesting that New Canaan needed a fourth elementary school “North School” to accommodate this surge in enrollment. This study included all sorts of additional things like renovating all the existing elementary schools and a new pre-school with a total budget of a up to $328 million.
A few months after this study, in January 2026, Superintendent Bryan Luizzi projected large increases in al the elementary schools because of a surge in kindergarten students in the 2026-2027 school year. The BoE was expecting an increase from 288 students in the 2025 kindergarten to 417 students in the 2026 kindergarten and was still considering a fourth school.
What happened? The surge of new kindergartners did not show up. Instead, of a 49% increase projected at the beginning of the year, there was a decrease to 280 or a 3% decrease. There is apparently no need for extra classrooms, let alone extra buildings.
The entire projection was based on a faulty assumption that new kindergartners are linear function of births from 5 years earlier. It did not consider that 2021 was an unusual year because a lot of young families and expecting parents moved to the suburbs earlier than usual because of the pandemic and gave birth in New Canaan instead of waiting a little longer to move out to the burbs.
This case is a good example of why “studies” should always be questioned when determining large expenses. Fortunately, the only extra expense the BoE did was pay for the cost of the study and not the $328 million capital expenditures proposed in the study.
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