By Sentinel Staff
The New Canaan Board of Education’s first regular meeting after Election Day combined ceremony, internal conflict and a sober fiscal warning about the condition of the town’s schools.
On November 17, newly elected and re-elected members were sworn in by Town Clerk Claudia Weber in the Wagner Room at New Canaan High School, then walked through ethics, Freedom of Information and public records requirements before reorganizing the board’s leadership for the new term.
First Selectman Dionna Carlson, herself a former multi-term board chair, presided over the organizational segment. A proposed motion to suspend the bylaw limiting the chair to two consecutive years drew no support and died without debate. The board then elected Phil Hogan as chair, Lara Kelly as vice chair and Erica Schwedel as secretary in separate votes.
The leadership reshuffle came days after voters returned Hogan and Schwedel to the nine-member board and added Democrats Kate Brambilla and Joshua Kaye, while Republican incumbent Julie Toal lost her seat. Republicans now hold a 5–4 majority on the board.
Dramatic resignation on the dais
The calm procedural start gave way to tension when member Matt Campbell, elected in 2023, used the secretary nomination to deliver a prepared statement accusing Hogan and Schwedel of “colluding” with the local Democratic Town Committee to shape the outcome of the recent election at Toal’s expense. He said he viewed the alleged arrangement as “unethical and antithetical to values I hold dear,” and described attempts “to viciously defame me and my family and to isolate me just for opposing them,” before announcing his immediate resignation from the board and leaving the room.
Campbell’s allegations have been publicly disputed, but his departure leaves a vacancy that, under state law, will be filled by the remaining board members until the next regular town election.
After Campbell exited, the board proceeded with the secretary vote and approved Schwedel, 6–2, with Kelly and Matt Wexler opposed. Hogan’s election as chair drew a larger majority earlier in the evening, reflecting his four years on the board, prior service as vice chair and experience leading the facilities committee.
The episode underscored the sharper partisan edges that have emerged around school governance in New Canaan and elsewhere. But it also clarified the lineup that will steer upcoming decisions on facilities, budgets and a long-term building program that could reshape the district’s physical footprint for decades.
Quarter-billion-dollar maintenance bill
The most consequential presentation of the night came from Studio JAED, an architecture and engineering firm that conducts facility condition assessments for districts and states across the country.
Principal Philip Conte told the board that an inspection of New Canaan’s five school buildings identified more than $250 million in deferred maintenance and system replacements over the next 15 years, with roughly $100 million of that need falling in the next seven. The work ranges from roofs, windows and masonry to mechanical, electrical, plumbing and site systems.
Conte stressed that the number does not reflect neglect so much as scale.
New Canaan Public Schools operates more than one million square feet of space across East, South and West Elementary, Saxe Middle School and New Canaan High School, serving over 4,100 students. Much of that space dates from the 1950s and 1960s and was last comprehensively renovated in the 1990s.
According to the assessment:
Mechanical systems (heating, ventilation and, where present, cooling) account for the largest share of projected cost.
Electrical upgrades are substantial, in part because older buildings were not designed for today’s power demands or for full-building air conditioning.
At Saxe Middle School, building envelope needs—roofing and exterior systems—are especially significant.
New Canaan High School, at roughly 375,000 square feet, faces major mechanical and interior investments if the district chooses to replace systems in kind.
Conte said the assessment is based primarily on useful life of equipment, not on observed failures. Many systems can continue operating beyond their theoretical life if they are carefully maintained, he noted, but doing so carries risk and rising maintenance costs.
“This is situational awareness,” he told the board. The report, he said, is not a set of work orders but “one piece of a larger planning tool” that should be revisited regularly by facilities staff and board members as they weigh program changes, additions or potential school reconfigurations.
Tied to a larger building plan
The timing of the assessment is not accidental. The district has been working on a multi-phase Future Facilities Plan, including a proposed “North School” on the Clark property to relieve projected elementary overcrowding by 2028 and to modernize all three existing elementary buildings.
That broader plan, which also contemplates moving fifth grade back to the elementary level and reconfiguring Saxe to expand pre-K, carries an estimated total cost between $194 million and $328 million, depending on design choices and state reimbursement.
SLAM, the firm supporting the district’s master planning work, told board members that the new condition assessment provides the “do-nothing” baseline: what it would cost simply to keep existing buildings functional without changing grade configurations or adding a new school. Any final recommendation on North School, elementary expansion or Saxe reconfiguration will now be measured against that baseline.
Board members pressed Conte and the SLAM team on how to avoid spending money twice—for example, by replacing roofs or electric service in areas that might later be expanded or demolished under a long-term plan. They also questioned whether replacing gas-fired equipment with all-electric systems, as some municipalities are doing, would drive up operating costs even as it reduces fossil-fuel use.
Conte replied that these choices are policy and budget decisions for the town, not technical mandates of the assessment. The report, he said, is designed so the district can prioritize projects by time horizon, building and system, and coordinate those choices with larger capital projects.
The analysis places New Canaan in a familiar discussion for Connecticut districts. Bridgeport, for example, recently received a study showing up to $709 million in needed school repairs and upgrades over a decade, underscoring how aging mid-century buildings and modern expectations for ventilation, technology and security are driving costs statewide.
Finances, donations and what comes next
Director of Finance Sean O’Keefe reported that district operating expenditures through October are slightly below the prior year as a share of budget, suggesting that spending is tracking as expected early in the fiscal year. The food service program is running a surplus, with lunch sales ahead of budget.
The board also accepted two donations: 57 Windows 11 laptops from a local firm for district use, valued at $14,750, and $10,000 from the New Canaan High School PFA for fall grants to support classroom supplies and student activities.
Those items, while modest next to a quarter-billion-dollar maintenance estimate, point to a continuing theme in New Canaan: the district’s day-to-day strength rests on a mixture of town funding, parent support and careful stewardship of facilities that are now reaching the age where capital needs arrive in clusters rather than one at a time.
The board will meet next on December 1, with a planned legislative update from the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education, a first look at 2026–27 budget assumptions and a first reading of the 2027–28 district calendar. By then, members will also be confronting the practical implications of Campbell’s vacancy and the political crosscurrents revealed in this meeting.
The new leadership team—Hogan, Kelly and Schwedel—will have to manage both: a divided board and a facilities agenda that could reshape school buildings, and tax bills, for years to come.
