Middle School Students to Brown Bag Their Lunches

The joy of having a new roof ready for the start of schools was evident among teachers and staff at Newtown Middle School Thursday as readied for students to arrive next week.

Their worst nightmare had not come true — having to share space with another school — the alternative officials would have put in place had the middle school not been ready to open on time.

About the only hitch in the opening was the state of the kitchen and cafetorium, which was slated to be completed by the end of this weekend but that would not have been enough time for the food vendor, Chartwells, to come in and prepare for Tuesday, according to Clerk of the Works Bill Knight, who is the town's on-site project representative.

That means students will have to bring brown bag lunches to school for the first week or so to give time for the kitchen and cafetorium to be completed and for Chartwells to set-up and accept food deliveries.

Principal Diane Sherlock sent a note to parents informing them of the delay in cafeteria use, saying no food or drink will be sold at the school until after Labor Day and asking that students bring a brown bag lunch and their beverages to school.

"Students will be eating in their classrooms during that week," she said in an e-mail.

The principal also urged all students to ride the school buses.

"If you find it absolutely necessary, parents, to drop your child off at school, please do so in the horseshoe area only," Sherlock said. "The side and rear of our school are still construction zones.  On Tuesday, when students arrive at school, they will be directed to the auditorium and will wait there until the first bell rings.  Staff will be in the hallways, helping to direct students to their homerooms."

Sherlock said the minor inconveniences were manageable.

"We are dry, we've got a new roof and it looks terrific," she said.

In addition to the roof crews, the project also required hustle from the middle school custodial staff, who usually spend the summer cleaning the building.

This year, they had to do double duty as they had to coordinate their cleaning schedule with the roofing work, clearing the furniture out of the classrooms and into the hallways so that the roof work could be done overhead, then, cleaning the rooms once the work was done and moving the furniture back in so that the roofwork about the hallways could be done, according to Tom Carapezza, one of the custodians.

In some cases, they had to clean rooms twice because the roof crews went into areas the custodial staff had already cleaned. It was a lot of work, Carapezza said, but well worth it now that school will open on time.