Online Health Screening App For Middle And High School Students

For Norwalk Public Schools middle and high school students, in order to maintain a healthy learning environment, all in-person learners must continue to complete a daily health screening form prior to entering school.

High School and Middle School students and/or their parents may now do so via the newly launched LiveSafe App. The LiveSafe App can be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play. High School and Middle School students may also scan the LiveSafe QR code or access the form on ClassLink.

Once the form is submitted, students will need to show the “check mark” screen to a school staff member. Responses are monitored through the system and flagged if necessary. 

If a child or parent does not have a mobile device, the paper health screening form may still be used. Paper forms are available at each school should one be needed. Parents of elementary school students should continue to fill out the paper form each morning.

Educational Equity Survey & Focus Group Registration Available For NPS Families

Norwalk Public Schools (NPS), in partnership with Temple University, is launching the next phase of the districtwide Norwalk Educational Equity Initiative. 

There will be two opportunities for NPS families to share their thoughts on this important topic: a survey and focus groups. 

To get a deeper perspective from the NPS community on equity in education within our school system, a survey for families is now available. 

Focus groups for parents will also be held over the next several weeks to explore equity through facilitated conversations. To ensure effective discussions, sessions will be limited to six participants at a time. Conducted by Dr. Fergus and Temple University researchers, focus groups will take place both virtually and in-person at a variety of locations throughout the city. Focus group signups are also available online. 

NPS Survey Link: Temple University & NPS Family Survey on Equity in Education 

NPS Focus Group Link: Temple University & NPS -- Family Focus Group Volunteer Sign Up 

Input from the survey and focus groups will be utilized to develop the next Strategic Operating Plan. Separate surveys and focus groups for employees and students will also be available.

All parents and guardians, both who currently have students enrolled in the district and those who have had students enrolled in the past, are encouraged to volunteer to participate in both the survey and focus groups. Your input is vital to the development of the next NPS strategic operating plan.

The Rowayton Racketlon raises $2,000 for Carver kids

Carver advocate Drew Seath and his friends organized a new special event for the benefit of the Carver community: The Rowayton Racketlon!

This charity racket sports tournament involved participants playing paddle tennis, pickleball, badminton and ping pong, one sport after the other, while observing social distancing rules. 

They called the event the Rowayton Racketlon after the sport rackelton in which competitors play a sequence of the four most popular European racket sports: table tennis, badminton, squash, and tennis.

One set is played in each sport, in the order from the smallest to the biggest racket. Each of the four sets are played with running score to 21 points, with a margin of two points needed to finish a set. The winner of a racketlon match is the player or doubles pair who has won the most points in total. When a player leads a match with more points than there are points left for the opponent to obtain, the match is over. All rules that apply to the four individual sports also apply for racketlon.

The sport originated in Finland and Sweden and was modeled on other combination sports like the triathlon and decathlon.

However these generous Rowayton Carver donors chose to set the rules for their fun and innovative Rowayton Racketlon, Carver students were the winners!

NPS Strategic Plan Listening & Learning Tour

Free Meals for All Norwalk Children

Carver alumnus Jeffrey Joseph inspires today's Carver students

See all our alumni stories here.

The clear-sighted earnestness of Carver alumnus Jeffrey Joseph is typical of Carver students, but Jeffrey’s story is uniquely his own.

Jeffrey is a third-year J.D. candidate at the University of North Carolina School of Law. Upon graduation he will be joining Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough as a first-year Associate handling complex transactional and regulatory matters for the firm’s Energy Industry Group. Having just served there as a Summer Associate, he will be working in their Charlotte, North Carolina office next year.

How Jeffrey reached this point in his life and career involved his devoted Haitian parents, Carver summer and after-school experiences, and the insightful and determined advocacy of Dick Whitcomb resulting in a scholarship to attend St. Luke’s School. Jeffrey attended Emory University supported in part by Carver scholarships and the Boule Scholarship. Jeffrey’s success is a testament to what happens when education lives up to its highest potential to ennoble the human spirit.

Born in Norwalk, fluent in English and French Creole, bursting with athletic and academic ability, Jeffrey did not come into his own until a crucial parent-teacher conference at West Rocks Middle School. At that moment, Jeffrey fully accepted what his parents, teachers, and Carver friends and staff believed him capable of achieving.

Dick Whitcomb is an Advisor (ex officio member) to the Carver Board of Directors after serving as a board member for many years, and he is Headmaster Emeritus, St. Luke’s School. Dick has been there for many Carver students through the years.

St. Luke’s School opened the world to Jeffrey, especially as a football star traveling with his team. “Carver experiences gave me the confidence to succeed at St. Luke’s School, as one of the few Black students there,” Jeffrey shared with us. 

Jeffrey could have easily leveraged his athletic accomplishments to gain entrance into an array of prestigious colleges, but he chose to attend Emory University for its academics alone. Though he initially chose Political Science over sports, Jeffrey takes his daily inspiration from his hero and role model Kobe Bryant: “Mamba Mentality is about prioritizing your professional goals over having a normal, balanced life. It is about playing without fear, mastering your craft and wanting not only to win, but to dominate.” The five pillars of Kobe’s Mamba Mentality are: Resilience; Fearlessness; Obsessiveness; Relentlessness; and Passion. This is the Jeffrey we know and love.

Few things are more heartwarming than bearing witness to one human being expressing deep gratitude for the profound, course-altering impact another has played in her or his life. This is what Jeffrey feels toward his parents, Dick Whitcomb, church communities, Carver, and so many others through the years. “I tell people all the time that my successes and accomplishments are not my own. I owe so much to those who have poured into me.”

Jeffrey is a member of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, founded on the Howard University campus. The Omega Psi Phi Fraternity remains “…on the front line, leveraging its power, influence and more than 100 years of commitment to the uplift of our people and our communities.”

Jeffrey transcended his challenges. In many ways, Jeffrey is still that middle school student who, despite the years, has never stopped being a grateful and eager pupil. He still embraces the Norwalk and Carver communities with all his heart. “The Carver has poured so much into my family. The success of my younger brothers Tomar and Isaiah, also Carver kids, are examples of this investment.”

“Sure, it takes a lot of hard work, luck, and God’s direction in life,” Jeffrey said. “However, I’d be remiss not to acknowledge the privileges I have been afforded along the way. I see and feel the inequities that affect our community every day and when advising Carver kids my approach is more nuanced that simply telling them, ‘If I can do it, you can too.’ I am merely one among many examples of what a Black kid from Norwalk can achieve. You can be a Kadeem Roberts, an up and coming politician, or Silas Redd, one of the best athletes to come out of this city. You just have to be willing to sacrifice and work for it. If anything, I simply want to inspire kids to seize even the slightest of opportunities even when the finish line isn’t readily apparent.”

Jeffrey continues, “I don’t know anyone else’s circumstances. There certainly are difficult and discouraging societal structures and barriers in place every step of the way. Despite the challenges, each young person can still exert control over her or his life. My message to Carver kids is to give your all to finding your individual paths to success. Find a way ahead that is bigger than your limitations. There is a wide-open world awaiting you that is bigger than your present-day circumstances. Fight for your dreams and don’t ever be afraid to advocate for yourself. Take full advantage of what you have access to; there will be good people ready to help you along the way.”

While preparing to become a lawyer, Jeffrey is presently a part-time Teaching Assistant for Professor Theodore Shaw's Social Justice Lawyering class at the University of North Carolina. His duties include research and preparation of source material for the class and legal analysis and writing of novel issues pertaining to voting, a particularly poignant subject for the nation during these fraught days.

As a Juris Doctor candidate, Jeffrey serves as treasurer for the school’s Holderness Moot Court and is a member of the Court’s Sports Team. Jeffrey is treasurer of the school’s Black Student Law Association, and serves as a member of the Transactional & Corporate Law Association. Jeffrey is also an intern with Oakhurst Energy, a provider of solar, solar storage, and other renewable energy development services. As a recent Summer Associate at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, Jeffrey worked on complex transactional and regulatory matters for their Energy Industry group.

In 2019, Jeffrey worked for the North Carolina Department of Justice in their Revenue Section where he assisted attorneys in all aspects of investigations and litigation. From 2015 to 2018, Jeffrey worked as a Contracts Administrator for United Technologies in Houston. He also interned in their contracts department in 2014. Jeffrey interned in the General Counsel’s office at GE Capital Aviation Services in Stamford in 2013.

From the moment Jeffrey found his voice, even though he did not know the details of the journey that would unfold before him, every positive act tacitly invoked a value that would stay with him throughout his life. Awareness, no matter how confused at any moment, developed from those positive steps forward. Real generosity toward the future lies in giving your all to the present.

Jeffrey’s story shows how one person can mend what has been torn apart, make justice imaginable in a world so obviously unjust, and give happiness a meaning that Carver kids can believe in. Jeffrey reawakens our noblest nature with newfound poignancy today. As much as Jeffrey is grateful for the countless acts of generosity through the years that enabled him to fulfill his goals, we share his story with deepest gratitude to Jeffrey for his Mamba Mentality and for giving our youth today an inspiring example of the Carver mission in action.

All Norwalk high schoolers invited to Norwalk's Youth Town Hall on 9/30/20 at 7 PM

35th Annual New Canaan Rotary Club Lobsterfest!

The New Canaan community is near and dear to heart of the Carver community! The next Lobsetrfest will be a drive-through with curbside pick up at the Waveny Pool Pavilion (663 South Ave, New Canaan) on Friday, October 16th and Saturday, October 17th.

Orders need to be placed online in advance at https://www.newcanaanrotarylobsterfest.org. No tickets will be sold on site.

All food will be prepared and packed by professional caterers from New Canaan's Fjord Fish Market (steamed lobster or grilled salmon dinners) and Walter Stewart's Market (fried chicken dinner) with wine and beer selected by Stewart’s Wine & Spirits also available for purchase.

A limited number of home deliveries are available for orders of 8 or more. Orders will be placed in your car/trunk per your request by members of the Rotary Club and the SLOBs.

Proceeds from Lobsterfest are the New Canaan Rotary Club's main source of funds to provide grants to support many local non-profits. In 2020 alone, over $40,000 was donated to more than 30 local non-profits.

Order by September 30th to save 10% on all meal tickets! NO discount code required! NEW: Buy Gift Cards and send a dinner to friends, co-workers, clients or say THANKS to a local First Responder.

If you would like to become a sponsor, please visit their website link above. If you cannot attend but would like to make a donation, you can do so on their website.

Nancy on Norwalk: Superintendent Alexandra Estrella shares next steps for the district

Read the entire article here.

Norwalk Superintendent of Schools Alexandra Estrella, just two months into her new job, sat down with NancyOnNorwalk to discuss starting work here during a pandemic and the Board of Education’s strategic approach to defining new goals for the future.

Estrella, former superintendent for Community School District Four in East Harlem, described herself as hands on, making it a priority to visit every school and have in-depth conversations with each principal in the weeks prior to the schools reopening, so she could get to know them. She also sought information about the district and advice on what she should continue doing or keep in mind as she transitions into her new role.

…the district is working toward drafting a new strategic operating plan, “hopefully at some point between January and February.” The listening and learning tour guided by Temple University Associate Professor Edward Fergus, Ph. D., as part of the equity initiative is part of that: “We are starting off by building the capacity and building a common language and understanding of what, what implicit bias is what does it mean? And how do we, as individuals contribute to the largest system around some of these challenges?”

MISSION POSSIBLE! Darien youth to undertake a campaign to support Carver kids

Organized by the Community Fund of Darien, Darien youth are about to undertake a campaign to gather PPE supplies for Carver students!  

The weeklong MISSION POSSIBLE! drive will be to collect as many new reusable and disposable face masks for Carver kids as possible. MISSION POSSIBLE! runs from Saturday, September 19th to Saturday, September 26th. We will have a collection bin at the Darien Sport Shop at 1127 Post Road in Darien to collect the donations.

Carver kids are back to school!

All of our K-12 before and after school programs are operating with the goal of achieving full enrollment by November 1st. Students and teachers are adjusting to the new public health challenges and rules. All our students have computers. Transportation is adjusted with more bus monitors. Carver also operates one of the two Community Pods for Norwalk public middle and high school students on their virtual learning days.

Thank you for your generous support!