"I like the fact that there's a strong sense of community," Ms. Dymond, a resident of Shelton, said regarding her early impressions of HHES.
She succeeds Sharon Beitel, who left this summer after four years at HHES to become the principal at the John Reed Intermediate School in Newtown, which is named after the superintendent of schools who had hired her in the 1980s when she got her first teaching position.
Some months earlier, Matt Salvestrini, the assistant principal at HHES for four years, had announced that he would be leaving to become the principal at an elementary school in Southbury.
The school has an enrollment of students in second through fourth grade.
"They're making the transition from learning to read to reading to learn," Ms. Dymond said regarding the 560 students at HHES.
Carrie Kilian, who began work last month as the principal at CES, opened school with Superintendent of Schools Anthony Bivona and Assistant Superintendent of Schools Genie Slone joining her in the parking lot as she greeted the prekindergarten through first-grade students as they departed the school buses.
Ms. Kilian is in her 12th year as an educator after earning her bachelor's degree and teaching certification from Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, where one of her instructors was Jack Devine, a longtime consultant for the Brookfield schools. She previously taught in Darien and Ridgefield and most recently was the assistant principal at the Meeting House Elementary School in New Fairfield.
Ms. Kilian said CES started the year with 423 students, including a larger enrollment than last year in first grade.
BHS Principal Bryan Luizzi said that this was the first time since he was appointed to the position in August 2006 that he didn't have to stay at the school until the wee hours of the morning on the first day of the academic year. In each of the last three years construction crews had to move equipment and materials at the 11th hour while working on the $31.875 million renovation to the school, which was completed earlier this year.
Dr. Luizzi said that there was almost 100 percent attendance among the ninth-grade students last week for freshman orientation, where the new students reviewed their schedules and were introduced to the school's peer counselors.
BHS has established block scheduling, in which there are 83-minute periods, which should allow instructors to do more lab work and discussion group activities.
Dr. Luizzi said that the staff "dedicated time" during professional development sessions last week "to focusing on teaching and evaluating in the block schedule and how to use those 83 minutes in an effective way."
He said that he believes the system will better prepare students for college, where they take classes in a course on certain days and sometimes have to absorb material during longer class sessions.
Students have been issued planners to help them keep track of when projects are due, since, with the longer periods, the classes will meet less frequently than under the previous system.
"We've gotten some calls from parents as to why we're doing the block scheduling," Dr. Luizzi said. "This is a program that we've studied and believe will allow us to teach 21st-century skills."
Deane Renda, who was elevated from the position of assistant principal to the principal of WMS during the last academic year, said the school enrollment, which was at 1,000 students as recently as three years ago, is down to 950 students, the lowest enrollment in about six years.
June Gordon, who has been an educator in the district for nearly 25 years, left as the principal as CES to become the assistant principal of the fifth-and sixth-grade students at WMS.
"She is a great addition, because she knows all of the kids and she has a great rapport with all the kids and the staff," Mr. Renda said.
The WMS principal said that as a result of the federal No Child Left Behind legislation that former President George W. Bush signed in 2002, WMS and other schools have had to focus more on analyzing the data on the standardized tests that the students take each March.
"We have data teams," Mr. Renda said. "We have content-area grade-level teams that go over the data and determine where we need to spend extra time and how we should change teacher strategies."
Students in the third through eighth grade take the Connecticut Mastery Test each March and 10th-grade students take the Connecticut Academic Performance Test.
St. Joseph School, which has students in prekindergarten through eighth grade, began its academic year Tuesday.
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