TUESDAY MORNING UPDATE

SCHOOL CONSOLIDATION TO BE CONSIDERED

The Stonington Board of Education is holding a special meeting on Monday, Dec. 11th concerning the possible consolidation of the town’s two middle schools. The school board is currently considering a proposal to close Pawcatuck Middle School and consolidate it with Mystic Middle School. The new school would be located at Mystic Middle School. The 6 p.m. meeting will be in the Stonington High School Commons. The board will present a short summary of the proposal followed by a question and answer session.

ONE PASSES, OTHER DOESN’T

One up vote, one down in North Stonington. Residents yesterday approved the town’s general government budget in a 308-271 vote but the education budget failed to pass, 294-284. Town officials say the board of selectmen will meet tonight and the board of finance tomorrow night to discuss options.

VESSEL REPAIRED

The University of Connecticut’s “R/V Connecticut” is back at Avery Point after undergoing a $2.5 million hull extension at a shipyard in Rhode Island. Workers severed the boat, creating a large gap in the middle and adding room for additional bunks and labs in the cabin and then welded the boat back together with enough space for six additional scientists. The vessel is being loaded with scientific equipment by researchers and its crew for a week-long mapping survey of eastern Long Island Sound.  It will be the first research voyage since the work on the vessel was completed.

DEVELOPER REPAYS LOAN

A controversial $150,000 loan, with interest, has been paid back to the New London Housing Authority by developers of a planned housing complex at the site of the former Edgerton School. FW Edgerton LLC had borrowed the funds from the housing authority in April 2016 to purchase the 120 Cedar Grove Avenue property. That was supposed to be the replacement site for the 122-unit Thames River Apartments. That plan has since been scratched and a 70-unit housing development at the same site has been approved.

CCM CONVENTION AT FOXWOODS

More than 1,000 lo­cal gov­ern­ment and busi­ness lead­ers are ex­pected to at­tend the Con­necti­cut Con­fer­ence of Mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties’ an­nual con­ven­tion “To­gether Toward To­mor­row,” which will open this morning with a break­fast meet­ing fea­tur­ing a dis­cus­sion of ways to im­prove Con­necti­cut’s econ­omy. On Wed­nes­day, the con­ven­tion’s key­note speaker, Neal Petersen, an award-win­ning au­thor, yachts­man and global in­vestor, will talk about striv­ing to achieve goals.  Nearly two dozen work­shops will be held over the two days on top­ics such as mu­nic­i­pal fraud pre­ven­tion; col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing; the opi­oid cri­sis,  dif­fi­cult la­bor cases, cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and lo­cal gov­ern­ment ethics.

SUICIDE FILM TO BE DISCUSSED

Slater Auditorium at Norwich Free Academy will be the location for parents and students to discuss what’s wrong and right with “13 Reasons Why,” the Netflix program about a female teenager who recorded 13 tapes identifying people who led her to commit suicide. Hartford HealthCare’s Behavioral Health Network will be there to generate dialogue and discussion. The program begins at 6:30 on Wednesday evening. The event is suitable for parents, teens, and school employees.