Region One school board approves high school graduation venue change

FALLS VILLAGE — The 2025 graduation ceremony at Housatonic Valley Regional High School will be held on the front steps of the school, not in a tent on the lawn.

The Region One Board of Education approved the change at its regular monthly meeting Monday, Nov. 4.

The newly-renovated and refurbished auditorium will host the end of the year awards activities and serve as a backup location in case of rain.

The board also approved an allocation of up to $5,000 for the purchase of stage skirting, bunting, and a pole/rail system for the backdrop curtain, to be funded from the graduation budget line.

The board approved the hiring of Brittany Bertola as a counselor at the high school. Bertola has a BA in Psychology from Mount Saint Mary’s University, and both a MA in Elementary Education and a sixth year degree in school counseling from Southern Connecticut State University.

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Selectmen suspend town clerk’s salary during absence

North Canaan Town Hall

Photo by Riley Klein

NORTH CANAAN — “If you’re not coming to work, why would you get paid?”

Selectman Craig Whiting asked his fellow selectmen this pointed question during a special meeting of the Board on March 12 discussing Town Clerk Jean Jacquier, who has been absent from work for more than a month. She was not present at the meeting.

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Dan Howe’s time machine
Dan Howe at the Kearcher-Monsell Gallery at Housatonic Valley Regional High School.
Natalia Zukerman

“Every picture begins with just a collection of good shapes,” said painter and illustrator Dan Howe, standing amid his paintings and drawings at the Kearcher-Monsell Gallery at Housatonic Valley Regional High School. The exhibit, which opened on Friday, March 7, and runs through April 10, spans decades and influences, from magazine illustration to portrait commissions to imagined worlds pulled from childhood nostalgia. The works — some luminous and grand, others intimate and quiet — show an artist whose technique is steeped in history, but whose sensibility is wholly his own.

Born in Madison, Wisconsin, and trained at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Howe’s artistic foundation was built on rigorous, old-school principles. “Back then, art school was like boot camp,” he recalled. “You took figure drawing five days a week, three hours a day. They tried to weed people out, but it was good training.” That discipline led him to study under Tom Lovell, a renowned illustrator from the golden age of magazine art. “Lovell always said, ‘No amount of detail can save a picture that’s commonplace in design.’”

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