Connecticut Postings

The legislature’s education committee, holding a marathon hearing on education reform bills, just heard Commissioner of Education Mark McQuillan speak in favor of House Bill 442, which would allow the state to replace school boards of chronically failing school districts. McQuillan said the law would be used sparingly, and would not necessarily usurp local elections, but would potentially remove a road block to reform. He is also in favor of a bill to reform the state’s high schools. A similar measure got hung up in the legislature last year.

A Derby Superior Court judge Monday refused to grant an injunction that would have blocked the Milford Board of Education from holding a termination hearing for Superintendent Harvey Polansky.
“To grant this would be showing a lack of respect for elected officials who have taken an oath to perform their duties in the best way they know how,” said Judge Dale Radcliffe, when making the ruling.
Polansky has been suspended with pay since Nov. 15 for allegedly sexually assaulting two female principals. He also faces criminal charges.

The sheer volume of downed trees and power lines is making the restoration of power across predominantly southern Fairfield County a very slow operation.

As of 10 a.m. Monday, 3,400 UI customers in Fairfield did not have power — 15 percent of the utililty’s overall base in that town. A little over 500 customers in Bridgeport remain without electricity.

Things are much worse down south. Half of Greenwich continues to be without power — 15,500 homes served by CL& P. And in Darien, 3,500 of the utilitity’s 7,800 customers have no electricity. Some 7,700 of the 29,400 customers in Norwalk still have no power.

For CLP’s outage list go here. UI’s home page, here, will lead you to their outage list.

There was a fatal stabbing early today in Milford.
The incident happened a little after 4 a.m. at 447 Woodland Drive.
Two people were injured. One was taken to Bridgeport Hospital, the other to Yale-New Haven Hospital’s pediatric unit.
It’s not known which of the injured has since died. We are trying to get more details on the incident.
We do know that one person has since been apprehened following a police pursuit that began in Milford and went through West Haven and ended in New Haven at Boulevard and Spring Street.

Tens of thousands of people in Fairfield County remain without electricity this morning, with outages particularly  heavy in the southern part of the county.

As of 9:05 a.m. Sunday, more than 16,000 customers in Greenwich are without power — more than 55 percent of Connecticut Light & Power’s service base, the utility said. Other communities hit hard include: Norwalk, with 14,800 customers without service; and New Canaan, with 5,000 of 8,300 customers without juice.

The immediate Bridgeport area is faring better. The city itself has only 1,900 outages, United Illuminating reports, only 3 percent of customers. Fairfield has the biggest hit right now, with 4,200 customers without electricity, about 19 percent of the total homes served. Trumbull and Shelton have no problems at all; Stratford  has 400 outages.

UI’s outage map is here. Click on the storm center link, then the outage map link. And CL&P’s is here.

A combination of press problems, power outages and lousy weather have delayed delivery of this morning’s Connecticut Post. Papers are being delivered throughout the morning.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Today’s rains have forced the cancellation of the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Milford. It has been rescheduled for March 21st, starting at 1 p.m.

Lawyers for suspended Superintendent Harvey Polansky will be in Derby Superior Court at 11:30 a.m. Monday in an attempt to block the Milford Board of education from beginning termination hearings against Polansky on Wednesday.

If the request for a temporary restraining order is granted it would block the board from holding hearings until at least April 5.

Polansky has been suspended with pay since Nov. 15 for allegedly sexually assaulting two female principals. He also faces criminal charges.