Christopher Gibbons has been named a National Merit Scholar. He is among 2,500 students with the “strongest combination of accomplishments, skills, and potential for success” out of 15,000 finalists, according to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. Photo courtesy of Lyme-Old Lyme High School.
OLD LYME–A Lyme-Old Lyme High School senior is among 2,500 National Merit Scholars honored as the most accomplished in their states.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation in a press release identified Christopher B. Gibbons, of Old Lyme, as one of 30 honorees from Connecticut to receive a $2,500 scholarship from the corporation.
The winners were chosen because they showed the strongest combination of accomplishments, skills, and potential for success out of the 15,000 finalists identified nationwide in this year’s contest, the nonprofit corporation said.
The corporation will continue to announce National Merit Scholars through July.
LOLHS guidance counselor Jo Williams in an email praised Gibbons’ “wonderful, curious mind.”
She described an intense schedule over the past several years that has helped prepare Gibbons to study linguistics at the University of British Columbia in Canada.
High school coursework included seven Advanced Placement and college-level classes, including AP Calculus as a sophomore.
Gibbons speaks Mandarin, Spanish and Polish in addition to English. He attended an ACES International trip to China over the April break that his guidance counselor described as “quite an immersion.”
Gibbons is a member of the National Honor Society, the Environmental and Community Service Club and the Chinese Honor Society. He volunteers at the Old Lyme Phoebe Griffin Noyes Library and was a Boy Scout from 2018 to 2024, achieving the Star Scout rank.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation said the number of winners named in each state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the nation’s graduating high school seniors.
The first group of appproximately 830 Merit Scholars was announced in April, the corporation said. About 360 more students will be announced in June and July.
As part of a years-long process, the corporation said the current swath of National Merit Scholars were first identified beginning in October 2023 as high school juniors taking the PSAT. The highest-scoring participants in each state, representing less than one percent of the nation’s high school seniors, were named semifinalists. More than 16,000 semifinalists had an opportunity to continue in the competition.
Over 15,000 of the semifinalists met the very high academic standards and other requirements to become finalists.
More than 6,930 finalists by the end of the summer will have earned the Merit Scholar title and received a total of nearly $26 million in college scholarships, the corporation said.
LYME/OLD LYME — Registration for Kindergarten in Lyme-Old Lyme Schools for the fall of 2025 is open at Lyme Consolidated and Mile Creek Schools.
Children who will be five years old on or before Sept. 1, 2025 are eligible to register for the 2025-2026 school year.
If your child is currently enrolled in the Lyme-Old Lyme Schools preschool program, you do not need to register for Kindergarten.
Registration packets may be picked up at either school. The following are needed for registration:
Birth Certificate
Three forms proving residency
While you may complete the registration process at either school, your child’s school placement will depend on District attendance zones, which are determined in August.
If you would like additional information, call either school at these numbers:
Lyme-Old Lyme Schools Superintendent Ian Neviaser. (File photo)
LYME/OLD LYME–The Region 18 school district’s $39.7 million 2025-26 budget has gone from proposed to official now that voters in Lyme and Old Lyme have approved the spending plan, which is up 7.39% over the current budget.
Unofficial numbers show the budget passed by 457 votes to 297, which reflects 60.6% of voters supporting the budget and 39.4% voting against it. That, in turn, shakes out to a vote by town of 374 to 272 in Old Lyme and 83 to 25 in Lyme. The total number of voters in. both towns combined was a scant 754.
Of the proposed budget’s $2.7 million increase, $1.8 million is attributable to debt payments on the renovation project. Calls from some residents to mitigate the increase by dipping into the district’s Rainy Day Fund were rejected by the regional school board at the budget meeting Monday night.
The budget includes an elementary school music position that was on the chopping block when Superintendent of Schools Ian Neviaser presented his initial recommendation early this year. The regional school board reinstated the position after a group of residents decried the ripple effect the reduction would have on the entire music program.
Neviaser on Monday evening welcomed the news. “We appreciate the continued support of our communities allowing for us to provide a top notch education for the young people of our two towns,” he said in a text message.
District budget documents show that Old Lyme is responsible for $31.51 million of the budget, while Lyme must pay $6.96 million. Both towns are billed by the regional school district based on enrollment.
That’s a proposed increase in Old Lyme of $1.99 million, or 6.7%, and in Lyme of $299,504, or 4.5%.
The Region 18 Board of Education on Monday declined to take upwards of $700,000 from the district’s ‘Rainy Day Fund’ to mitigate the impact to taxpayers of a $39.7 million budget proposal.
OLD LYME–The Region 18 Board of Education on Monday evening unanimously sent the proposed $39.7 million 2025-26 budget to referendum unchanged despite calls from several residents to take money out of its reserve funds to reduce the impact on taxpayers going forward.
The referendum will be held Tuesday from noon to 8 p.m. Old Lyme residents and qualified taxpayers will vote at the Lyme-Old Lyme Middle School Gym, 53 Lyme Street. The vote in Lyme will be held at the Lyme Town Hall, 480 Hamburg Road.
Of the proposed budget’s $2.7 million or 7.39% increase, $1.8 million is attributable to debt payments on the extensive renovation project affecting all the district’s schools except Lyme-Old Lyme High School.
Old Lyme resident Andy Russell, a member of the Old Lyme Board of Finance and the District Building Committee, who said he was speaking for himself, asked the board to use $700,000 of its $3.1 million undesignated fund – colloquially referred to as the ‘Rainy Day Fund’ – to offset the anticipated increase in the district’s special education spending.
State law beginning in 2023 empowered each regional school board to create a reserve fund for “educational expenditures.” The law previously specified reserve funds could only be used for one-time capital expenses.
Special education is up$726,721, or 58.67%, in the proposed budget. Superintendent of Schools Ian Neviaser has attributed the increase to the number of students, who need to be placed in programs outside the district to meet their needs. There are four students requiring outplacements in the coming year compared to the single student identified when the current budget was approved.
Russell said the school board could dip into its undesignated fund balance for the next several years until the debt payments stop increasing.
He said the district typically ends each year with a healthy surplus.
“I’m reminded that you’ll probably end up – because the school district is very well run – with another $700,000 put back in that budget following this year,” he said.
David Kelsey, another Old Lyme Board of Finance member, who also said he was speaking for himself, said the school board needs to be more “healthily skeptical” of the enrollment projections from the New England School Development Council (NESDEC) that helped justify the need for the renovation project.
He said the NESDEC forecast overestimated the number of students in the district.
“Going forward, we have a high school that’s going to need to be renovated as well, and I do not think that we need to rely upon projections that are not commensurate with an obvious skepticism that’s required,” Kelsey said.
District Building Committee Chairwoman Susan Fogliano before Monday’s vote to send the budget proposal to referendum laid out the school board’s case for not dipping into the ‘Rainy Day Fund.’
She said the school board over the past two years used reserve funds to reduce the overall amount of money that would have to be borrowed for the project, which resulted in the proposed 2025-26 budget coming in lower than the 10% increase originally anticipated.
She also cited grant funding and advantageous interest rates that helped bring down costs. Neviaser said the district will be spending about $17 million less than the $57.5 million price tag approved by voters at referendum in 2022.
Neviaser said the district’s bond rating – which district business manager Holly McCalla said has stood at an AA2 rating from Moody’s since 2017 – is influenced by the size of the district’s undesignated fund balance.
“Keep in mind too, we will be bonding again this summer, so they will be looking at what’s in our undesignated fund, and that does impact our rating,” he said. “We’ve confirmed that with our bonding agent, so that’s another consideration.”
Fogliano pointed out the school board has earmarked $1 million of the undesignated fund balance to be used if necessary for security upgrades to the school vestibules.
She said the district hopes to cover the expense out of the total project budget.
“We hope, but we can make no promises,” she said.
She cited the potential impact of tariffs enacted under the administration of President Donald Trump.
“A great number of our materials have already been purchased, but it’s possible we may see overruns that we don’t anticipate based on future purchases that we can’t control,” she said.
Fogliano and Neviaser said state law allows the district to put an amount not exceeding 2% of the prior fiscal year’s education budget into its reserve fund. But they said the school board is willing to put less than that into the fund in the coming year – if it makes financial sense at the time based on district needs – so that it can return more of the surplus to Lyme and Old Lyme.
“I just wanted to have that out on the table so everyone understands that we are thinking about this concept, and that we are doing as well as I think anyone could expect under the present circumstances,” Fogliano said.
