Students from Stacey Crouch’s second grade class at Westport’s Coleytown Elementary School enjoy a day of fun at field day today as temperatures soared into the 80s. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Ariane Stiegler for WestportNow.com

Staples High School 10th grader Jackson Blackburn was awarded first prize today in an “engineering efficiency” competition in the Teck Ed class. The competitive goal was to build a model bridge that would support the highest mass weight on the lowest weight structure. Blackburn built a Warren Truss structured bridge (similar to the structure of the William F Cribari Bridge – also known as the Bridge Street Bridge) with only 1.58 ounces of balsam wood. It supports an item weighing 101 pounds. Blackburn, whose winning structure won first place over “10-15 other bridge entries,” said it required two weeks to construct.  Expressing pride in this engineering achievement, School Principal John Dodig said, “Everything we do here (at Staples) is at the varsity level.” (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com

By Dave Matlow

UPDATE AND CORRECT Westport’s Staples High School has won first place in the 18th annual Connecticut High School Geography Challenge at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.
Celebrating the win are (l-r) James D’Amico, Social Studies Department chair and Geography team coach, Eric Wessan, Victor Hollenberg, and Scott Grundei. Missing from the photo are Jeff Loselle and Alex Nitkin. (CLICK TO ENLARGE) Dave Matlow for WestportNow.com

The competition Tuesday saw juniors Scott Grundei, Victor Hollenberg, Jeff Loselle, Alex Nitkin and Eric Wessan, beat out 14 other teams from 10 schools around the state. It was the second time Staples had entered the competition, placing second last year. (An earlier version of this story said it was the first time.)

However, according to principal John Dodig, the students that entered the contest last year did so on their own entrepreneurial initiative. 

“I didn’t know what geography award they were talking about last year when I heard about it the next day,” Dodig said. 

The Westport Board of Education tonight approved revised budget allocations for meeting the $1.4 million reduction by town funding bodies in its requested 2009-10 budget increase.

The approved budget of just under $94.6 million is a .57 percent increase over the current year.

In two hours of discussion before their vote, board members heard that four employees had accepted the district’s separation incentive program resulting in $100,000 in savings. It was earlier told that 10 employees were eligible for the program.

They also were told that while no funds have been budgeted for salary increases for about 40 nonunion personnel, $90,000 has been set aside as an “incentive pool” for distribution to these employees.