Aliyya Swaby Photo
Corey and Jae Rossman are drawn to Strong School in part because Lego blocks are integrated into the science curriculum. But they worry their son won’t be placed in the kindergarten class there, or in any of his other top choices.
They joined other families running around the Citywide School Choice Fair last week held at the Floyd Little Athletic Center, gathering pamphlets and information from among 50 school booths.
Though the district has changed the name of the process this year from “lottery” to “school choice placement,” many parents still feel like their children’s futures are up in the air.
The Rossmans (pictured above) want their son to get into kindergarten at Worthington Hooker, the closest neighborhood school to their East Rock home. But they are broadening their options by looking at STEM (science, technology, engineering & math) magnet schools like Strong School and Quinnipiac School. Their son is interested in “Legos, robots, construction,” Corey said. “He does things with Legos I would never have thought of.”
The choice fair is like “going to a restaurant that has a five-page menu,” Corey said. He said he and his wife worry their son will not get into his top-choice schools, but they do not want him to go to a private school, since they both went through the public school system. “We want him to be so comfortable interacting with anyone” from any ethnicity or background, Corey said.
The school district choose the phrase “school choice placement system” instead of “lottery” in order to reflect the way the system really works, said Sherri Davis-Googe, director of enrollment. The word lottery “can denote just balls in a bucket,” despite the fact that the system takes into account neighborhood and sibling preferences in order to place students in schools, she said.
Also new this year, students who want to transfer into another neighborhood school for grades 1 through 8 can apply through the placement system, instead of waiting until July 1 to request a transfer, Davis-Googe said. In previous years, the transfer process was late in the year and “first come first serve.” Now families will be notified earlier and will go through the same preference-based placement system as everyone else, she said.
At the fair, which was held this past Wednesday night, Regina Berryman said she wants her great-granddaughter to get into a K‑4 school, because she is “of small stature” and would be towered over at a school that went all the way up through eight grade. Last year, Berryman said, her great-granddaughter was accepted into the city’s newest charter school,Booker T. Washington Academy, as a preK student; the school ultimately opened as a K‑1 in fall 2014.
Berryman will try Booker T. Washington again, as well as proposed Achievement First charter school Elm City Imagine, which may open in August, pending district approval. But she said she worries about the daily schedule, which would have the K‑1 students start at 7:15 a.m. and leave at 5 p.m. “It’s a long curriculum for them,” she said.
Christine Tyson also said she wants her child to get into Booker T.‘s kindergarten, or into the charter Elm City College Prep Elementary School or East Rock Community Magnet School. From Newhallville, she lives closest to Lincoln-Bassett School, which this past fall underwent a state-funded turnaround. But Tyson said it was not one of her choices. “You don’t want your child to go to just any school,” she said.
Though some parents do not realize how much the school has improved, many are excited to send their kids to Lincoln-Bassett, said school Principal Janet Brown-Clayton. “Parents are sending people by word of mouth,” she said. “We make sure our every contact with parents is positive.”
Past monthly parent events have drawn in at least 100 people each, she said. “As long as we keep the positivity going, people will hear about it.”
Most families at the fair hail from New Haven, but some came from the surrounding suburbs to get a head start on the application process.
Paochen LaPointe of Hamden walked around looking for schools that would allow her son to continue studying Chinese, as he does at Hamden Middle School. She said she stopped by Engineering and Science University Magnet School’s booth — the school doesn’t have Chinese classes, but LaPointe was told her son might be able to take them at Yale University.
“Does your school have Chinese?” she asked Co-op High students Lauryn Wilson and Kayla Driffin, peer leaders volunteering to represent their school.
“Yes,” they responded, and proceeded to tell her about the program.
“Students really like the Chinese class. It’s very diverse,” Wilson said.
“He’s half Chinese, half American. It’s very important to me” that he continue to learn the language, LaPointe said afterward about her son. She said she plans to attend Saturday’s Interdistrict Magnet Fair for suburban families.
Achievement First (AF) Elm City Imagine Principal Katherine Baker answered a long series of questions from concerned parent Tom Robey, whose son is 4 and will be entering kindergarten. “I have a young boy who’s too active. He’s a little disruptive right now in preschool because he’s so engaged,” Robey said. He asked whether classroom management tactics varied by instructor or classroom.
“The school is designed for students who are very active,” Baker said. “We definitely know that kids are at very different development stages and personalities. It’s designed for different modes of learning. We can change the program to personalize it.”
Who are the teachers? Robey asked.
Details of a proposed financial partnership between AF and the New Haven Public Schools for Elm City Imagine—a charter testing out ideas for how to create the “school of the future”— have not yet been approved. But AF has already started hiring teachers and administrators. “We need a lot of staff who do have experience,” Baker said. In every classroom, there will be at least one very experienced teacher, as well as other newer teachers, recruited from across the country. “We want people who want to be here for a long time.” Elm City Imagine’s model encompasses a variety of creative teaching and learning methods, including a calendar alternating eight weeks of regular classes with two weeks of career “expeditions” and daily blocks of “self-directed learning.”
Robey said his priority is for his son to love school, not to be corralled through an academic regimen that is “too rigorous” or “too structured.” He said his mother used to be a public school teacher and he believes in the public school system, but he wants the best for his son. Despite agreeing politically with the anti-charter set, he said he likes the idea of his son having a less rigid academic experience at Elm City Imagine.
“I understand the politics, but as a parent, if this [process] doesn’t work out, I’ll probably pay for a private school,” he said.