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Melissa Bailey
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Jun 21, 2011 11:36 am
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From left: 5th-graders Tylon Watkins, Tyreese Sheats, Jamie Middlebrook, and Malik Brown pick up summer reading material.
Melissa Bailey Photos
Kids borrowed thousands of books. Reading scores rose. Parents feel their children are safer. The longer school day didn’t work out as well as planned at the city’s first in-house “turnaround” experiment.
As New Haven Promise prepares to dispatch its first CollegeCorps crew to knock on students’ doors this weekend, the program is looking for more volunteers.
Laying out a “blueprint” for his mayoral run, Clifton Graves took aim at a central plank of Mayor John DeStefano’s reelection platform — education. Graves called the city’s public schools a “failure” that have served as a “employment agency for the mayor’s political cronies.”
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Melissa Bailey
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Jun 14, 2011 11:12 am
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Hooker’s Robles-Rivas & Hershonik.
Quick learners at the Hooker School will get newfound independence, and a new team of teachers aims to boost Dixwell kids’ test scores by 10 percent, according to new plans due to take effect this fall.
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Thomas MacMillan
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Jun 10, 2011 7:35 am
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(3)
Thomas MacMillan Photo
Cosby with third-grader Evan Scott Alexander.
Sitting on the floor in Crocs and a baseball cap, Bill Cosby offered a gym full of laughing kids a math lesson on the difference between a “skazillion” and a “manillion.” His efforts just might help them get an education at Southern Connecticut State University.
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Thomas MacMillan
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Jun 10, 2011 7:20 am
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New Haven’s school principals have a “sense of empowerment and accountability” in general, and say that English-language-learning (ELL) and special education students still need more support.
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Melissa Bailey
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Jun 6, 2011 11:02 am
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(27)
Melissa Bailey Photo
George Cunningham joined mentors who talked to Hillhouse boys.
At Hillhouse High’s graduation this month, 97 girls and 75 boys will get diplomas. Two-thirds of the boys who entered the school freshman year didn’t make it.
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Melissa Bailey
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May 25, 2011 7:35 am
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(11)
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Dawn Gibson-Brehon worries that her son will be too close to recovering drug addicts and sex offenders when the city’s high-performing science and engineering school moves to a swing space this fall.
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Melissa Bailey
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May 19, 2011 7:16 am
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DeStefano chats with sophomores Kyle Duffy (left) and Daniel Frizzell (center) about calzones and careers.
Searching for ways to help public-school kids who won’t get college scholarships, New Haven officials took a look inside the bakery and auto shops of a Massachusetts school.
Three-quarters of the school’s students will show “more than a year’s progress” on standardized tests. The school’s overall test scores will “close the gap to the district average in five years.”
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Melissa Bailey
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May 17, 2011 7:25 am
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(62)
The Board of Ed postponed a vote on turning over the first city school to a for-profit entity, as the company revealed it has already secretly begun working at the Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy, before the public received notice.
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Melissa Bailey
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May 13, 2011 1:06 pm
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(51)
Officials don’t want to let the public know about it yet, but they alerted staff and some parents at the Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy this week that they’re planning to turn over New Haven’s first school to a for-profit company.
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Melissa Bailey
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May 10, 2011 9:37 am
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(44)
Principal Lucia Paolella of Nathan Hale.
Kids will choose their own books and join more clubs, and a batch of new teachers will get more training in classroom management, according to new plans underway at three city schools.
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Melissa Bailey
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May 6, 2011 12:04 pm
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(6)
City kids will play Grammar Jammers on the iPad and welcome suburban students into their West Rock classrooms, as New Haven’s first in-house “turnaround” school becomes a communications-themed magnet.
Sixth-graders Rachel Young and Mary Linton want to go to Yale one day. With a boost from a new “Pathway To Promise” campaign, they and students across New Haven spent part of the school day strategizing with their teachers about how to get there, as a seven-letter word became an official focus of the city school curriculum.
Junior Gysel Montufar, head of Hillhouse High’s math club, posed this numbers question to Mayor John DeStefano based on his proposed new school budget: Cut $166,255 from the textbook fund. That leaves a remainder of $617,777. Divide by 20,000 students. Resulting quotient: Only $31 per student for textbooks for the whole year, when the average text costs more than twice that amount. Do you care?
If I didn’t, the mayor responded, I wouldn’t be at this meeting.
“This is meant to be a dialogue,” said Principal Karen Lott. She pushed aside a heavy jar of Jolly Ranchers so she could sit face to face with her evaluee, a teacher in her 20s starting her career at ground zero for New Haven’s school reform drive.
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Melissa Bailey
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Mar 30, 2011 7:17 am
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(57)
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“What do we want? Textbooks!”
“When do we want them? Now!”
Students marched that message from their high school to City Hall, as they took school reform off-script and ended up with a face-to-face meeting with the mayor.
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Melissa Bailey
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Mar 29, 2011 11:04 am
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Principals Lott, Nathan and Tracey report on their experiments so far.
The extra-long school day at the district’s first in-house turnaround school has brought its share of “fatigue,” but staffers are finding ways to stay “resilient” as they face the next changes to the classroom.
