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Maya McFadden |
Jun 7, 2024 12:17 pm
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Alex Lewis and Lisa Rodriguez celebrate Lewis' $500 college scholarship.
Hillhouse senior Alex Lewis began high school feeling isolated and insecure amidst online-only classes during the pandemic. All that changed when he joined the school’s Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC), which gave him the confidence he needed to feel like he too could go to college.
With the help of his sergeant and the local teachers union, Lewis received a $500 boost to chase that post-high school educational dream.
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Laura Glesby |
Jun 7, 2024 9:01 am
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794 Dixwell Ave.
The leaky roof of 794 Dixwell Ave. will soon get fixed, with the help of $300,000 from the city, in time for a new all-boys charter school to open there in the fall.
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Maya McFadden and Jabez Choi |
Jun 6, 2024 6:20 pm
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Adult Ed's Class of 2024 celebrate on Thursday.
Zamirah Jackson: "I am superwoman."
While flaunting a pink-gem-encrusted graduation cap reading “Mommy Did It!,” seventeen-year-old Zamirah Jackson crossed the stage Thursday to get her high school diploma from the New Haven Adult Education Center — never forgetting the long journey of balancing motherhood with accomplishing her academic goals.
Incoming ninth-grader Chrisette Kendall didn’t go into Hillhouse High School’s extracurricular fair looking for anything in particular. She left wanting to join the cheerleading team, the math team, and the Brown Girls Cooking and Conversation Club.
Superintendent Madeline Negrón: “There is no simple solution."
Cost cutting options, including $6M in staff.
Sixty-one public school jobs could soon be on the chopping block, as the superintendent laid the groundwork for layoffs to possibly come to help close a nearly $12 million budget gap.
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Maya McFadden |
Jun 5, 2024 9:35 am
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Inside Isabel Senes' ESL class Tuesday morning: NHPS's English language learner student enrollment has increased from 4,199 to 4,626 since October.
Career High School freshman Cecilia translated the sentence, “The horse is under the desk,” from Spanish to English in her head before saying the words out loud to her classroom conversation partner Enmerl — as part of a playful exercise in an English as a Second Language (ESL) class designed to help city public school students from a variety of linguistic backgrounds get up to speed in English.
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Maya McFadden |
Jun 4, 2024 9:14 am
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Biliteracy ceremony honoring the superpower of knowing more than one language.
Cross seniors Fernando Aroca, Paola Velasquez, and Anthony Perez: All recognized for Spanish proficiency.
During the school day, Paola Velasquez often pauses in the Wilbur Cross hallways to help out fellow students whose first language is also Spanish. She helps her peers know where their classes are, what the school bells mean, or what a teacher is asking of them.
Those skills were honored by the city’s public school district at a recent ceremony uplifting 176 “biliterate” graduating seniors who are proficient in languages ranging from Spanish to German to Pashto to Mandinka.
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Ashley Stockton |
Jun 3, 2024 2:14 pm
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Paras speaking up at a recent school board meeting.
The following opinion essay was submitted by Ashley Stockton, a New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) teacher and parent and city resident who currently teaches kindergarten at Truman School.
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Maya McFadden |
Jun 3, 2024 2:06 pm
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Student rep-elect Jonaily Colon (right) and challenger Vikram Dalal after Friday's election.
High School in the Community (HSC) sophomore Jonaily Colon prevailed in her bid to bring the voice of smaller high schools to the city’s Board of Education — after winning a school board student representative election to replace graduating Wilbur Cross High School senior Harmony Cruz-Bustamante.
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Maya McFadden |
May 31, 2024 11:50 am
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Truman sixth graders Jovanni Sanchez, Julian Torres, and Kayden Williams.
Twins Marin and Kana are left behind on a dystopian island that alternates between 14 years of sunlight and 14 years of nightfall.
The long sun is about to set — and Marin and Kana are not alone.
What happens next? Pulitzer Prize-winning local author Jake Halpern wouldn’t say. Truman School sixth graders Jovanni Sanchez, Julian Torres, and Kayden Williams had some ideas of their own.
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Maya McFadden |
May 29, 2024 6:13 pm
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Kindergarten reading levels: Going up, up, up?
New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) Superintendent Madeline Negrón has her eyes set on bringing kindergarteners’ literacy proficiency rates up from the current 18 percent to 80 percent by 2029 — as one of many goals included in the district’s new five-year strategic plan.
Cross Principal Brown: "The job of the teacher has never been harder."
Wilbur Cross Principal Matt Brown has a math problem to solve:
How do you lead a school where the building’s capacity is for 1,300 students, its enrollment tops 1,700, and the number of students who actually show up to class each day is somewhere in between — given the district’s persistent struggles with chronic absenteeism?
Brown’s answers: Get creative, share classrooms, celebrate student diversity, and encourage a sense of belonging and school pride among students and teachers alike at New Haven’s largest public school.
At Cross Friday morning: Education Justice Organizer Megan Fountain and Cross staffers Mia Comulada Breuler, Cordell Wallace, and Gwendolyn Bright.
(Updated) “What do we want? Fully-funded schools! When do we want it? Now!”
Those chants echoed down Mitchell Drive Friday morning as New Haven students, teachers, and paraprofessionals kicked off a day of action to rally support for increased funding for the city’s public schools.
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Maya McFadden |
May 24, 2024 9:31 am
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Leonaya Knox: Next stop, Georgia Southern.
Less than a day after Hillhouse High School track star Leonaya Knox broke a 25-year state record for 100-meter hurdles, she signed paperwork before a cheering crowd of family, friends, and peers to declare her commitment to becoming a Division I student athlete at Georgia Southern University.
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Maya McFadden |
May 22, 2024 8:07 am
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This work just got a whole lot more expensive for NHPS.
The cost of clearing the first inch of snow from New Haven’s public school properties during winter storms jumped from around $19,000 to more than $49,000 this year — thanks to what one Board of Education-hired contractor described as spikes in the costs of fuel, insurance, and maintaining worn-down snow removal equipment.
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Maya McFadden |
May 21, 2024 1:21 pm
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Imani Bryan and Alexis Aguirre unpacking first AP African American Studies class.
After learning about everything from Africa’s Mali Empire to Black rebellion during Reconstruction to the history of slave codes and slave ships and convict leasing — and with coursework still to come on the Black Panther Party and the Black Arts Movement — Career High School senior Eliana Brito Castillo praised her school’s inaugural Advanced Placement (AP) African American Studies class as opening her eyes to “a huge part of history that isn’t taught.”
“Now,” she said, “I feel I have a more complete view of how America came to be.”
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Maya McFadden |
May 17, 2024 11:51 am
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One of many Bishop Woods student awardees Seth Middleton ...
... at crowded Florence Caldwell Title I Award ceremony.
Students, parents, teachers, and administrators packed Career High School’s auditorium to celebrate middle schoolers for their academic growth this year in such areas as reading, math and science — and to honor the many adults who work tirelessly to make that learning possible.
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Maya McFadden |
May 15, 2024 12:01 pm
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Holly Maxson: From Waterbury to New Haven.
A former digital arts teacher and school musical theater director who currently serves as the top arts admin for Waterbury Public Schools will soon step into a similar supervisory role in the New Haven Public Schools district.
Hillhouse's Antoine Billy: Will be back in August.
Not quite three months into his new top job, Hillhouse High School Principal Antoine Billy has taken up a bet with some of his staff — that he will be returning to Hillhouse at the end of summer break, and that he won’t make the school find its sixth principal in less than three years.
If Billy wins that bet — which, he promised this reporter, he’s 100 percent sure he will — he plans to celebrate with a glazed Krispy Kreme donut in August. And a successful school year to follow.
District award winner Sanchita Dollin (center) with librarian Kim Rogers, Clifford, NHPS Supt. Madeline Negrón, and Scholastic's Liz Price.
The following write-up was submitted by New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) spokesperson Justin Harmon about Monday’s celebration of Supt. Madeline Negrón’s Reading Challenge.
New Haven is hustling to find more white, Asian, and suburban kids for three inter-district magnet schools — or else face a potential fine for having too many students enrolled who are Black, Hispanic, and from the city.
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Maya McFadden |
May 10, 2024 8:53 am
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Ari checks out a preserved black swallowtail butterfly.
In the school’s garden space, Clinton Avenue School fifth-grader Ari brought a magnifier close to a green, rounded leaf plucked from a dandelion and discovered tiny pearls — better known as caterpillar eggs.
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Allan Appel |
May 10, 2024 8:50 am
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Angel Mercado, Luis Diaz, and Joel Tolman on Thursday.
Walking to school is going to become a lot safer in the near future for students like Common Ground seniors Angel Mercado and Luis Diaz, as a half mile of new sidewalks connecting Brookside Estates and other developments with their Springside Avenue charter school are en route — as part of a suite of traffic safety improvements coming to the semi-rural West Rock corner of the city.
