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Nora Grace-Flood |
Dec 21, 2022 6:27 pm
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Wilbur Cross's athletic complex: Ready for plastic repairs.
Synthetic turf prevailed over goose poop-laden grass — as high school athletes won not a football or soccer game but a civic debate against environmental advocates concerning the harms and benefits of replacing Wilbur Cross’s chronically muddy sports area with a field of plastic fibers.
CT Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker: "I want Team New Haven to know that the Department of Education is here to support the work that you are doing."
Tuesday's state delegation-organized meeting about NHPS.
Connecticut’s top education official and New Haven state lawmakers called city public school district leaders to the table for a reality check on student chronic absenteeism — and for a discussion on improving local public education while working as one “Team New Haven.”
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Maya McFadden |
Dec 19, 2022 2:23 pm
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First grader K'Jalee makes tasty treat for birds during Wellness Wednesday, an outdoors and inclusive successor to a talented and gifted program.
Students looking for color inspiration for their art class mandalas.
An Edgewood School first grader spooned sun butter and Cheerios onto a pinecone to feed a hungry bird.
Nearby, one of her fourth grade schoolmates found inspiration for a classroom art project in a pale-yellow house with green shutters.
And in an outdoor classroom area near Yale Avenue, an eighth grader weaved coral-colored yarn around two sticks to make a dream catcher to beautify her school, all as a part of a unique effort to address both social emotional challenges in the classroom and concerns about exclusivity in enrichment programs.
Shelley Smith and second grader Maite at New Haven Reads tutoring site.
The Elicker Administration is looking to spend $3 million in federal aid to build out a new math and literacy tutoring program designed to help up to 1,500 public school students catch up on lost learning during the pandemic.
With a look of defeat, Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School (BRAMS) eighth grader Dakarai Langley lifted his left foot and dangled it over the edge of an auditorium stage as a song shook the dark room with the lyrics: “Would anyone cry if I finally stepped off of this ledge tonight?”
And then Langley kept dancing, proving to everyone in the room before him just how lucky this city is to have this young artist call New Haven his home.
NHPS dropout prevention workers canvassing during the pandemic.
Laura Glesby photo
NHPS's Dania Torres and Gemma Joseph-Lumpkin on Thursday.
When Dania Torres knocks on a student’s door, she doesn’t know if she’ll find a kid sick with the flu, a teen wrestling with substance use, a parent reeling from domestic violence, or a family preparing for the fallout of an eviction.
As a New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) dropout prevention worker, Torres is tasked with visiting the homes of students who have missed several — or sometimes most — days of school.
She explained the myriad of challenges that lead kids to build up absences and fall behind in school during a workshop on that very topic of chronic absenteeism hosted by the Board of Alders Education Committee.
School board members ended a meeting early after a heated disagreement over how best to move forward with the search for a new superintendent turned personal, amid fears of repeating the mistakes of a previous “unethical” search.
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Maya McFadden |
Dec 12, 2022 7:07 pm
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Brown: Coming back to NHPS.
Former High School in the Community Building Leader Matthew Brown is heading back to the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district to become Wilbur Cross High School’s third principal so far this academic year.
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Maya McFadden |
Dec 9, 2022 10:34 am
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Melissa Bailey File Photo
Michelle Sherban: "I have witnessed the impact we as educators have on the lives of our students."
Michele Sherban plans to retire at the end of this school year after more than three decades of serving New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) as a teacher, administrator, and central office director of research and evaluation.
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Maya McFadden |
Dec 9, 2022 9:08 am
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First graders erupt from mountain pose at Lincoln Bassett.
Lincoln Bassett School first graders took a break from their usual class instruction to witness a volcanic eruption.
Luckily, the eruption took place during a yoga lesson where the students locked their fingers together, pointed them to the sky in a mountain pose, and then made them burst apart into what resembled an explosive geological wonder.
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Maya McFadden |
Dec 8, 2022 9:16 am
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Ashley Stockton (center) at "Tell Me Why It Works" panel.
The stakes of learning the wrong way to read are more than just academic for Ashley Stockton.
The Wexler-Grant teacher saw firsthand how her son with dyslexia struggled in school when following a now-outdated method that prioritizes looking for clues and guessing at words — and she saw how his literacy improved when, with the help of a costly private tutor, he began to sound words out.
Stockton shared that story of her shift in understanding about how reading can and should be taught during a panel discussion called, “Tell Me Why It Works: The Science Behind Reading.”
Career High's Jonathan Berryman with Board of Ed VP Matt Wilcox Wednesday.
The Board of Education has hired a national search firm to try to find the next city schools superintendent by March — raising public concerns that the process to find Iline Tracey’s replacement needs to be longer and more community-focused.
The following letter was written by former Wexler-Grant 1st grade teacher Mary Healy, who resigned from her New Haven Public Schools job earlier this year.
Healy originally wrote this letter on Sept. 14. She then sent it by email to the Board of Education on Wednesday night to explain why she left after working for 10 years in a district she hoped to spend her whole career in.
The Independent is reprinting Healy’s letter/email with the author’s permission. Click here to read another recent Independent article about a teacher who left, and about what NHPS is doing to try to retain local educators.
At NHPS's recent "reading expo" at Betsy Ross Parish Hall.
The city’s public school district is now down to five choices for which state-sanctioned program to adopt as it builds out an enhanced K‑3 literacy plan that is required to follow the “science of reading,” which emphasizes learning how to sound out words instead of looking for other clues.
Paras Union President Hyclis Williams: Looking for "a decent wage for a modest living."
Paraprofessionals who help run the public school district’s before and after school programming will receive an “extra duty” pay hike of more than $10 per hour for their work this school year.
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Allan Appel |
Nov 28, 2022 8:56 am
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Aubrey Bido and Aaliyah Jones trying to calm speeders.
“We have to worry so much about the cars going fast, we can’t learn how to spell!”
The remark by Common Ground High School freshman Aubrey Bido and her classmate Aaliyah Jones was jokey about the misspelled word on Bido’s sign,“Yeild” for “Yield,” but the occasion was anything but.
In fact, the message — and the West Rock safe streets sign-making workshop it sprang from — pointed to a matter of life and potential vehicular death.
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Maya McFadden |
Nov 23, 2022 12:02 pm
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Melissa Bailey photo
Starting with high hopes: Carina Ruotolo in Clemente art classroom in 2012.
Roberto Clemente art teacher Carina Ruotolo wanted to keep teaching in New Haven’s public schools.
But a lack of support during Covid, rapid turnover at the top ranks of her school, and higher pay elsewhere in the state led her to part ways with the district after a decade on the job — reflecting some of the factors fueling a citywide teacher shortage that has the district scrambling to fill classroom spots and keep kids learning.
Board of Ed member Darnell Goldson: "First, one of our schools was shut down due to a lack of proper maintenance of the HVAC system, now our seventh and eighth grade classes are being dismantled. What's next?"
A shortage of teachers at Brennan-Rogers School has led the city’s public school district to recommend that families transfer 7th and 8th graders out of the West Rock magnet school and to another New Haven public school that has more educators on staff.
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Maya McFadden |
Nov 18, 2022 2:11 pm
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New Haveners pick up turkeys from John Martinez parking lot.
Hundreds of New Haveners are now a bit more prepared for next week’s holiday meal after picking up a free bird at the city Youth and Recreation Department’s annual turkey drive.
First marking period discipline data over the last three academic years.
Expulsions, suspensions, and in-school fighting are all on the rise as the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district sees a significant increase in discipline so far this school year.
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Maya McFadden |
Nov 17, 2022 12:32 pm
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Gateway's William Brown talks reading, kindness at Mauro-Sheridan.
With a book in hand, Gateway Community College CEO William T. Brown showed Mauro-Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School second graders the superpower of kindness — and the benefits of good deeds and college educations.
Youth engagement chief Gemma Joseph Lumpkin: Looking to "stop the bleed."
NHPS data
First marking period student absenteeism #'s.
More than four out of every 10 New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) students have missed at least 10 percent of school days so far this academic year — raising questions about why so many young learners are “chronically absent,” and putting a spotlight on what exactly the public school district is doing to make sure kids go to class.
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Maya McFadden |
Nov 15, 2022 10:18 am
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Educators rally outside City Hall for full school funding in March.
The Board of Education unanimously approved a new teachers union contract that local educators described as “life-changing” — thanks in large part to a nearly 15 percent pay hike over the next three years.
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Maya McFadden |
Nov 14, 2022 11:46 am
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Maya McFadden file photo
Shelley Smith tutors second grader Maite at Bishop Woods Thursday.
Bishop Woods second grader Maite paused and took a deep breath as she looked at the word: “Dent.”
She knew what it meant. The spelling was the hard part. So she decided to sound it out — at the suggestion of a tutor from a successful New Haven nonprofit that has been called in to help the city’s public schools up their reading game.
