The announcement of a delay in the construction of the new Davis Street Interdistrict Magnet School was the latest in a string of recession-caused delays and consolidations in the City’s $1.5 billion school construction.
The announcement didn’t daunt Davis Principal Lola Nathan (on the right in photo) and members of her staff on hand at Monday night’s Board of Ed meeting The meeting featured a pre-Thanksgiving show-and-tell for how the Westville pre‑K ‑5 school is doing to improve their students’ learning, and those all-important CMT (Connecticut Mastery Test) scores.
The announcement of the delay, made by the mayor, who heads the Citywide School Construction Committee, was not exactly a surprise. Davis’s construction delay, setting back the inception of the project from the beginning of 2009 to the summer, comes on the heels of the already announced cancellation of the redesign and reconstruction of Vincent Mauro School and consolidation of its population with Sheridan; and the similar consolidation of Dwight with Troup.
The city issued a release Monday describing those changes as well as one-year delays in construction projects planned for New Haven Academy, High School in the Communityl, Helene Grant Head Start, the Early Learning Center at the former Martin Luther King School and the Microsociety School. The changes were made because debt service payments reach their height in 2009 — just as municipal bond markets have frozen, the release noted.
It’s likely, said school construction coordinator Sue Weisselberg (pictured here receiving a pre-Thanksgiving hug from Superintendent Reggie Mayo), that when the Davis project begins, its students will find temporary space in the Mauro building in the Hill.
Due to the poor condition of the 1918 Davis buildings, all the structures on the quiet street in Westville will be torn down. A larger new building will enable the current K‑5 to expand to the K‑8, the current model in New Haven.
Providing a little pre-holiday comic relief, the mayor said there might even be further delays depending on the Davis students’ presentation at the board meeting.
But they did well. Literacy coach Mary Derwin and third-grade teacher Jessica Atnes (on the left in photo, with Nathan) were looking forward to the enlarged 23-classroom building, but it wasn’t keeping their kids from making steady improvement, they said. They described highly personalized, data-driven interventions. “We mine very deeply,” Derwin said, “into the kids’ CMT and DRP [Degrees of Reading Progress] scores, looking even at specific test questions to shore up weaknesses. And, in the case of adequate readers, making them even more proficient.”
She was also at pains to point out that all the test prep didn’t get in the way of a school atmosphere where the love of reading in its right is celebrated. “Recently we had a bring- your-own-book and blanket night,’ she said.
The board also passed a resolution formally terming the Dwight School building “surplussed.” The next step will be for the citywide school construction committee to make a recommendation on its sale or other disposition; then that decision has to be approved by the board. It will likely be taken next month.
If Davis begins in the summer of 2009 — the mayor implied that additional delays are indeed possible — Weisselberg said the project would conclude within 18 to 24 months.