Paul Bass Photo
ESUMS grad Yelena Muralles of the youth program LEAP, who’s headed to UConn this fall, checks in families at Monday’s rally/fair.
Back-to-school anticipation and excitement filled the air at Bowen Field as families prepared for kids’ return to the classroom — without a doubt, this year, that that’s where they belong.
The Board of Ed’s Youth, Family & Community Engagement staged the event Monday from 2 to 6 p.m. with the help of two dozen community agencies. An estimated 1,500 New Haveners lined up early to pick up backpacks filled with school supplies, down hot dogs and soft-serve ice cream, shake their bodies, find out about scholarships and health care and after-school activities, and, if they made it across the street to Hillhouse High’s fieldhouse, get a Covid-19 vaccine shot. A steady stream continued arriving throughout the afternoon.
New Haven Promise Program Manager Jorgieliz Casanova tells parents about scholarships and student internships.
The families circled the booths arrayed around Bowen Field track to get on track for the new school year, which begins Aug. 30.
The goal was to “give kids what they need to get off to a great start,” said public schools’ youth development and engagement supervisor Kermit Carolina (pictured above). “Day one is the most important day of school.”
Chief of Youth, Family and Community Engagement Gemma Joseph Lumpkin distributed attendance trackers to help parents prevent chronic absenteeism.
As usual this time of year, kids expressed a combination of nerves about the unknown and excitement about returning to friends and new challenges. Carlos Pizarro (pictured), armed with a hand sanitizer prize from Cricket Wireless’ beanbag booth, spoke of a slight concern about “seeing new people” when he begins 5th grade in two weeks, but he’s also looking forward to seeing his friends.
“It’s going to be good,” Xavier McClease (at left in above photo) predicted about freshman year at Coop High, where he plans to try out acting and play sports. At Monday’s fair, founder Lawrence Lopez (at right) offered Xavier a taste of the rowing involved at the new Crew Haven program at Long Wharf’s Canal Dock House on Long Wharf. Xavier expressed interest in signing up.
Jackson Andrew Biroscak was already pumped about third grade at Ross Woodward School even before Green Peacock zumba leader Chaila Gilliams got him swinging his arms and shaking his body at the fair. “I’m going to have a new teacher and a new classroom,” Jackson enthused. “It’s amazing! I can learn a lot.”
Parents, too, expressed a mix of apprehension and optimism: optimistic about their kids’ return to productive learning and play, apprehensive about the Delta variant-fueled resurgence of the Covid-19.
Parents felt that same nervousness last year. New Haven was the last city to resume in-school learning amid a public divide on the subject. But a year later, a consensus (mirroring a national consensus) was on display at the fair: No one expressed doubt that kids need to be back in person at school. No more remote, please; just make in-school learning work out, safely.
Even outdoors, many participants, including vaccinated participants keeping a safe distance from others, masked up at the fair.
“I’m feeling a little leery about it,” grandma Claudia (pictured), a retired Masonicare nurse who worked with hospice patients (who declined to give her last name), said about Mykara beginning Hillhouse and Ava beginning first grade at Barack H. Obama Magnet University School amid the pandemic/endemic. “Not everybody is following the rules, getting vaccinated and wearing the masks.” Still, she said, it makes sense to return to the classroom. And “this is great what they’re doing,” she said of Monday’s gathering, “the free stuff they give to the kids.”
“The biggest thing is safety of the kids — without losing the education,” Silas Shannon (pictured above) said as he waited on the Omega Psi Phi fraternity-run hot dog line with toddler Olivia and rising LW Beecher Museum School of Arts & Sciences Interdistrict Magnet kindergartner Silas IV.
“It’s tough as a working parent” to keep kids on track through remote learning said Shannon, who’s an accountant.
So it’s full steam ahead: “He’s ready. My wife’s ready. Everybody’s ready.”