When the brand new Clemente Leadership Academy opened Wednesday, the Hill neighborhood regained not just a school but a community center.
After spending two years away at a swing space, students returned to class at a new, $45 million school at 360 Columbus Ave. The Hill neighborhood school serves 531 students in grades pre‑K to 8.
The mayor and superintendent welcomed kids into the building Wednesday, the first day of school for 18,000 public school students in grades 1 to 12. Led by the school marching band, students formed a parade snaking around the building to new, prow-like front entrance at the corner of Columbus and Howard.
“The last two years, the Hill neighborhood has been missing something,” said Mayor John DeStefano during a grand opening ceremony. “What has it been missing?”
“Roberto Clemente!” answered a crowd of students and parents gathered outside the school in the blazing morning sun.
Citing the city’s new school reform plans, the mayor said the new building “doesn’t make a difference if you don’t work hard, achieve and go to college.”
The new, 75,000 square-foot building was designed by KAGAN Architecture, a city-based firm that also designed the Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School in the Hill and the Benjamin Jepson magnet school in Fair Haven Heights.
The school district originally proposed to add on to the old Clemente school, but then decided to tear it down and build a new one on the same site, said Thomas Haskell, an associate principal at KAGAN. The old Clemente school had few windows. It was a “very closed,” dark design, he said.
Haskell said in redesigning the school, his firm aimed to make it fit better with the neighborhood. The classrooms are filled with light, bright yellow paint lines the hallways, and an inner courtyard allows kids to play in safety, he said.
At Wednesday’s event, the city’s motorcycle squad showed up at city schools to make sure kids got to school safely. As the school year continues, Clemente will keep one city cop on hand to monitor hallways. Officer Al Acosta, a three-year veteran of the force, has been chosen as the school’s resource officer (SRO). He’s one of four new SROs that are being added to city schools this year, after new police academy classes restored positions in schools that had been eliminated.
As first-graders settled into class, two onlookers, apparently parents, peered in through the window.
While the new school is smaller than the new one, it makes room for a new, 24-student pre-kindergarten class. It also includes space for community events, including a gym-auditorium that fits 600 people.
Leroy Williams, who’s been the Clemente principal for 16 years, said the new building will allow the school to resume some neighborhood partnerships that had to be put on hold for two years, while the school was temporarily housed at Leeder Hill Road in Hamden.
The school will be open late — until 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and all day Saturday until 9 p.m.
During that time, a number of community groups are invited to come use the space, he said. Neighborhood kids are invited to join two basketball leagues in the gym; they don’t have to be Clemente students, he said. LEAP plans to run a Hill-based program at the school, and the Boys & Girls Club and YMCA should be returning for after-school activities, Williams said.
Other activities include parent reading groups and events run by the city parks and recreation department.
The new Clemente is part of the mayor’s $1.7 billion school rebuilding project, which aimed to renovate or rebuild every city school using mostly state money. Only a handful of schools — including Hill Central, nearby — remain to be rebuilt.
Williams (pictured) said he’s glad the school is returning to its original location. He said he wants the building to be used “for the whole community in the Hill neighborhood.”
“We pride ourselves on being open more than any other agency in the community,” he said.