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Maya McFadden |
Mar 31, 2025 10:09 am
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Wexler in-school suspension coordinator Doug Bethea: "A lot of people from this area can't go to Newhallville."
Keyana Calhoun fought back tears at the thought of her five elementary school-aged children being transferred from Wexler-Grant School in Dixwell to Lincoln-Bassett School in Newhallville.
She felt blindsided by the public school district’s decision to merge the two community schools. And as a Newhallville resident herself, she’s been working hard to keep her kids far away from what she considers to be her home neighborhood’s negative influences.
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Jordan Allyn |
Mar 28, 2025 1:29 pm
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Brittiny Johnson, with Twonisha Wright, at Hillhouse Thursday.
Sharon Bradford-Fleming’s own high school pregnancy inspired her to support teen parents in her retirement. “There is a stigma still attached to teen pregnancy,” said Bradford-Fleming.
“A lot of kids can’t talk to their parents.” So Bradford-Fleming fills the void. She meets young adults on their own turf, or court in the case of the Me Project — an event that took place at Hillhouse High School on Thursday.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 26, 2025 4:48 pm
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Rev. Edmonds and Ed Joyner started a book bank for Wexler students, back in the day.
The city’s school board voted to rename New Haven’s adult education center after the late local minister and civil rights leader Edwin R. Edmonds — as it considers whether or not to extend the program’s lease on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard for another five years.
Supt. Madeline Negrón explains merger at Monday meeting.
A proposed new middle school on Wexler-Grant’s campus could open up next fall with around 30 students — before slowly growing over the years to eventually include high school students as well.
Skyy Merritt: "I'm really good at math" thanks to New Haven Counts.
These days, 10-year-old Skyy Merritt knows what’s going on in math class. That wasn’t always the case.
At a packed budget hearing in the Board of Alders chamber, Skyy watched her mom explain the reason for her academic progress: a tutoring program that’s been helping her with math and reading multiple times a week for the last year.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 21, 2025 12:17 pm
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Wexler-Grant in Dixwell, to merge with ...
... Lincoln-Bassett in Newhallville.
Grappling with low enrollment and decaying buildings, the city’s public school district plans to merge Wexler-Grant and Lincoln-Bassett into a single PreK-8th grade school next academic year.
That doesn’t mean the total number of schools in New Haven will drop, however, as the district then plans to convert the current Wexler-Grant site into a new alternative middle school focused on “project-based learning.”
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 20, 2025 8:26 pm
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Rosa: "Why does my school feel more like a battlefield than a place to learn?"
HARTFORD — When Sound School ninth grader Journey Rosa thinks of an average school day, they ask themself, “Why do I watch my teachers ration supplies like war rations, spending their own salaries to make sure we have the bare minimum?”
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Maya McFadden and Thomas Breen |
Mar 20, 2025 4:10 pm
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Clemente Principal Adela Jorge: "Reaffirm that your child is safe and that your child is loved."
(Updated) Roberto Clemente Academy has lined up extra counselors and psychologists to help students process the loss of one of their second-grade classmates — two days after an 8‑year-old boy named Stacey Glasgow died from an apparently accidental gunshot wound at his home in the Hill.
HSC junior Jonaily Colon: "Adding more funding, as proposed in this bill, will help us be able to focus on what matters in school: Learning."
Cross senior John Carlos Serana Musser: Why do we have leaky roofs and no teachers in our classrooms when the state has a record budget surplus?
HARTFORD–Ever since his first year at Hillhouse High School, Badu Smart knew he wanted to take honors biology. He worked hard to secure a spot in what he hoped would be a more rigorous science course — only to find out that the class had been canceled for lack of a teacher.
Smart, who is now a senior at Hillhouse, shared that story with state lawmakers Wednesday as he traveled to Hartford with 80 fellow New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) classmates to speak up about teacher shortages, building disrepair, and other challenges faced by a city school district in need of more state funding.
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Allan Appel |
Mar 19, 2025 9:23 am
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Chris Aguero.
As a seventh-grader, Chris Aguero had acquired enough Hebrew to use a personally coded script to express his 12-year-old angst — aka kvetching — in his daily diary.
Aguero, now 42, has grown up to become neither spy nor cryptologist but rather the new Head of School of Ezra Academy, the New Haven area’s anchoring progressive Jewish day school.
ConnCORP's Ian Williams, with ConnCAT's Steve Driffin: This redevelopment project represents "a total transformation" of the corridor.
At work on Monday.
Nearby, underground, in the Construction Academy's new classroom.
As a construction crew worked to lay the foundation for “ConnCAT Place on Dixwell,” redevelopers behind the neighborhood-transforming effort gathered in an underground classroom a few hundred feet away to lay the foundation for a more diverse, locally rooted construction workforce.
165 Years of House, the documentary that New Haven teacher and filmmaker Raven Mitchell is carefully constructing, describes concentric circles of community working together to support young people’s development. Mitchell uses this lens, based on a model called Bronfrenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory, to describe the importance of Hillhouse High School over its 165 years of existence.
From interpersonal bonds in the family to parent-teacher relationships, connections to media and beyond, according to this model, each circle of community has an impact on the other levels and, ultimately, the child at the center.
On Saturday afternoon at NXTHVN art gallery in Dixwell, several of these circles were at play as Mitchell presented a sneak peek of her documentary-in-progress to a room full of intergenerational love, support, and family of all kinds.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 17, 2025 10:47 am
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Hillhouse juniors observe the reaction of sodium chloride and heat.
Hillhouse chemistry teacher Corazon Libao-De Leon’s lesson on the Bohr model and applying heat to atoms looked different for each of her 12 students — thanks to her embrace of a teaching method that prioritizes individuality and skill mastery rather than just completion.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 13, 2025 11:25 am
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NHPS
Feedback about Apptegy from other school districts using the platform.
The city’s public school district plans to adopt a new app-based communication platform — which includes translation services that will allow parents to reach out in the language of their choice — in a bid to improve how students’ guardians and school staff stay in touch.
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Jake Halpern |
Mar 13, 2025 10:23 am
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Then-sophomores Charlotte Herzog, Alma Barjamovic, and Maya Harpaz-Levi at the start of the 2023 school year.
Every single person who ever attended Wilbur Cross will be there.
Well, that’s the idea anyhow.
For the first time ever, alumni from every generation of Wilbur Cross will be gathering for the ultimate reunion.
On Saturday, April 5, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., the school is opening the doors for the “Reunion in the Halls.” It’s free and it’s open to everyone — graduates of all years, all ages, and all generations. In truth, this is more than just a reunion or a chance to relive some old memories; it’s a moment to reaffirm our commitment to the city’s largest high school, even as the very idea of public education teeters on the brink.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 10, 2025 4:24 pm
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Truman 7th graders Balal and Jovanni: Yondr is better than a lock box but not better than new sports teams.
As 5th-8th graders across New Haven locked away their cellphones for the official kickoff of phone-free schools Monday, many Truman School students did so knowing that it would help them in the long run — though some argued that the money could’ve been spent better, like on more school sports.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 10, 2025 9:46 am
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Drawing partners Omar and Rosa Gonzales with finished renditions of Pikachu and Sonic characters ...
... in a class that brings Cross art students together with East Rock kindergartners.
Wilbur Cross sophomore Rosa Gonzales and East Rock School kindergartener Omar put pencils to paper to draw Sonic and Pikachu — as part of a monthly class-to-class collaboration focused on cartooning and literacy.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 7, 2025 3:07 pm
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At NHPS' mental health and first aid training session.
Rather than watch students present mid-year projects, 20 New Haven educators and school staffers stood at the front of the “class” to present their own research to their peers about what to look out for when it comes to student wellbeing and mental health.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 7, 2025 10:11 am
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Contributed
Rosemary Russo: “I had to do it for me."
After teaching New Haven’s youngest special education students for the past 35 years, Rosemary Russo has now made the difficult decision to say goodbye to the energy-demanding work that only continues to increase.
Teachers union Prez Blatteau: "We will stand up and fight back."
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HSC juniors Japhet and Jonaily making a case for their future education.
High School in the Community (HSC) junior Japhet dreams of becoming the first college graduate in his family — but also worries that dream won’t be possible if federal education cuts are made by the Trump administration.
Holding signs reading “People over profit” and “fund our schools,” Japhet marched alongside hundreds of fellow New Haveners to fight for the future of public education.
On Tuesday, she’s also a symbol of opposition to President Donald Trump’s efforts to slash federal education funding and abolish the U.S. Department of Education. She is a guest of U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro at Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 4, 2025 8:59 am
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Fractions on the mind, in Amanda Gonzalez's classroom.
After a full day of learning new vocabulary and all about fractions, taking “brain breaks,” and studying the American Revolution, Conte West Hills K‑8 students and staff concluded that strong relationships, engaging work, and one-on-one instruction are the keys to a successful school day.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 4, 2025 8:29 am
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At January's Local 217 rally at Gateway Center.
Pay raises laid out in the new four-year deal.
The Board of Education unanimously approved a new contract for the school district’s cafeteria workers union that includes a $6‑per-hour raise over four years and stepped-up training for lead cooks.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 3, 2025 4:35 pm
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A Feb. 13 leak in a Wilbur Cross classroom.
New Haven’s public school district says it found “no evident deficiencies” in the 30-plus areas of Hillhouse and Wilbur Cross high schools that were the subject of a recent state workplace safety complaint by the city’s teachers union.
All the while, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) continues to address ongoing condition problems like leaky roofs and cold classrooms at Cross that educators have been speaking up about for months.
