City gets $6.3 million in federal funds to fix failing schools
Linda Conner Lambeck, Staff Writer
BRIDGEPORT — The $6.3 million federal School Improvement Grant that will be spent at three city schools starting this fall may prove there is more than one way to fix a failing school.
All schools receiving “SIG” funds must chose from among four tightly scripted models prescribed by the U.S. Department of Education.
Barnum and Bassick will both use the “transformation” model, which requires them to change their principal. Both will use the University of Connecticut’s CommPact School program to help improve. Barnum has already been a CommPact School — which stands for an alliance of community, parents, administrators, children and teachers — for two years. The new $500,000 a year grant to Barnum will be used to continue that work and add extra reading support, officials said. Bassick, which will get $2.1 million over three years, will be UConn’s first high school CommPact school.
Harding, meanwhile, is the only school in among 14 in the state to receive federal “SIG” money that will undergo the “restart” model.
That plan leaves it up to the management firm hired by the district to decide if the principal stays or goes. For Harding, the district will receive $2.2 million over three years.
In July, the Board of Education selected Global Partnership, a New York based school improvement company headed by two former national school superintendents of the year — Rudy Crew of New York and Miami and Manny Rivera of Rochester N.Y. — to take over Harding. As of this week, an agreement had yet to be signed spelling out what it is expected the firm will deliver in terms of school improvement. Still, Global Partnership staff have been in the school for a couple of weeks, meeting with the principal, staff and district leaders.
Joseph Garcia, a Global vice president, said he is close to hiring an “educational change” leader to work with the principal and staff at Harding. There will also be three to five Global staff on hand when the school opens this week to make sure things go well. The initial focus will be on teacher training and the ninth grade, where things start to fall apart for students.
“We want to change the experience they’ve been having,” he said. The hope is to make classes more interesting so students want to go to them. Attendance and cutting classes are major issues at the school. They will also be assisting staff to use test data to modify how they teach, similar to what is done now in city elementary schools. There will also be outreach to parents and an eventual focus on making the learning academies at Harding stronger and on a more equal footing with one another.
Global has also sent a facilities and scheduling expert to the school and is looking at security.
At Bassick, where there is a different principal — Alejandro Ortiz, formerly principal of Central High — and at least one new assistant principal, the reform process will be collaborative, said Michele Femc-Bagwell, director of the CommPact program at UConn.
“We see this as a planning year,” said Femc-Bagwell. UConn will hire a site facilitator who will sit down with teachers, administrators, parents and children to identify the reform models and best practices they want to implement at school. “CommPact is about empowering people at the school to identify priorities. We need their voice.”
Unlike eight other CommPact schools in the state, which were invited to the school with a vote by 90 percent of staff and parents, Bassick’s was brought in by the district.
The federal grant also provides for $170,000 a year to support the salary and office of Robert Henry, formerly the district’s chief of staff and now associate superintendent of choice, innovation and transformation.
