New Haven Independent

The man on the left is James Monahan, a psychologist who teaches at University of New Haven. Beside him is New Haven schools chief Reginald Mayo. The two reminisced Friday about a meeting they had with some colleagues two years ago dreaming about launching the state’s first science-oriented public high school.

They met up again Friday to join a high-powered crowd in UNH’s Bartels Hall for an official announcement that such a school is going forward. Fast.

UNH, New Haven and West Haven are applying to the state to pay for 95 percent of the cost of building the school. Assuming the state approves the money — an “if” House Speaker Jim Amann showed up to support — the school will serve grades 6 through 12 with the aim of training a future generation of engineers. The school will eventually have 616 students, according to the plan: 400 from New Haven, 125 from West Haven, 91 from other towns.

It will take several years to build the school, at an as-yet-to-be-determined spot near UNH’s West Haven campus. New Haven will build it. In the meantime, officials said they hope to seat the first class as soon as the fall of 2008 in a temporary spot, and grow the school one grade at a time.

UNH President Steven H. Kaplan said the school would address a national challenge: producing more engineers. He said the U.S. is graduating about 75,000 engineering majors a year, compared to close to 1 million in China, India and Europe combined.

The DeStefano Challenge

Kaplan (pictured) accepted a challenge issued at the event by New Haven Mayor John DeStefano.

In remarks to the room full of pols, business people and academics, DeStefano called for UNH to make its engineering professors available to teach at the 6-12 school; to allow high-schoolers to take UNH courses for free; and to make available scholarships for those students to attend UNH.

Kaplan took the microphone — and said yes. It’s already part of the plan, he said, including a “significant scholarship program.”

The Aldermanic Challenge

Such contributions, DeStefano said after the event, are worth a lot more than $150,000 a year. That’s the amount he estimated New Haven probably pay over 20 or 30 years to foot the remaining 5 percent cost (around $3 million) of building the school after the state kicks in its 95 percent.

So, DeStefano said, he’s not asking UNH to put up money to build the school itself.

One problem: The Board of Aldermen wants the city to find someone other than the city itself to foot that 5 percent. Interest payments related to the school’s $1.5 billion school rebuilding program already have contributed to tax increases in town, leading to calls to putting brakes on the program.

The city needs Board of Aldermen approval to ask the state for the money to build the school. The full board is scheduled to vote June 4 on a proposal to pursue the money. The proposal passed the board’s Finance Committee — but with an amendment proposed by Hill Alderwoman Andrea Jackson-Brooks. The amendment states: “The Board of Education shall obtain all funding for the school construction costs from sources other than from the City of New Haven.”

“I understand that,” DeStefano said Friday. “If there’s another source, great. But that’s not a standard we apply to any other magnet school.” The value of UNH’s other contributions add up to a lot more than the money in question, he argued.

Hill Alderman Jorge Perez, chairman of the board’s Black and Hispanic Caucus, said he’s not sold yet on the proposal.

“I buy the idea of creating more engineers and scientists. We should do what we have to do to make that happen,” Perez said Friday. “I’m not convinced that building another high school for $60 million is the best way to do it,” even if state tax money rather than local tax money pays the majority of the bill.

“Should we be putting all that energy and effort,” Perez asked, “into making every school a school of choice” instead?

The Standards Challenge
The school is designed to deliver a rigorous science and math curriculum. But unlike, say, New York’s Bronx Science, it won’t choose students based on an admission exam, said Ed Linehan (pictured), the school system’s magnet schools chief.

Connecticut law doesn’t allow magnet schools to do that. It requires lotteries.

Plus, Linehan said, the city wouldn’t want to choose only the most accomplished students for the school. “This is about closing the achievement gap,” he said. “You don’t close the achievement gap by closing out people by gap.

“That’s why we’re reaching down to sixth grade” rather than starting in high school, Linehan said. The school will work intensively with younger students to prepare them for an “extremely demanding math and science curriculum.” Included wil be an expanded school day for students needing extra help, UNH undergraduate tutors and an already-existing UNH summer program for kids, Linehan said.

“We don’t want to say to any fifth-grader, ‘It’s already too late for you.’ We know we’re going to have to work hard and in supportive ways to ensure success,” Linehan said.