New Haven Independent

One of those, Ross/Woodward, is going to have the classics as a theme. The gentleman primarily responsible for this is Ed Linehan (pictured), recently retired after a long career as the supervisor of magnet schools. He made the announcement, along with other BOE staffers, at a workshop for members of the Board of Aldermen’s education committee Tuesday night.

The two other schools, Beecher and John Daniels, will have museum studies and international learning and Spanish language for all students, respectively, as themes.

The grant will also help to underwrite the creation of a new school, the University of New Haven Science and Engineering High School, whose theme — a requirement for magnet schools — is obvious. The grant supports curriculum development, equipment purchase, teacher training, and the magnet school office for marketing the programs, but not ongoing operational expenses.

Linehan said the schools received word just that afternoon from the office of U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro that New Haven had successfully competed for the Magnet School Assistance Program funding. One hundred fifty school districts nationwide submitted proposals, and 40 were granted. This is the sixth time in a row, Linehan said, that New Haven magnet school proposals have been successful, an impressive record. The four new schools will bring to 15 the total number of interdistrict magnet schools.

New Haven has the largest and most successful interdistrict magnet school — or school choice — program in the state. “The idea,” said Linehan, “has been to create schools of such interest that not only New Haven kids but kids from the surrounding towns and the suburbs will want to come in, and they are coming.”

He indicated that here are about 1,900 kids from surrounding towns, or 25 percent of the total magnet school population, from dozens of towns near and far, such as West Haven and Hamden, Derby and Ansonia, and applications are dramatically up, from 986 in 2005 to 1386 in 2007.

“What is most telling,” said Linehan “is that while in the past two thirds of the suburban applicants have been minority and one third white, in 2007 that is reversed. This kind of racial diversity is not required for the magnet schools in New Haven by law, but it is a long-sought goal, and it is happening because we are creating really interesting schools.”

Linehan has retired, but is staying on as a consultant easing in his successor as magnet school supervisor, Bob Canneli (shown here with Linehan receiving alderwoman Migdalia Castro’s congratulations). He said he was excited about the University of New Haven Science and Engineering High School. While a specific location has not been chosen, the several sites under consideration, which, he said, could not be disclosed yet, are all immediately adjacent to the University of New Haven campus, but not on it.

Linehan and Superintendent of Schools Reggie Mayo said that, regarding the proposed sixth-to-eighth-grade UNH science school, they had already sent in to the state for tuition support for the first group of students. The state is also slated to pay 95 percent of the construction cost, with the city picking up 5 percent. None of the federal grant, they said, can go toward the city’s contribution to construction costs.

Bishop Woods Alderman Gerald Antunes asked why none of the impressively growing magnet schools had the manual arts or vocational education as their themes. Mayo said he was cognizant of the kids who are considering not college but careers in the manual or automotive trades, but there were 18 “votech” schools statewide already. Linehan added that the city’s Career High School and Metropolitan Business High School, a magnet, already spoke to some careers, and you therefore had to be careful about such a theme to avoid repetition.

But incoming supervisor of magnet schools Cannelli liked the idea. “I think it’s really good,” he said. “The mechanics and carpentry courses at Cross are very popular, and we should pursue it, I think.”

Until then, however, he has his hands full, he said, learning the running of the magnet school office, and learning the intricacies of the funding streams. But he knows how to convert regular schools to magnets. He was the principal of Sheridan in the late 1990s, when that school was a beneficiary of a magnet school development grant similar to the one received today. “We turned Sheridan into a communications-technology themed school, with robotics labs, and the whole thing, and we marketed the school to the suburbs. Over three years we got the suburban population up to 120. I’m a great believer in white, African-American, Hispanic, all kinds of kids learning together. They become friends, email, visit each others’ neighborhoods. That’s important.”

He said that he had just visited Metropolitan Business High School to help them market their school, to up the suburban participation. “Since it’s a business school, one of the staff came up with the idea that they should develop their own marketing plan to market themselves; I think that’s terrific.”

The only potential cloud on the city’s magnet school engine of success is, said Mayo, a regulation expected to be announced next month from the state commissioner of education. The gist of it, said Mayo, will be to cut the reimbursement to a surrounding town if it sends students to a city like New Haven’s magnet schools. “What’ll happen, ” said Mayo, “is like what’s happening in Milford. Towns will limit the number of kids they send to us. This will be very bad, and I hope the regulation will be reversed.”

Cannelli said he’d heard that the regulation was not supported by the legislature, and he expected that when word got out, it might be reversed. In the meantime he is concentrating on the four new magnet schools to be added to New Haven’s crown. He said the magnets may open by the 2008-09 school year. And he said he likes the idea of one of them teaching Hebrew, along with Greek and Latin. Classical Arabic, anyone?