The Buck Starts At The Shack
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| Feb 20, 2024 1:27 pm |Make your money work for you. Don’t work harder, work smarter. You can’t out-invest bad spending habits.
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| Feb 20, 2024 1:27 pm |Make your money work for you. Don’t work harder, work smarter. You can’t out-invest bad spending habits.
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| Jan 31, 2024 2:53 pm |Dozens of Common Ground High School’s community members expressed support for the school’s state renewal while a handful said the renewal should be granted only if the school agrees to make administrative improvements.
Continue reading ‘Students, Families Urge Common Ground Renewal’
Students, staff, and parents at Common Ground High School say the school is going downhill because of high teacher turnover and distrust for administration. The environmental-themed charter school’s board and leaders say they are working to get to the bottom of these concerns.
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| Jan 15, 2024 11:54 am |Nobody stole any vehicles in West Hills, West Rock, Westville, or Amity during the first week of 2024.
Nearly half of high schoolers attending a West Rock environmental charter school were “chronically absent” during the first two months of the school year — an uptick that school leaders are working to address through everything from perfect-attendance recognitions to home visits and family meetings to recommended withdrawals.
Fifty new low-income elderly housing units are coming to Level Street, bringing new life to the site of an abandoned nursing home and more options for aging tenants waiting for an affordable home.
If it was up to West Rock/West Hills Alder Honda Smith, her ward would put two now-vacant former public school buildings — including the recently shuttered ex-Clarence Rogers School on Wilmot Road — back to use by creating a black box theater for family-friendly programming, a rental space, a second community center, and an all-boys charter school.
Continue reading ‘What To Do With 2 Closed School Buildings?’
Ronisha Baskin didn’t know how to tell her 14-year-old daughter that the Housing Authority of New Haven had evicted them. “I didn’t even know what to say.” She could not find the words to explain that a lack of housing options would force them to split up across different cities.
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| Jun 14, 2023 8:58 am |Kids with hands upraised half way between shouting hallelujah and playing volleyball with an immense sun. A green plant as imposing as Jack’s beanstalk growing out of the palm of one girl’s outstretched hand while goats, cats and two hens, notably a Buff Orpington and a Polish chicken, dash happily underfoot.
Those joyous images are at the heart of “Class of 2025,” a lush and engaging mural executed by long-time New Haven muralist Kwadwo Adae and the entire sophomore class (thus the title) at Common Ground High School.
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| May 31, 2023 3:38 pm |Four-year-old Carter watched as the strongest man he knows — his dad, Chad Hutchinson — helped his older brother Damarion conquer the monkey bars.
Carter beamed with confidence as he knew that, with his father by his side, he wouldn’t fail now or in the future.
James Baldwin, Sylvia Rivera, and Harvey Milk are now watching over the halls of Elm City Montessori School — in newly unveiled mural portraits that fit in well with the Blake Street charter school’s anti-bias and anti-racist values.
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| Mar 27, 2023 4:07 pm |United Illuminating (UI) has awarded The Shack another $10,000 to help the Valley Street community center keep up with its life-skill-based programming for local youth and seniors.
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| Feb 16, 2023 8:42 am |When Malek Alkhalawe graduates from Common Ground High School this spring, he will already have in hand several serious Google IT certifications allowing him to start his own business online while studying computer engineering in college.
Continue reading ‘Common Ground Lands Grants For Student-Led Projects’
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| Feb 2, 2023 4:10 pm |One of New Haven’s coolest places was also one of its hottest Thursday morning.
Continue reading ‘Word On Springside: Hot Pile, Cooler Planet’
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| Jan 24, 2023 4:11 pm |The Board of Education signed off on extending Elm City Montessori’s charter, bringing the Blake Street local charter school one big step closer to winning another three-to-five-year renewal.
Continue reading ‘Ed Board Greenlights Montessori Charter Renewal’
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| Jan 20, 2023 5:24 pm |Gender-neutral bathrooms. Thoughtful and caring educators. A Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA) for middle schoolers. And a school mission statement that loudly and proudly supports LGBTQ students.
Those were just a handful of ideas that came to mind for the members of Elm City Montessori’s GSA when asked to dream up their ideal school.
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| Jan 5, 2023 1:22 pm |Thirty-eight families so far have chosen to move their students out of a West Rock magnet school and to another city public school that has more teachers on staff.
Continue reading ‘38 Students Transfer Due To Teacher Vacancies’
Honda Smith made a promise to herself and to her West Hills neighbors that, after retiring from three decades of working for the city, she would find a way to keep serving her neighborhood.
As a reborn westside community center thrives under her watch and neighbors keep busy and fed, that promise has been well kept.
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| Dec 20, 2022 9:31 am |An urban farming and ecology-centered local charter school has grown its outdoor classrooms on the far west side of town thanks to a team of environmental educators funded by a two-year, $100,000 federal grant.
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| Dec 14, 2022 5:21 pm |Three community-boosting miracles — including an oversized check from a power company and a truck full of toys from a bike life group — showed up at The Shack to help the West Rock community center get in the holiday spirit.
Continue reading ‘Christmas Comes Early At The Shack With $, Toy, & Food Donations’
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| Nov 28, 2022 3:11 pm |Sabrina Gibbs and her two daughters Xora and Nova got a slice of their new neighborhood — and a slice or two of pumpkin pie — at a reborn West Hills community center’s inaugural “Our Table” Thanksgiving dinner.
Continue reading ‘Shack Sets "Our Table" For Thanksgiving Feast’
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| Nov 28, 2022 8:56 am |“We have to worry so much about the cars going fast, we can’t learn how to spell!”
The remark by Common Ground High School freshman Aubrey Bido and her classmate Aaliyah Jones was jokey about the misspelled word on Bido’s sign,“Yeild” for “Yield,” but the occasion was anything but.
In fact, the message — and the West Rock safe streets sign-making workshop it sprang from — pointed to a matter of life and potential vehicular death.
Continue reading ‘Common Ground Plants Signs For Safer Streets’
A shortage of teachers at Brennan-Rogers School has led the city’s public school district to recommend that families transfer 7th and 8th graders out of the West Rock magnet school and to another New Haven public school that has more educators on staff.
Continue reading ‘Teacher Vacancies Spark Student Transfers’
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| Nov 11, 2022 2:14 pm |A group of moms from Philadelphia walked a brick pathway lined with the names of hundreds of New Haven victims of gun violence — to take solace in the tranquil Valley Street garden, and to find inspiration in how to build a similar memorial in their own home city.
Continue reading ‘Philly Moms Find Brotherly Love By West Rock’
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| Oct 28, 2022 3:17 pm |Before he moves on from his city job next week, Martin Torresquintero is hustling to finish one last bridge to connect New Haveners to an overlooked nature wonderland.