Melissa Bailey Photo
Principal Brown-Clayton at Monday’s announcement.
Mayor Toni Harp’s campaign pledge to bring a nearly 11-hour optional school day to Lincoln-Bassett School came true Monday, as the state announced it will help pay the bill.
Lincoln-Bassett, which serves 355 kids in grades pre‑K to 6 on Newhallville’s Bassett Street, is set to receive $1.4 million this year for capital improvements and to offer optional before- and after- school programs for kids, state education chief Stefan Pryor announced in a visit to the school.
The grant is part of $5.7 million in extra supports city schools are receiving this year. The money will support school-level turnaround efforts in 11 schools serving more than 6,000 students, according to the state. The money comes from the School Improvement Grant 1003(g) and 1003(a) and High School Redesign competitions, and the State Bond Commission, which approved $1.2 million in bonds to pay for technology and capital improvements at Lincoln-Bassett and Hillhouse High School, which is splitting up into three “academies” thanks to a High School Redesign Grant.
Lincoln-Bassett got a three-year grant through the Commissioner’s Network of low-performing schools. The money will allow the school to hire the Newhallville-based ConnCAT to provide after-school programming for kids. The school will offer optional programming from 7:20 a.m. to 6 p.m. — hours that Mayor Toni Harp has argued better suit the modern working family, where households are often headed by a single mom. Lincoln-Bassett has a new principal, Janet Brown-Clayton, who has replaced 20 out of 27 teachers while embarking on an ambitious plan to turn around the school following a blistering audit. (Click here to read more about her efforts.)
Harp (pictured) framed the investment in Lincoln-Bassett as part of a broader effort to revitalize Newhallville.
“Newhallville goes as Lincoln-Bassett goes,” she said.
Extending the hours at Lincoln-Bassett was a pledge Harp made during her mayoral campaign last year.
“I’m really thrilled that we were able to get this done,” she said. She said Lincoln-Bassett will be the first city school to make a concerted effort to have longer hours that suit a working family.
She was asked about the “community schools” effort in the 1960s, in which the federal government paid for schools like Katherine Brennan to stay open on nights and weekends for families and neighbors to use. Harp said her understanding is that that effort was successful — until the money dried up. “The problem is that they did it and stopped,” she said.
Harries and Pryor.
Harries said part of the hard work at Lincoln-Bassett will be figuring out “how can we sustain these efforts.”
Pryor was asked why he believes these latest state-funded turnaround efforts will succeed while others have not. The state awarded New Haven SIG money to transform Hillhouse High and Wilbur Cross High by breaking them into “small learning communities,” then scrapped those “small learning communities” that SIG had created and started over again with new turnaround efforts.
“This isn’t an after-school program being imposed on a school,” Pryor said of Lincoln-Bassett. “It’s a central component of the turnaround.” He added that the turnaround effort would be stronger because the school is “leveraging community assets” — ConnCAT — to help with the work.
What about Finland,where school time is less and the results are higher?