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New Haven Turnaround Leader Lured Away

by Melissa Bailey | Sep 3, 2012 2:00 pm

(5) Comments | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author

Posted to: Schools

Melissa Bailey File Photo Find out what other staff changes are taking place in city schools this week.

Jen Olsen, the assistant principal who helped lead a “turnaround” effort at Brennan/Rogers School, left this summer to join the Derby school district, where she’ll serve as principal of the Irving School.

Kate Magaldi (pictured above), a special education teacher at Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy, won’t be returning to New Haven either. Reached by phone, she said it was “bittersweet” to hear of her former colleagues starting a new year at Clemente Wednesday, as that school enters the second year of a turnaround.

Magaldi said she moved away because her husband graduated from Yale and took a position with the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.

“I’m not working because I’m expecting my first baby in December,” she said. She plans to return to teaching when her child gets older.

Those were just two of the staff changes that popped up in the most recent personnel report for the public schools.

Click here to read the report, approved at Monday’s school board meeting.

The beginning of school can be a stressful time, when teachers find out where they’ll be transferred, and principals wait to see if they got their top picks for staff. School administrators showed up in force for the last two school school board meetings to grab “blue sheets” detailing the superintendent’s recommended hires, transfers, terminations and resignations.

In other news in this week’s report, New MicroSociety Principal Rosalyn Bannon, who got her job just a week before school started, completed one of her top-priority tasks: Hiring a 2nd-grade teacher. Lauren Iacovo, who has a BA from Southern Connecticut State University, is joining the school as her first teaching job.

Teachers who left High School in the Community amid a turnaround shakeup landed on their feet at other schools.

Melissa Bailey File Photo And Ross/Woodward teacher Michelle Bonanno moved up to begin training teachers as a literacy coach, which is often a stepping stone to higher leadership.


Eugene Driscoll contributed reporting.

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posted by: HhE on September 3, 2012  8:12pm

Teachers leave schools for to reasons:  to get away, and to go somewhere else.  Good school leadership will find out which. 

I knew a great teacher who had her second baby earlier than planned so she could use maternity leave to get away from a bad place.

posted by: Teachergal on September 3, 2012  10:18pm

New Haven has become an extremely difficult place to teach. Lack of support, tremendous pressure to raise test scores, poor leadership and unmotivated, undisciplined students. Many people are looking to transfer out or just quit. 

posted by: Threefifths on September 3, 2012  10:32pm

What this shows is that teachers are leaving the inner cites to go teach in the suburban areas were there is less boundaries.

posted by: mechanic on September 4, 2012  9:42am

Thank you NHI for sharing the blue sheet (the list of staff changes).  It’s nice to see where our colleagues have gone, as well as other information.

posted by: Jacques Strap on September 4, 2012  9:14pm

@ teachergal—Bingo.

@ threefifths—No, what this shows is yet another highly qualified professional unwilling to accept the blatant disrespect from many students and parents (at schools like Clemente), the confusion between the city’s math and reading departments (does one ever know what the other is telling their teachers?), and inexperienced leadership whose mandate changes like the wind with every gale of bluster from downtown.

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