Ma’Den NIlkerson, an honoree at the annual Florence Caldwell Title I awards.
The straight‑A students, who usually take home most of the academic honors, don’t get an invite to this year-end award ceremony.
Instead, on Wednesday night, the auditorium at Fair Haven School filled up with 300 elementary-school kids who put in the most work during their reading and math lessons.
Their grades might not have topped the class, but their effort hadn’t gone unnoticed.
The Florence Caldwell Title I Awards, which recognize two students in every grade from the nearly two dozen schools that enroll the most children growing up in poverty, have been a tradition in New Haven for four decades. Students are selected for their academics, behavior and attendance.
Florence Caldwell and Hazel Pappas.
Florence Caldwell, a parent liaison at Lincoln-Bassett Community School who shows up at nearly every Board of Education meeting and the namesake for the prize, started the awards in 1980 with fellow advocate Hazel Pappas.
“It’s for students who are doing their very best. We want to let them know that we care and that we see them working as hard as they can,” Caldwell said. “It just grew and grew.”
At first, they gave out the prizes to just 25 students, but the event is now so large that they split it into two ceremonies that still manage to pack the house.
On Wednesday night, traffic backed up all the way down Grand Avenue as parents made their way to Fair Haven School.
Inside the gigantic auditorium, the rows of seats filled up with proud parents. “We’re doing something right at home,” said Ivanna Foskey, a mother of two whose fourth-grader at King-Robinson Interdistrict Magnet School, received an award.
Some boys had come in button-down shirts and kid-length ties, while some girls had done up their hair. Folded strollers and baby carriers crowded the aisles.
Matt Wilcox, the newest school board member, sat in the audience. Superintendent Carol Birks and two of her assistant superintendents, Paul Whyte and Iline Tracey, spoke from the stage.
After jazz bands from High School in the Community and Davis Academy for Arts and Design Innovation Magnet School played four numbers, each school was called up.
Parents rushed forward to snap pictures on their cell phones. Flashes went off as the winners were announced, and the students stepped forward to accept a certificate and shake officials’ hands.
Parent liaison Carmen Torres escorted timid youngsters up to the podium, and she danced alongside other kids who flossed and dabbed in celebration.
After the two-and-a-half-hour roll call of awards ended, Caldwell and Pappas took a seat on the stage and reminisced about their years in the district, before they went off to the cafeteria for a bite to eat.
“You can see on the faces of the parents and the kids how happy they are to be recognized,” Caldwell said. “The reward is just seeing the excitement.”
The second half of the awards ceremony for fifth-graders through high school seniors. is scheduled to take place on June 5. It will be even bigger, Caldwell said.
I have known Florence Caldwell and Hazel Pappas for a very long time when I was an educator in the NHPS. They are truly beautiful people who see the good in everyone and try to bring out the best in everyone. They are excellent role models, and they have done some very good parenting over the years for their own children and those of others.
Congratulations to another cohort of children who received the Florence Caldwell Award.