As the city’s largest public high school reorganizes, a small program that gave kids like Nicko Navarro extra help has been quietly shut down, and its building is being sold.
CT Scholars, which served 160 ninth-and-10th graders technically enrolled at Wilbur Cross High, was dismantled over the summer.
Now the city is moving forward with a plan to sell the program’s former home at 45 Nash St. in East Rock.
Founded six years ago, CT Scholars aimed to give freshmen and sophomores at Cross a leg up on schoolwork. It gave kids like Nicko a chance to take extra classes on core subjects, take guidance from an adult advisor, and take the reins of parent-teacher conferences.
Click on the play arrow above to watch him tell his parents about his grades last year, with his teacher Leslie Blatteau.
Blatteau taught at the program for three years. With only 160 students and 14 teachers, the school provided a cozier setting for students who needed help transitioning to high school.
“It really was familial,” recalled Blatteau last week. The small school building “allowed us to know where everyone was,” she said. It was easy to keep kids after school for extra tutoring. And the students built up “a strong identity as scholars,” she said.
Melissa Bailey Photo
Blatteau and her colleagues found out mid-summer that the program was being shut down.
“It was a surprise for all of us. It was also really hard for the staff, because the staff was such a family,” she said. “Part of wanting to go to work was the people you go to work with.”
In the shakeup, CT Scholars’ director, Cross Assistant Principal Judy Puglisi, got promoted to principal of the Metropolitan Business Academy. When she moved to her new school, she took seven staffers — including Blatteau — in tow, as well as many students.
Saving Dollars
None of the 14 teachers at CT Scholars or support staff lost their jobs, said schools Superintendent Reggie Mayo. They were transferred within the system. The rising sophomores transferred to Metro, New Haven Academy, Co-Op High or to Cross, he said.
Mayo said the program was eliminated for two reasons: space and money.
Over the past few years, parents and students have complained of overcrowding problems at Cross. Mayo said he has long expected the crowds at Cross to die down this year, as Metro expanded its student body in a new building, New Haven Academy moved to a new space on Orange Street, and Co-Op High filled out its new building downtown.
The student body at Cross fell by about 60 students this year, to about 1,330 students. That made more room in the classrooms at Cross for the CT Scholars kids, Mayo said.
Second, the district was spending $900,000 on staff for the program, plus building maintenance. Eliminating CT Scholars freed up $1.2 million in annual operating costs, according to Mayo.
“It’s saving us dollars,” the superintendent said in an interview last week.
Reforms Afoot
The shift comes as the high school restructures itself as part of a citywide school reform effort. Before reopening this month after the summer break, the school split up into four “houses,” smaller learning communities of about 350 students each.
Those changes brought about the end of CT Scholars, Puglisi said in a phone interview last week.
As the city moved forward with a plan to sell the old building, she reflected on the program she oversaw for the past five years.
CT Scholars’ original goal was to give middle-performing students a small community where they could get up to speed on core subject classes, then return to Cross as juniors in the honors track.
In reality, the program ended up serving a wider range of students — such as siblings of old Scholars, kids who didn’t get pulled for the magnet lottery, and kids who just wanted a smaller setting. Not all ended up on the honors track. Depending on the graduating class, between 40 and 60 percent ended up taking at least one honors course when they returned to Cross, Puglisi said. Among those who did end up in honors, there was a wide variety of how rigorous their studies were.
“Some did go into all honors. Others might have just taken one. It really varied,” she said.
In two years at CT Scholars, students took three years’ worth of math, science and history classes, with no electives. Students who did not get Cs or better had to go to mandatory after-school tutoring.
CT Scholars offered several services that weren’t available at Cross — such as a student-led parent-teacher conferences and student advisories. Students also had access to trauma therapists.
“The program served a purpose for some children that really needed a smaller environment for two years,” Puglisi said.
“A core group of students was really successful,” Puglisi said. She said the program was based on “the idea that students need adults that they trust and can develop meaningful relationships” with.
“It was nice to have this small group of kids that a staff could collectively” focus on, she said.
This year, the former Scholars won’t have the same “family” setting. But they will have a smaller learning community than Cross historically provided, Puglisi pointed out.
And they’ll have a much nicer building, she noted.
Yesterday, A School. Tomorrow, Condos?
“As much as we came to love it at Scholars, that building really wasn’t meant for long-term use,” Puglisi said.
The Nash Street building (pictured), which opened in 1888 as the Lovell Elementary School, is among the longest-operating school buildings in the city. It was the first home of the High School In The Community, which later moved to Water Street. It later housed the Cross Annex program, until neighbors got that program booted across town. Then it became home to CT Scholars.
The bathrooms were built for elementary school students, and had not changed much in the past half-century. There was no air conditioning. Electrical wiring wasn’t suitable for computer labs. There were “very limited offices,” and no place for conferences.
Now, as the students start the academic year at new schools, the city is moving to get rid of the building.
The three-story, 23,000-square-foot building is assessed at just shy of $1 million. It needed “major repairs,” including a new roof, according to the schools chief operating officer, Will Clark.
The building has been continuously occupied as a school since 1888, school officials said.
“It served its time, and then some,” Clark remarked.
The decision to surplus the building was approved by the school board last Monday. It needs approval from the Citywide Building Committee before being put up for sale.
The city aims to sell the building this fiscal year, according to Clark.
Teacher Blatteau said the transition to Metro hasn’t been easy for students or staff. She embraced the change, and offered best wishes for her former haunt at 45 Nash.
“My classroom will make a very nice loft some day,” she said.
Is there really more demand for housing than jobs? That building might be a good candidate for offices.