Melissa Bailey Photo
ESUMS student Nicole Rivera and her dad, Felix.
Students at the city’s growing engineering science magnet school will move to another swing space next fall, as the district continues to look for a way to build a permanent home near the University of New Haven campus in West Haven through acquisition or eminent domain.
The Engineering & Science University Magnet School (ESUMS) will move from State Street to 540 – 560 Ella Grasso Blvd. in September to accommodate its continued expansion. The school is a joint project between New Haven Public Schools and the University of New Haven.
The move was announced to parents in a letter sent home Monday afternoon and approved by the school board Monday night.
The Boulevard spot will be the school’s third temporary space, as the district proceeds with a longer-than-expected hunt for a permanent home. The plan is to build a home for ESUMS close to the UNH campus in West Haven so students can benefit from the proximity to university staff, students and facilities. The district is currently scouting out sites in West Haven for the school.
The project has been set back in part by West Haven’s “unwillingness to exercise Eminent Domain on our behalf,” schools Chief Operating Officer Will Clark wrote in a letter sent to parents Monday. (West Haven’s mayor later denied that claim.)
Click here to read the letter.
Felix Rivera (pictured above with his daughter, Nicole) got the letter when he picked up his two kids Monday afternoon from the school, which is at the former St. Stanislaus School at 804 State St.
Like many parents, Rivera was eager to know what the next year would hold for his kids. Next fall, his son is set to be part of ESUMS’ first freshman class as the school expands into high school.
Founded in 2008 with just a sixth grade, the school now serves about 226 students in grades 6 to 8. It aims to keep adding one grade per year until it reaches its full size, serving 616 students in grades 6 to 12.
The current site can’t fit any more students, and parents waited to hear what would happen when another 88 sixth-graders join the school next year. There was some talk of splitting the high school from the middle school.
Rivera had a keen interest in that point — his son will be in ninth and his daughter in seventh grade next year, and he doesn’t want them to be split up.
“I would love it if they just moved the whole school” together, Rivera said.
He got the answer he wanted Monday in Clark’s letter.
The district has worked out a deal that will both keep all the students together and continue the school’s expansion, Clark announced.
The details were approved at Monday’s Board of Education meeting.
Under the new deal, ESUMS will move into two buildings at 540 and 560 Ella Grasso Blvd, which are currently being used by the charter school group Achievement First.
Amistad Academy Elementary will move from the Boulevard to a new school being built on Edgewood Avenue, which will also house Amistad Academy middle school, said Achievement First spokesperson Mel Ochoa. Achievement First, which currently rents the Boulevard space from New Haven Plaza, Inc., agreed to amend the lease to let ESUMS move in.
The lease for the new space won unanimous approval at Monday’s meeting. ESUMS will rent the two buildings, which comprise 42,460 square feet, for $369,755.75 for the year, beginning on Aug. 1.
ESUMS PTO President Andrea Frasier said she was “relieved” to hear that the district secured a space for ESUMS this early in the year.
“I am glad that they have come up with a space,” she said. “We won’t have to be scrambling at the last minute.”
Eminent Domain?
The district recently hired two appraisers to evaluate three potential permanent sites for ESUMS, all near the UNH campus. Appraisals should be back in the next couple of weeks, according to Clark.
In his letter, Clark hinted at why the process has taken so long.
He said the district has a preferred site adjacent to the university. The site he referred to comprises three homes, a vacant lot and six UNH properties. (Those properties appear in a cluster on the map above.)
“Unfortunately this site may not be feasible,” Clark wrote, “due to the inability to lock in the purchase of all the parcels and the City of West Haven’s unwillingness to exercise Eminent Domain on our behalf.”
“While we continue to seek amicable resolution of acquisition of the preferred site,” Clark wrote, “we have widened our search to include additional sites.”
Asked to elaborate Monday, Clark said that West Haven officials have not refused to use eminent domain, a process by which municipalities can take private property for projects that aim to serve the public good.
West Haven officials “expressed concern” that it would be difficult to approve an eminent domain project, Clark said.
Reached Monday, West Haven Mayor John Picard said he hasn’t ruled out eminent domain for the project.
“We haven’t been asked,” Picard said. “If they needed us to do that, they would ask us to.”
Picard said he supports the ESUMS project, which aims to serve 125 West Haven students when it reaches full size. His zoning officials as well as council members have been meeting recently with school officials on the topic; Picard himself met with DeStefano to discuss the project about six months ago.
Picard said he supports the effort to place the school near UNH: “Being on the university’s campus is a good thing.”
He said he is aware of New Haven’s preferred site, a cluster of university properties and homes on the western edge of campus, south of the Boston Post Road.
“I didn’t know there was a problem with the property,” he said. If there is a problem, Picard said he wouldn’t rule out eminent domain. “I’d be willing to explore all our options.”
Clark said while the district seeks to be “as collaborative as possible,” eminent domain is “still an option we would want on the table.”
In his letter, Clark wrote that the district continues to “work diligently” on finding a permanent site. Architects Svigals + Partners have hosted a series of meetings with West Haven and New Haven officials, he said, in order to “determine the best available site and move the project forward in a collaborative and efficient manner.”
The district’s goal is to break ground on a new ESUMS site by April 2012, to avoid the risk of losing state construction grants already awarded for the project.
If all goes well, Clark said, construction would be complete in two years, and students would move into the new ESUMS building in the fall of 2014.
Meanwhile, the Boulevard spot will make a good interim home for the school, he said. Under the terms of the new lease, ESUMS will be able to move into the space in the summer and “make some adjustments to the space to better suit the needs of the school,” Clark wrote in his letter.
ESUMS Principal Medria Blue-Ellis said the new space will allow the school to add 88 students in sixth grade next year, and another 88 the following year, continuing the school’s expansion into 9th and 10th grade.
While the students at the Boulevard site will be divided into two buildings, the separation is “minuscule,” said Blue-Ellis. “It’s a very short walk.”
Blue-Ellis is coordinating the move after taking over the school just last month as its new principal.
“We’re really happy that this is our last move until we move into our new building on UNH’s campus,” Blue-Ellis said. “And we’re really happy that we’re able to stay together as a school community.”
Why not build the school right on the campus itself? A denser, taller building may be slightly more expensive, but it pays off in the long term by saving energy and allowing students to feel more like they are part of the campus.
Most of the sites being reviewed by New Haven BOE will feel like "satellites," not really integrated with the life of the campus as a whole.
Look at the layout of Stuyvesant High School, a public magnet school in Manhattan that is often ranked among the 10 best high schools, public or private, in the entire United States.