Merger With Obama School Nixed

It turns out New Haven can’t save money by moving two schools into the district’s newest school building early next year.

School officials reached that conclusion and have proceeded to cross that plan off their list of budget-mitigation strategies.

Two weeks ago, as they tried to think up ways to close a projected $30.7 million budget shortfall, school officials had floated a creative cost-cutting measure: co-locating two schools at Barack H. Obama Magnet University School’s new campus midway through next year.

But after looking at the proposal in detail, officials said the plan wasn’t feasible or cost-effective. They said they didn’t even bother asking the State Department of Education whether it would approve the move, because colocating on the new campus just wouldn’t work.

Officials offered that update during the Finance & Operations Committee meeting held Monday afternoon at the district’s Meadow Street headquarters.

Next year, the Barack H. Obama Magnet University School, a $36 million building at 69 Farnham Ave. on Southern Connecticut State University’s campus, will replace Strong 21st Century Communications Magnet School’s deteriorating, century-old building at 69 Grand Ave. in Fair Haven.

The new building can fit about 490 students. After accounting for the roughly 270 students who’ll be moving over from the Strong’s temporary Orchard Street location, that leaves room for about 220 more students in the building.

Only one elementary school in New Haven is small enough to fit in that space: West Rock STREAM Academy Interdistrict Magnet, a pre-kindergarten to fourth-grade school on Valley Street with about 185 students this year.

(Brennan-Rogers Communication & Media Magnet School, the one other elementary that officials have said is well below capacity, currently enrolls about 500 students.)

But school officials said on Monday that, because of the grants that West Rock brings in, they’d likely lose more money by closing it down than by keeping the lights on for a few more months.

“Colocating, frankly, is not possible,” said Michael Pinto, the district’s chief operating officer. ​“The programming requirements for Barack Obama and West Rock would not allow them to colocate side by side. Maybe they could share gym space, but setting up the educational space would interfere with the way that Barack Obama is designed.”

Next year, West Rock will receive $726,000 in state interdistrict magnet funding for accepting about 50 students from the suburbs and $600,000 in federal magnet school funding for accepting students from other city neighborhoods, Pinto said. With a move, the school might have to send suburban students back to their hometown and give up the extra money, he told the finance committee.

Plus, the Obama building’s layout wouldn’t really work, unless students cram into spaces that the school wasn’t really designed for, Pinto continued. That’s because the school was supposed to offer small learning environments with space for bilingual instruction and special education that it wouldn’t be able to maintain in the ​“sardine model,” as Pat Middleton, the district’s enrollment director, put it.

Superintendent Carol Birks also pointed out that, because of construction delays, West Rock students wouldn’t be able to move into the new Obama building until January, negating an immediate savings. Until then, she explained, ​“we still need space for West Rock.”

With that plan off the table, Birks said, she probably will not recommend another school closure. She said her budget team will regroup to figure out another way to make up the $1 million savings they’d been banking on from the consolidation.