St. Thomas Says Goodbye To Mr. A

In 1970 a young elementary school teacher named Fred Acquavita got in serious trouble for painting his classroom at the old Mauro Sheridan School. He didn’t have union permission, but the kids needed a bright cheery place, and the job simply couldn’t wait.

A decade later ​‚when he became headmaster at St. Thomas Episcopal Day, he painted the entire school. On his own.

The parents awarded him a golden paintbrush, and 32 years of devoted affection.

Sunday afternoon, the St. Thomas school family past and present, 150 strong, gathered at the cozy campus on Whitney and Cliff to share pizza and memories of Fred Acquavita, lovingly known as ​“Mr. A,” as he prepares to retire. It was the final good-bye event in a year of good-bye events for a beloved educator.

Acquavita grew up on Legion Avenue hearing Yiddish spoken and living among New Haven’s whole range of immigrant people. He went to Barnard, Troup, and Hillhouse High.

Growing up on Legion Avenue prepared him for a teaching career that involved everyone equally, he said. But he didn’t see a future for himself in the New Haven Public Schools; he was too full of change-the-system energy.

He was on the union negotiating team during a bitter strike more than 40 years ago; e and the other members of the team were thrown in the Whalley Avenue jail. After a decade of teaching mainly in the Hill, he was studying administration and hoping to get a principal’s job. But he didn’t see it coming his way.

So in 1981 he became one of 60 applicants to lead the progressive private St. Thomas School. He got the job.

“It was a perfect match, ​“Acquavita said. He said the parents already were imbued with the socially progressive Episcopal idea: ​“You make a better world; let it begin with me.”

So the values were there and ​“I brought the curriculum piece, ​“Acquavita said as he greeted his admirers Sunday.

That meant a balance between progressive and traditional models of educating. ​“Kids play with blocks, but then I call their parents and say they have to memorize their numbers too, like Abe Lincoln,” Acquavita explained .

Jennifer McTiernan remembered something more basic from her daughter’s admission interview. Acquavita was describing compulsory chapel not in Episcopal or even Christian terms but in kid terms: a powerful community experience, a space and ritual every morning that’s essential for the children to feel nurtured and loved.

Miriam Battista remembered her daughter in the second grade doing a writing assignment with the theme: ​“What makes me happy?”

Her daughter’s thesis was simply put. She was happy ​“when Mr. A. pulls on my ponytail.”

“That’s who he is, everyone’s grandfather. He does everything here, ” said Battista, who is now the school’s development and communications director.

That included plumbing. Battista said she recalled an admissions open house when one of the school’s toilets wasn’t working. Mr. A to the rescue, so that when she introduced the headmaster to prospective parents, he entered carrying a plunger, she recalled.

Dan Gooly went to Hillhouse High with Mr. A but had lost track of him when he came to an interview for his daughter Bree to enter St. Thomas.

“I said, ​‘What in God’s name are you doing here?’”

“I’m the headmaster,” Acquavita answered.

“If it’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for my daughter,” Gooly recalled saying.

Celebrating Mr. A. As Jailbird
Craig O’Connell was one of the New Haven Public School teachers Mr. A recruited. That was 31 years ago, and he continues to teach, as do many of the teachers, a stable workforce over the decades.

“He’s the bus driver, painter, gardener,” said O’Connell. This year, to celebrate Halloween, each of the teachers dressed as a different aspect of Mr. A., with paint brush, with that plunger, with pruning shears.

O’Connell won the prize. He came dressed in a funny jail outfit, and explained it all to his first graders, who at first associated being a jailbird with something bad.

“I told the kids Mr. A. went to jail and Martin Luther King did too, and many heroic people did.”

“Dressing up big-time for Halloween is in our teachers contract,” O’Connell said. (That couldn’t be factually checked by press time.)

Acquavita said post-retirement he intends to stay in New Haven. He serves on the board of Farnam Neighborhood House, where he coaches in the little kid basketball league. That activity might grow. His Farnam involvement grew out of his bringing a St. Thomas team to Farnam so they could get to know kids they might not normally meet.

The parents have had a gala and parties all school year long to mark Mr. A.‘s 32 years, said parent Barbara Schaffer. Sunday’s event marked the end — sort of.

Schaffer said thatMr. A. is an inveterate traveler (he accompanies every school trip, often driving the lead van), and has long wanted to go to Hawaii, the only state in the Union he hasn’t visited. He was a little uncomfortable accepting a goodbye gift of a trip, but since there was an education conference in Hawaii that he wanted to attend to continue to sharpen his skills, he consented.

“All for kids,” Schaffer said.

The new headmaster will be Gina Falcone- Panza. In his remarks Mr. A. said one of her challenges will be to bring St. Thomas more into the digital age.