School Board Gets An Overview Of New Magnet School In Danbury

By Susan Coney

At Tuesday night’s board meeting, Superintendent Evan Pitkoff introduced Bonnie Rabe, project coordinator for the new magnet school in Danbury, to provide members with an overview of the innovative elementary school due to open in August of 2006.

Ms Rabe, who is the principal of North Haven Middle School, is acting project coordinator but will not be the principal of the new, interdistrict school, which will be called Western Connecticut Academy of International Studies. Ms Rabe stated that class instruction will be in Spanish as well as English.

The school will be a Danbury public school but will be partnering with Brookfield, New Fairfield, Newtown, and Redding school districts. Western Connecticut State University and Education Connection, which is the regional education service center in the area, will also partner with the new school.

Western Connecticut Academy of International Studies will be overseen by a board of trustees made up of the superintendent of each of the five school districts participating in the project as well as a board member from each of the school districts. A representative from Education Connection and one from Western Connecticut State University will also serve on the board of trustees for the new school.

Construction of the building is already underway and the facility will be located next to WestConn’s Westside campus. The school will begin as a K through four elementary school and when fully operational will include fifth grade as well, with a capacity to handle 360 students.

Ms Rabe provided board members with an overall view of what the school will offer students in the area, including an all-day kindergarten program as well as before- and after-school care.

The school’s curriculum will adhere to Connecticut and national standards. Ms Rabe said, “It will provide students with the highest academic standards in a rich curricular environment. It will be a passport to learning.” She is hopeful that the school will be staffed with many bilingual teachers or at least teachers who are receptive to learning and integrating a second language into their teaching.

Ms Rabe stressed that the new magnet school is exploring partnership opportunities with such prestigious institutions as the Jane Goodall Institute and the Smithsonian Institution, both of which have a working relationship with Western Connecticut State University. The school intends to offer an immersion in learning that will support and enhance the arts, music, and the use of technology to link with others to provide more global learning.

Newtown board member Lisa Schwartz has been working along with Superintendent Pitkoff in attending meetings dealing with the planning process of the magnet school. She stated, “It is up and running. It has a very optimistic schedule to open the school next August. Several things are still in the preliminary stages.”

School board chairman Elaine McClure said, “It sounds like a really good idea. In order to cover all the curriculum it would fill the entire day. What are you going to leave out and how are you going to fit it all in? Or will it be a longer school day?”

Ms Rabe responded saying, “We all function with the same state curricular guidelines. What we are looking at is the instructional interpretation of the curriculum. The teachers make choices on the curriculum delivery. For instance if a third grade class is studying the environment we might actually be linking with a school in Costa Rica and talk about the rainforest there compared to what we have here in our own backyards.”

She continued by saying that the same curriculum will be covered just the resources and how it is delivered will be a little bit different. The emphasis at the school will be to draw on the use of the Spanish language and use that language throughout the teaching process.

At the present time there will be space available for 24 students from Newtown to attend the school. Superintendent Pitkoff explained that it is a Danbury School and the State Department of Education would reimburse the districts for those students who attend the school. He said that Newtown would pay just $1,000 for each student attending the school. Transportation, however, is left up to the individual participating schools. Dr Pitkoff said, “It may be a bit challenging [referring the transportation]. We can cluster the students in the town to transport them to the school. We may have to designate a certain bus to do this.” Ms Schwartz stated that concerns over the busing logistics were probably premature at this time.

Ms Rabe stressed at the close of her presentation that there are of course many challenges ahead with planning the last details of the new school but emphasized the need for all of the partner districts to be flexible and offer suggestions through their board of trustee representatives.