The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Name for new Madison school down to 3 finalists
MADISON — A list of 150 possible names for the new elementary school has been pared down to three finalists.
The New Elementary School Ad-Hoc Naming Committee narrowed the choice down to Hammonasset Elementary, Neck River Elementary and Taffy Bowes Elementary at the Tuesday, Jan. 10 meeting. The vote was unanimous. The new $66.9 million, 87,000-square-foot elementary school was approved by referendum Feb. 15, 2022, as part of an $89.2 million school renewal process. Plans are to open the school in 2025, with construction starting early 2024.
The original name submissions came from the public, in addition to suggestions from Jeffrey and Ryerson elementary school students.
A spreadsheet, shared at the meeting, listed the public rank order for a suggested name.
The top five on that list included Taffy Bowes Elementary, at the top, followed by Noreen M. Kokoruda Elementary, Hammonasset Elementary, Robert Graham Hale Elementary and Warner P. Lord Elementary.
“I think if we want to send a name as one of our choices, it looks like Taffy Bowes is the highest, both on our list and the public list,” said Rebecca Frost, committee member.
Eric Becker, Daniel Hand High School teacher and football coach, extolled the virtues of Taffy Bowes at the public input session the naming committee held on Tuesday, Dec. 12.
“Taffy is an incredibly vibrant, intelligent, caring, hilarious woman who has radiated her light on the young people of Madison public schools for over 43 years,” he said.
“Her employment with Madison public schools started in 1980,” he said. “She was a homebound tutor, she was a teacher at Academy (elementary school),” he said.
“But her role of most prominence with our town was as Dave Melillo’s first hire at Madison Youth & Family Services,” he said. “She retired in 2015 as assistant director in charge of prevention and is still doing work at Grove School.”
Committee member Cathy Miller said she felt it was important to include at least one choice that included an individual’s name.
“I think it’s probably a good idea to throw at least one person in the mix,” said Miller.
Amelia Marcous, committee chair, talked about her thoughts on naming the building after an individual.
“I think we definitely saw a lot of support for Kokoruda, too, but I understand some people might be apprehensive of that for reasons that she was involved in politics, and she has less votes,” she said.
“But overall, I think if we are going to pick a name it would be really important that maybe we choose a female because we don’t have any schools named after females right now,” she said.
There is a school in Madison named after a woman, the Kathleen H. Ryerson Elementary School, which will be closed when the new school opens. The moderator noted at the meeting that many of the public suggestions for individual names came from family members.
“When you’re looking at the names of individuals — now this is neither here nor there, I just think it’s an important fact for the committee to know — with every name, with the exception of Warner Lord, anywhere from 10 to 25 percent of all the votes in favor of their name were from an immediate family member or a close family member,” said Zoe Roos, Madison Public Schools communications specialist and moderator of the meeting.
“That’s not a bad thing, by any means, but it certainly is just information I think the committee should have,” said Roos.
Board of Education member Seth Klaskin, a non-voting member of the school naming committee, strongly supported naming the school after a place, rather than an individual.
“I tend to kind of feel like we should use a place or locality name because it’s just generally less divisive,” he said.
The committee will present the choices to at the Board of Education Tuesday, Jan. 23 meeting and the board will make their final decision at the Tuesday, Feb. 13 meeting.