New animals elevate Shepaug program
WASHINGTON — AJ Conrad knelt and held out a handful of feed, as Raina the alpaca timidly approached him and began to nibble some of the food.
He tentatively raised his other hand and patted her nose before she walked away.
“It’s nice to get the experience and be exposed to it,” said Conrad an eighth-grader at Shepaug.
The two alpacas, four sheep and two lambs are the latest additions to the long-awaited agriscience program that just started at Shepaug Valley School this fall. The program teaches agricultural courses with a focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Residents had worried the school wouldn’t attract enough students to cover the cost of the program, but students seemed to have embraced the offerings with the number of applicants exceeding expectations and prompting Region 12 to have a bigger starting class.
Fifteen to 20 students even came out to the school on the Saturday and Monday of Martin Luther King Jr. weekend to welcome the lambs hours after they were born.
“I don’t think I anticipated how much enthusiasm would be generated by the program,” said Kim Gallo, Shepaug’s principal.
Growing enrollment
Boosting Region 12’s declining enrollment was a catalyst for the new program and officials are optimistic it will happen.
“The agriscience enrollment will help to stabilize our enrollment numbers over the next ten years,” said Superintendent Megan Bennett. “We are working with our towns to encourage new families to move to our region. The agriscience program will allow more opportunities for those in our sending towns as well as potential homebuyers in Bridgewater, Roxbury, and Washington.”
Like many districts in the state and especially in Litchfield County, Region
12’s enrollment has dropped over the years. It’s total enrollment was 692 in
2017, down from 841 in 2012 and 1,057 in 2007.
“We came into this at an intersection of our school having declining enrollment and looking to do something educational about it,” Gallo said.
The first class has 41 freshmen and 5 sophomores. Of those, 29 are from sending towns and 17 from Shepaug.
About 30 out-of-district students are expected to join the program annually. There isn’t a set number for Shepaug’s cohort and depends more on the applicants who qualify for the program, though the state caps the overall program at 139 students.
Other Shepaug students are also able to take advantage of parts of the offerings, including the eighth grade animal studies classes that will get to observe and work with the animals on campus.
“They can show you instead of tell you,” said Willow Kuck, a Shepaug eighth grader.
She’s hoping she’s accepted into the agriscience program for next year and can join her sister who is a sophomore in the first class. Kuck wants to be a veterinarian or teacher and sees the program as a great way to do either, as well as meet her love of animals. “I hope I get it,” she said. Kuck said she’s also happy to have new students from other towns at Shepaug, especially because it’s a small district where everyone already knows each other.
New students not only allows better engagement in the classroom as well as greater participation in extracurricular activities, but it also means more money for the district.
Region 12 receives $4,200 from the state for every student who attends the program. It also receives another $6,800 from the home districts for each of those students. This translates to about $350,000 each year to cover the program.
A long road
The agriscience program has been in the works since at least 2014 when Nonnewaug was looking for a comparable local program to meet the growing demand for its own program. Nonnewaug had 23 towns in its catchment area, including those in the Danbury area that now send to Shepaug. At the time, Nonnewaug was getting at least
120 applicants and only had room for 55 to 60 students.
It was delayed because of state budget holdups. The project cost $29.9 million, with the state paying nearly
$24 million for the new construction, as well as another $1.5 million for furniture and fixtures.
“It’s just so exciting to see it come to fruition,” Gallo said.
Construction began November 2018 and will officially wrap up this month. It include 35,750 square feet of new space. It features a greenhouse, plant sciences wing, commercial kitchen and tech wing.
“Everything is planned to be industry ready,” Gallo said, showing off the woodshop. “This tool crib is just like one you’d expect to see at Sikorsky.”
The barn is almost done, complete with stalls for horses and other animals, indoor and outdoor riding rings and a dig grooming station.
Horses, pigs, chickens and goats are also expected to join the program soon.
Staff have been updating the community throughout the process with community meetings and posting information online.
“I am proud of the work that has been done and continues to occur to make sure the program is not only functional but thriving,” Bennett said.
Creating a program
Gallo is no stranger to agriscience programs. She came from Nonnewaug High School, where a program has been in place for years, but she said starting one from scratch has been a completely different experience and they’ve turned to a lot of experts to help create it.
Students choose from four pathways as sophomores after sampling all of the options their freshman year. The choices are plant systems, food production and processing, animal systems and power, structural and technical systems, which used to be agriculture mechanics.
They spend 80 percent of their school day in regular Shepaug classes and the rest in agriscience programs, as well as coming in before school or on weekends and staying after to do some of the agriscience tasks.
There are 2.5 teachers now, with four full time teachers expected within a few years. There is also a part-time barn manager.
The new students have been working with administrators and the agriscience teachers to help mold the new program as it’s rolled out and finetuned.
“I call them my pioneers,” Gallo said. “They’re the first ones. They’re learning by doing and creating.”
Not only are the programs partially designed by students by they will also have a lot of student leadership.
Students could be running the barn and the different workshop storage areas. The flower program students will also run the flower shop, creating arrangements, corsages and boutonnieres for the school and surrounding community.
“When our kids wear their boutonnieres at graduation, they’ll be wearing the ones made by their peers, which is cool,” Gallo said.