Newtown plans to divide 300 students in two schools
NEWTOWN — Top educators expressed confidence in a complex plan to send 300 young students to two different schools for the 20222023 year while the 100-year-old Hawley Elementary School is closed for an $8 million equipment upgrade.
“Hawley is an exciting project and a long time coming, and with the excitement, when you look at the scope of a construction project and a relocation like this, there is definitely anxiety and trepidation that comes with that,” said Christopher Moretti, Hawley’s principal, during a school board meeting this week. “The beauty of having this year before the project has given us ample time to begin our planning and to make sure we are thorough in everything that we do.”
The latest plan is to move an estimated 130
Hawley kids in kindergarten and first grade to Sandy Hook Elementary School, and to move an estimated remaining 180 Hawley kids in grades 2 through 4 to Reed Intermediate School.
That means there will be four new classrooms of kindergarteners and four new classrooms of firstgraders at Sandy Hook, and as many as 10 new classrooms of second-, third- and fourth-graders at Reed, along with their teachers, their supplies and their special needs.
“Our priorities were to make sure that we can fit and fit comfortably, and that people would be accepted and welcomed … to make this relocation as smooth as possible,” Moretti told the Board of Education on Tuesday.
So will they fit? The short answer is yes, administrators said.
“They are going to fit beautifully into Sandy Hook school,” said Kelly Maclaren,the lead teacher at Sandy Hook School, at Tuesday’s board meeting. “(We) are excited to mesh those eight classes. While we want to make sure we have unique identities because we are two schools, we are really looking forward to working together.”
The assistant principal at Reed mostly agreed, except to say that the situation was different at her intermediate school of fifth- and sixth-graders, because there were no shared grades with Hawley’s incoming second-, third- and fourth-graders.
“Hawley’s two-throughfour and Reed’s five and six kind of operate as more of independent schools,” said Jenna Connors, Reed’s assistant principal, at the Tuesday board meeting. “Our plan at Reed is for Hawley classrooms to all be grouped in one hallway so they have their own identity in that hallway as students and staff.”
Connors said it was Reed’s priority to “make sure that everyone feels warmly welcomed – and that includes students, staff and families.”
Meanwhile the construction project that voters approved in November to upgrade the ventilation, air-conditioning and electrical system in the 1921 classroom building was on track to begin at the end of the school year in June.
That same month, Superintendent Lorrie Rodrigue will step down after five years to tend to aging parents.
Construction is expected to be complete by April 2023.
“That does gives us some cushion if the project runs late that we are not up against the end of summer,” said Robert Gerbert, the school district’s director of facilities, during Tuesday’s board meeting. “It still gives us time to get the school cleaned up, and to work out any bugs that may develop as we start up this new equipment.”