An innovative New London public school that opened last fall recently held a special event to showcase how it’s meeting the learning needs of elementary students in the urban shoreline community.

New London’s Shoreline Academy is part of a new model for school reform called CommPACT schools (Community, Parents, Administrators, Children, Teachers) that includes eight Connecticut public schools in urban school districts. 

The school focuses on combining the use of arts and technology through hands-on projects for students in kindergarten through grade three. Five teachers from New London’s Jennings Elementary School developed the concept for the academy. 

They applied to become one of the first group of CommPACT schools after presenting their idea to the school superintendent. The acronym CommPACT symbolizes the commitment required by the partners within each school, including community members, parents, administrators, children, and teachers. 

The academy’s five teachers – Jeanne McDowell, Carolyn Rowbotham, Cheryl Mullaney, Michael Podeszwa, Patricia Passaro, and Barry Fargo – are part of the collective effort that makes decisions about the school. This is a change from the traditional top-down operations common to most school systems. CommPACT schools like the Shoreline Academy are still accountable to their local districts, but have the autonomy to make changes.

New London’s CommPACT school, which has one class for each grade level, is located in a new portable building at the Winthrop School. It is the only CommPACT school that is a school-within-a-school – all of the others are in existing schools that have been converted to CommPACT schools. New London parents and community members were invited to the special evening event – “Passport to Success” -- in late January to see firsthand the student activities at the school and to meet with the school’s teachers in their classrooms.

“This event is a celebration of what we have been working on with our students for the past several months,” said teacher Michael Podeszwa during the opening presentation for the event. Each of the school’s partners kicked off the event with special presentations.

Parents and community members then traveled to the academy’s five classrooms to review student activities – from a flag project in Jeanne McDowell’s kindergarten classroom to a family tree project in Carolyn Rowbotham’s first grade classroom. Laptop computers in the hallways displayed other student learning projects. 

CEA along with five other organizations are members of a coalition – the Connecticut Alliance for CommPACT Schools – that are collaborating on this initiative. In addition to CEA, the coalition comprises AFT-Connecticut, the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents, the Connecticut Association of Urban Superintendents, and the Connecticut Federation of School Administrators, and the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut.