The original Weaver High School, circa 1924, is now M.L. King School; both are steeped in history (photo courtesy of the Hartford Public library).

When Weaver High School was established in 1924, it had a "twin" building, Bulkeley High School.  Those two original high schools now are M.L. King and M.D. Fox Middle Schools, respectively - and the present Weaver and Bulkeley High Schools also are based on the same basic design.

Now, under a tight but manageable time frame to develop a redesign for both the academic offerings and physical plant at Weaver, the District has established a schedule both deliberate enough to gather public input - and yet expeditious enough to meet the June 2012 state construction grant application deadline.

To better involve the community, the District has appointed a Weaver High School Renovation Steering Committee to engage the community and arranged for the Blue Hills Civic Association (BHCA) to conduct public outreach activities to exchange information and bring forward residents' ideas about the project.  BHCA's North Hartford Education Taskforce last week held public meetings at Weaver and Parker Memorial Center to share findings from its door-to-door survey of residents.  

The survey's 881 participants made it clear that people feel strongly about community involvement in neighborhood schools. More importantly, residents feel the North End is treated unequally - and want financial investments in Weaver and Martin Luther King schools to be a priority.

What are the issues?

The 36-year-old Weaver building now houses its Senior Academy graduating class and the Culinary and Journalism and Media Academies, in a school built to accommodate as many as 1,500 students.  With its state-of-the-art, million-dollar kitchen, the Culinary Academy is bound to stay at Weaver - and the Weaver name is expected to remain.  But with the Journalism and Media Academy moving, there is room for new ideas about how to use the space.

Some community residents are opposed to academies.  They want a liberal arts high school of the kind Weaver was in its heyday.  At the May 19 and May 21 task force meetings, one parent called for that traditional approach, asserting that "academies don't work."

That viewpoint, more than any other, underscores the need for the District to communicate clearly about the rationale for - and the performance data from - its small learning academy model.

Other visions expressed for Weaver include that of a community center with ancillary services for housing and employment and accommodations during evenings and weekends for neighborhood activities. 

Hartford Board of Education Chair David MacDonald, who also attended the May 19 Weaver meeting, says some residents are generally afraid of change and simply want the high school they attended at Weaver.  But they also want a good education to be provided - and yet the problem with the large, comprehensive high school model is that it has not worked; in fact, students - especially struggling students - tend to fall through the cracks.  His hope is that the outreach now under way in the Blue Hills area will help forge community consensus behind an innovative approach that meets the needs of students today, Mr. MacDonald says.

The project timetable calls for the Steering Committee to begin meeting in June and to complete its plan by October, in time for the necessary Board and City Council consideration in December 2011 and January 2012, respectively. Costs and details await the deliberations.

In the meantime, the North Hartford Education Task Force invites residents to participate in any of its four subcommittees that interest them: Policy, Alumni, Educators, and Stakeholders. 

We hope the District and all interested parties work in concert to inform the community fully as details emerge from the process.  In this way, the facts about the design choices can be shared widely - and the best ideas can be generated.

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Who is serving on the Weaver High School Renovation Steering Committee?

The District-designated co-chairs are Precious Ross-Ellis, the parent-teacher organization president at Weaver, and Kevin McCaskill, the district's director of School Design.  In addition, the Steering Committee includes North End parents Nancy Walker (Global Communications Academy) and Lori McBride (Simpson-Waverly Elementary School); Diane Jones and Vonda Dennis of the Culinary Academy's school governance council; Culinary Academy teachers Nancy Fortin and Raul Rivera; Culinary Academy Principal Matthew Conway; Principal Baxter Atkinson and Assistant Principal Lenford Lawes of the Martin Luther King Jr. School; Culinary Academy students Kenya Stewart and Sheldon Rhoden; State Rep. Douglas McCrory; Andrea Comer, representing the North Hartford Education Task Force; Lee Hunt of the Blue Hills Civic Association; and Jack Butkus, manager of District construction projects and John Carson of the University of Hartford, who will serve as consultants and ex-officio members of the group.

Application Deadline May 31, 2011: The Achieve Hartford! Teacher Support Program, helping teachers with innovative approaches to build literacy skills in Grades K-8; please click here for more information.

Hartford Board of Education Workshop, 5:30 p.m., Tuesday, June 7^th, 2011, at Classical Magnet School, 85 Woodland Street; School Governance Council Co-Chairs' Annual Forum.

The Hartford Votes ~ Hartford Vota Coalition Mayoral Candidate Forum, light refreshments at 5:30 p.m., forum at 6 p.m., Wednesday June 8, 2011; at the Hartford Public Library, 500 Main Street.  This is the first in a series of forums where the public will have an opportunity to meet the declared candidates.   

Please click here for an updated listing of the graduation dates and locations for the Hartford Public Schools between now and June 17, 2011.