Schools collaborating to share cultures  

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BEACON FALLS — Laurel Ledge Elementary School is participating in an urban-suburban collaborative with Clinton Avenue School in New Haven.

Laurel Ledge Principal Regina Murzak last week told the Region 16 Board of Education, which oversees schools in Beacon Falls and Prospect, the goal of the program is to enhance students’ understanding and acceptance of others.

Clinton Avenue is a kindergarten through eighth-grade school. The school has 513 students, 80 percent of which are bilingual, Clinton Avenue Principal Kristina DeNegre said. Of that 80 percent, she said, 32 percent receive English as a Second Language (ESL) services.

According to the school profile for Laurel Ledge on the state Department of Education’s website, as of Oct. 1, 2015, the most recent figures available on the website, 85 percent of the school’s 380 students at the time were white. Nearly 8 percent of students were Hispanic or Latino and 3.2 percent were black, according to profile. The profile didn’t report the percent of students that receive ESL services because it was too small of a number.

The school profile for Clinton Avenue states that as of Oct. 1, 2015, the most recent figures available online, 73.1 percent of students were Hispanic or Latino and 17.7 were black.

Through the collaborative, kindergarten through fifth-grade classrooms at the two schools have been paired up and the students are writing letters to each other, Murzak said. Laurel Ledge, which has 342 students this year, goes up to fifth grade.

The students will also talk with each other online, using Skype or Google Hangouts, and the program will culminate with a joint field trip or activity in the spring, Murzak said.

At the culminating event, DeNegre said, students in kindergarten through third grade will work on projects, while fourth- and fifth-graders will participate in team-building activities.

DeNegre said Clinton Avenue has done an urban-suburban collaborative in the past and it was a valuable experience for students.

“It was such a benefit to my students because New Haven is a big city, but our kids never got out of our city,” DeNegre said.

For Laurel Ledge, the collaborative is part of an ongoing effort to increase students’ cultural-sensitivity.

“We’ve had some incidents with our students that show a lack of kindness and respect for others,” Murzak said.

Last year, following some incidents involving students not being sensitive to other children’s ethnicity, race and special needs, the region hired Edward Joyner, a consultant who also sits on the New Haven Board of Education, to present a workshop on social awareness and respecting others at Laurel Ledge.

Officials didn’t provide details on the incidents, but the number of discipline referrals to the office spiked last year at Laurel Ledge.

There were 105 referrals in 2014-15 and 158 in 2016-17, Murzak told the board.

In a subsequent interview, Murzak said the school hasn’t experienced any similar culturally-insensitive incidents so far this year and the collaborative is a continuation of last year’s efforts.

Superintendent of Schools Michael Yamin and the school board embraced the program.

Yamin said the elementary level is the most important time to develop a child academically, socially and emotionally.

“As our community changes a little bit, our needs for our children change, and we as educators have to change as the community changes and the times change,” he said.