Sentinel & Enterprise

Group to give $750K for small-schools initiative
By Lisa Guerriero

Monday, May 24, 2004 -

LEOMINSTER -- A national education reform group will help Leominster High School pay to create smaller schools within the building.

The Coalition for Essential Schools told Principal Dr. William Hart last week that LHS will receive $750,000 over four years to create teams of teachers and students.

"It's extremely difficult for a large school to make the changes we need to make, and not just Leominster High School," Hart said Wednesday. "We want to focus on helping students use their minds as effectively as possible. We want the student to be the worker in class. We want them to be engaged every day, as much as possible, in problem-solving, analyzing, synthesizing information from class to class. To do that, you need an enormous amount of professional collaboration."

The Coalition of Essential Schools, which is partly funded the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is dedicated to providing personalized education to children of all backgrounds and abilities.

Leominster High School was one of two high schools to receive a grant to begin converting the building into small schools.

Hart said small schools seek to create a better learning environment in which all students are familiar with their teachers and peers and receive personalized attention.

"It's too big a school for all students to feel a real sense of connectedness. Research shows there is a significant correlation between students feeling welcome and known at school and their level of achievement," Hart said.

There are roughly 1,800 students enrolled at LHS and its vocational school, the Center for Technical Education.

LHS will launch a pilot small school this fall. A group of about 18 teachers will be assigned to one part of the building as the core educators for about 350 students. The students would mingle with other teachers and students during their non-academic classes, lunch and after-school activities.

The grant also will provide the Parker Essential School, a charter school in Devens, with $150,000 to act as a mentor for LHS. It gives $300,000 to the regional Center for Collaborative Education to guide LHS's transition to small schools.

"When you add it all up, it's about $1.2 million," Hart said.

Much of LHS's $750,000 allocation will go toward training teachers to share instructional strategies, create parallel lessons, and use research and data to create classroom content.

Some of the money will help pay the salary of Pauline Baker, who will be the headmaster of the pilot small school.

Hart said he is waiting to see how the pilot program works out before converting the entire building into smaller schools.

March 31 is the last day to submit applications for LHS's pilot small school.