Tale of two City...schools?

Helen Ubiñas’ damning commentary on the 2550 Main Street Academy raises more questions than answers.  Mind you, not about the controversial columnist loathed, or feared, by those at 550 Main Street. (I once had a dept. head ask me to ask Helen to stay away from said person…shiiii…like I got that kinda pull? she called me sheepish in a column once…every man for himself!)

No, the questions surround more the school, or Academy, itself and the recent complaint by both the Center for Children’s Advocacy and Greater Hartford Legal Aid.  The complaint charges that the Academy failed to provide educational services in the least-restrictive environment, excluded students from participating in school programs because of their disabilities, failed to comply with required disciplinary procedures and failed to provide a safe school environment.

The complaint prompted an article by the Courant which prompted the visit by Ms. Ubiñas.

For those of you wanting to get more information on this 2550 Main Street Academy, good luck.  The Hartford Schools web site has no mention of it anywhere in there list of schools.  There’s a mention of a move from Washington Street to Main Street in Ubiñas’ column, but the Adult Education Center still remains at Washington Street.  So…what gives?

Turns out that this 2550 Main Street Academy in question is the old Halo Alternative Learning Center.  A victim of this incessant need to rename everything, they couldn’t even come up with another cool video game themed name, they went with an address (which I believe is actually 2548 Main Street.)

The Academy provides educational services for non-traditional and at-risk students. Initially opened in September 2001, the HALO center was for students that experienced behavioral and disciplinary problems in the classroom. The HALO center was created as an alternative to most of these students dropping out of school One of the goals of the program is to return students to their mainstream high school classrooms at the earliest and most appropriate time, In Its first year the HALO center serviced 205 students.

Or for you old school (no pun intended) cats, HALO was for the kids who first went to White House at Quirk, then went to Moylan and still were considered “issues.” Yeah, those kids.

The Hartford School System hired a former Hernando County (Tampa Bay area) Superintendent as Director of the Academy in Ocotber 2009.  Here’s a link to a “report card” type of coverage of the man, Mr. Wayne Alexander, responsible for the academy.

There are some real disturbing reasons why adults and these “non-traditional youth” get shafted.  Eduardo Genao, Director of Hartford Adult Education appeared at the City Council’s Education Committee meeting and gave testimony of the woeful amount of state spending dedicated to these populations.  I’ll get my notes, but it didn’t even reach 5K a student.

But we can’t even begin to confront those issues collectively if we don’t deal with our own house first.  Absolutely NO mention of the Academy on the Hartford Schools web site! really!?! really!?!  You can’t get much more swept under the carpet than that.  A current board member was quoted as saying that the school was just opened in 2009.  That’s the fallacy of these name changes, one can say, without guilt, that it’s a new thing, we’re trying new things to see how they go.  NO, Halo has been around since 2001 and we probably have studies that show that it’s been under-serving that population going back as long.  Changing the name and location doesn’t make it all go away.  And we can’t say it’s only been a year, give us a break.

Some level of transparency and dialogue needs to come ASAP, or else how can anyone argue with one of Ms. Ubiñas’ conclusions that “this is just a holding cell until either the kids give up or age out of a broken school system and into a broken correctional system.”