Amistad Academy pupils show their spirit to delight of Rell

A nice article about Amistad:

Gov. M. Jodi Rell swept into Amistad Academy Thursday afternoon to visit the classrooms and congratulate the charter school students on their academic accomplishments.

 

"I have never been in a school where there has been so much enthusiasm," Rell said after hearing the students chant their school spirit cheers.

 

Achievement First, the nonprofit agency that runs Amistad and other charter schools, hopes to replicate its successful model with future schools. Officials were on hand to show Rell how the charter school works firsthand to gain more state support for charter schools.

 

"We have a track record of closing the achievement gap. Many moons ago people said it could not be done, said Doug McCurry, superintendent of the Achievement First Schools. "There is too high a correlation between poverty and low educational achievement. We thought that with the right kind of education, kids in New Haven can be just as successful as kids anywhere else. This is not a fluke, this is not a boutique. This is not about a personality. This is a highly replicable model."...

 

Parents are also excited about the expansion.

 

"Here at Amistad, it’s cool to be smart. It’s cool to be on the honor roll," said Alysia D. Pearce, mother of Christopher Gibbs, a seventh-grader at Amistad. She became very active on the Parent Leadership Council when she saw how much her son’s academic skills improved, particularly in writing. "Before he came to Amistad, for his homework he would write three sentences full of punctuation errors, now he writes a whole page of sentences with hardly any errors," she said with pride.

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Amistad Academy pupils show their spirit to delight of Rell

Maria Garriga, Register Staff

09/08/2006

http://www.nhregister.com/site/index.cfm?newsid=17167418&BRD=1281&PAG=461&dept_id=517515&rfi=8&xb=maniv

 

NEW HAVEN — Gov. M. Jodi Rell swept into Amistad Academy Thursday afternoon to visit the classrooms and congratulate the charter school students on their academic accomplishments.