WHAT'S GOING ON NOW:

2009: "Turnaround" Elementary School

Excited to Learn
With a helping hand, Bronx school starts making strides

Principal Ted Husted’s plans for P.S. 85 befitted the school’s name: Great Expectations. Husted, a 22-year veteran of school systems, began as P.S. 85’s principal in fall 2006. He spent his first year getting to know the school, a kindergarten-through-5th-grade institution with nearly 1,200 students, and he immediately began strategizing how to improve school life. His physical approach included opening science and computer labs, and remodeling the library and the gym to diversify the school’s offerings.

Academics needed serious attention, too. Husted discovered that even during the best of times, 60 percent of the students were reading below grade level.

“The [school] systems weren’t engaging enough to make kids really think,” he said.

His solutions included using more project-based learning and giving teachers the chance to work with smaller groups in the classroom. But Husted hit a roadblock trying to figure out what the rest of the class would do while the teacher was working with a smaller group of students. That is when Turnaround entered the picture.

In spring 2008, Husted applied to Turnaround’s “Petrie Demonstration Project,” which provided Turnaround’s academic improvement services to six schools at a lowered rate, thanks to a grant from the Petrie Foundation. The program, which focused on social and emotional development, accepted P.S. 85 because it had already shown efforts to change.

“A lot of good things had to be in place already,” said Edi Vogel, Petrie’s project director.

The partnership between Turnaround and P.S. 85 was a natural one. While other programs the school had considered wanted to make changes by throwing out preexisting ideas, Turnaround wanted to work with administrators.

“Turnaround supported our changes,” Husted said. “They wanted to support us, and we wanted to support them.”

The team began in the summer of 2008 by training 130 faculty members in class organization and management. There was also instruction on working with a student intervention team that focused on behavior, and an instructional support team that focused on academics. Throughout the school year, Turnaround offered academic, behavioral and social services to the students, even working to connect students’ families to outside sources for help.

The program provides three years of Turnaround services, with the first focusing on installing academic systems and training teachers, the second bringing those practices to life and the third allowing Turnaround to step back so that the school can work independently. Though only in its second year, “[The school] is taking off on its own,” Vogel said. Husted sees signs of improvement in score increases in students’ English language arts and math assessment tests, and in more classes using project-based models.

Change is also evident through the student attitudes. Just last spring, 2nd-grade bilingual students worked on a project about the rainforest, constructing an entire rainforest, including plants and animals, out of recycled materials. Community members came to the school to see the students’ work, and the 2nd graders were visibly excited.

“That couldn’t have happened before,” Husted said. “It was really exciting to see children excited about their learning.”

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Great Expectations, P.S. 85
2400 Marion Ave.
Bronx, N.Y. 10458
718-584-5275
Ted Husted, Principal
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— Christine Werthman