Brand New Walsh Intermediate School Blends Technology, Tradition

BRANFORD, CT — On a chilly Saturday morning, there was a warm welcome from school administrators and town officials for a tour of the brand new and state-of-the-art academic wing at Walsh Intermediate School.

Schools superintendent Hamlet Hernandez and Walsh principal Raeanne Reynolds led the tour that included Board of Education chair Shannen Sharkey and First Selectman Jamie Cosgrove, whose daughter is a fifth grader at the school. The tour began in the Board of Education suite of offices slated to be occupied in the summer of 2021.

Students and grades five through eight educators began their 2020 spring semester in the bright, immaculate, school where technology isn’t just embraced but built into the very design of the three-story building addition, like classroom Promethean boards, an interactive whiteboard that in addition to acting as a screen for an image from a laptop or a computer, to old chalkboard-style interaction, albeit through touch or specialized pens. Many rooms connect to each other with some, specifically science, technology, engineering, and math courses, sharing a wall that can be raised for classes to collaborate.

Fifth and 6th grade students are on the second floor, dubbed the lower school with 7th and 8th graders in the upper school, or the third floor. With 889 students, 70 full time certified teachers and support staff, there are around 1000 in the building.

With Phase I wrapped, Phase II is under way in the $88 million Fusco Construction-built project. Outside an upper floor window, some fifth-graders were able to watch the demolition of a portion of the old section of the school.

Project manager Chris Toussaint told Patch that in addition to the advanced technology seen in the building, energy efficiency has been a priority. For example, he said “daylight harvesting” sensors read the ambient light in the room and lighting coming from windows and adjust the lighting.

Toussaint explained, as Cosgrove praised the work so far, that the working relationship between Fusco, the town and the schools has been great.

“Construction isn’t clean. It isn’t quiet. But we communicate. We tell them what to expect, noise for example. We communicate.”

He said the “hardest part,” as learning goes on every day of the project, he has to keep in mind lunchtimes, recess times, deliveries, buses coming in and out. “But we have open communication and the town of Branford has been absolutely amazing supporting this project.”

Some of the rooms now being used as music, for example, will be other classrooms. Most are modular and can be reconfigured.

The tour took visitors from the future BOE suite of offices into the new cafeteria and on to the “grand staircase” leading to upper floors with grade-level support services on each floor to the breathtaking two-story media center, tour-goers were excited, and impressed, but not more than students and educators, Hernandez said.

“Kids are really excited about their new space,” he said.

Touches include a sea, land and sky color theme, comfy nooks that are student learning spaces, dots on floors that mark the gender-neutral bathrooms and corridor intersections.

Gleaming hallways, inviting classrooms where unlike days of old when teachers decorated their classrooms, at Walsh, educators are encouraged to let students make each room their own.

“It’s got to be about the kids. Teachers are here to facilitate their learning and their interest,” as students express themselves, Reynolds said.

“Our students have always been great learners but now even better able to concentrate better and own their space. That ownership is so important. They love it," Reynolds said. "Kids are happy. Parents are happy. We are happy.”

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