Stamford School Tries New Strategy To Help Spark A Turnaround

STAMFORD, CT — As the new school year gets underway, one Stamford elementary school will be operating with two principals at the helm. Mark Bonasera and Edith Presley will serve as co-principals at Roxbury Elementary School as part of a three-year pilot program.

The program was approved by the Board of Education in August and initiated to help improve academic performance and also upgrade the climate in the building.

"We met with the Board of Education two times to present a plan," Bonasera told Patch. "Throughout the entire process, we went over the plan with staff, parents, the community and the board, so it was kind of a fluid process of presenting what this plan would entail for a three-year period."

Board of Education president Andy George said Roxbury has struggled in some areas over the past few years, and it is hoped that this new program will be able to turn things around somewhat.

"The performance of the students and the school has been a concern for some time," George said to Patch. "Mostly academic markers and the climate. The climate also involves the staff, and sometimes those things go hand-in-hand. If the staff is feeling low morale, it may bleed over into the performance of the students."

George said Presley's presence at the school and her work with Bonasera over the past year has improved the school's climate dramatically, and he hopes their continued partnership will continue to improve morale and help scores go up.

"Part of the attractiveness of this is the fact that Mark Bonasera and Edith Presley have worked together before, so in some ways it is somewhat personality-driven here," George said, "but if the model works we certainly would consider it for other locations."

According to Bonasera, the purpose of the program is to address the needs of Roxbury, as well as continue a partnership that began nearly nine years ago.

Bonasera and Presley both worked together at Julia A. Stark Elementary School, where Bonasera served as principal. When he first arrived at the school in 2011, Presley supported Stark as the assistant director of special education, and later became the school's assistant principal.

Bonasera subsequently moved over to Roxbury, where Presley began working last year in a substitute capacity.

"We realized [this partnership] was very beneficial for the school community," Bonasera said, "so we pursued it as a specific innovative strategy for our particular school."

According to Bonasera, most Stamford public schools have a principal, an assistant principal and an administrative intern. Under this new program, Roxbury will operate with Bonasera and Presley as co-principals and Kenneth Childs as assistant principal, which Bonasera said is a "very cohesive team."

The program was established as a three-year pilot program to build a sense of immediacy and a need to work strategically within that timeframe, Bonasera said. It also provides the co-principals with opportunities to evaluate the program each year.

"That was part of the proposal to the Board of Ed. We had a very measurable benchmark that we planned to hit each year to substantiate our success and to know that we're on the right track," Presley said to Patch. "We would like to monitor, as we always do, our school's climate and culture data — our staff, students and parents take a survey once a year in the spring to evaluate how the school is doing — in addition to several academic benchmarks that we have, as far as our standardized testing and some of our ongoing progress monitoring of students."

Though they will work collaboratively, they have also fleshed out specific roles and responsibilities for each principal aligned to their areas of strength.

"The goal is to make our school be everything that it can be," Bonasera said. "We have an amazing staff and wonderful parents. I think achievement-wise, the goal is, in the short term and long term, to bring together all of our strengths, move our kids forward and make Roxbury...a destination where all families will want their kids to be."

Presley said the two principals are "very, very excited" about the new school year, and expressed gratitude toward all who made this new program a possibility.

"Dr. Bonasera and I are both encouraged and grateful for the support that we've received from our families, teachers and ultimately the Board of Education," Presley said, "to agree to such an innovative and promising idea."