Bowe School educators have tried many initiatives including increasing the school day.
CHICOPEE — A tour of Patrick E. Bowe School shows things might be a little different next year.
Kindergarten classrooms will be clustered in the basement, the computer laboratory will be moved to a former kindergarten room, the special education interventionist office will be in the former principal’s office to make it easier for parents.
But the biggest changes will come as new Principal David T. Drugan begins to try to turn around the city’s lowest-performing school.
When Principal David M. Potter resigned for personal reasons after three years leading Bowe School, Drugan volunteered to take the principalship at the school.
As principal of Anna E. Barry School for five years, Drugan saw test scores slowly improve to make Barry School the highest-performing in the district and the only Chicopee school to be ranked as in the highest Level 1 category by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.
Bowe has consistently been the lowest-performing school in the district, despite a number of initiatives its educators have tried over the years, including extending the school day and implementing a state-sponsored Read First program.
“I thought it was an awesome opportunity,” Drugan said. “I want to level the playing field. There is no reason students shouldn’t be doing just as well as they are in other schools.”
Barry and Bowe School are about the same size but students have a much higher poverty rate at Bowe, with 85 percent instead of 58 percent of children from low-income families. The number of children who do not speak English at Barry is 12 percent instead of the 9 percent at Bowe.
While Drugan is changing some of the physical building over the summer, he is not trying to make major academic changes until teachers return and he can discuss ideas with them.
“I’m inheriting awesome teachers,” he said. “I want to help teachers make the best changes in their classrooms.”
He has also been asked to add an autism program that will serve about eight children of different ages integrated directly in the classroom. Barry had a similar program.
Drugan said in no way does he have all the answers. His first year as principal at Barry School, he saw MCAS scores drop.
“It worked out in the end and we learned what worked and what didn’t,” he said.
The one thing Drugan said he will focus on is small-group instruction, where children are divided into different groups. While one works with a teacher, other groups are with an assistant or work individually or with other children on a task.
“We will eliminate the idea of worksheets and work on hands-on center-based materials,” he said.
Drugan said he has been going through supply closets and has been telling teachers that he has met over the summer what they need for their classrooms. In addition, the school has computers and laptops and will be ordering more iPads.
With a strong focus on individualized instruction, Drugan has already drawn up a schedule that will allow a special education interventionist to be in classrooms to lead small groups at least once a day. He said centers are also to be flexible so children can move from one group to another depending on their changing needs. At Barry School, interventionists would even take children from different classes to create a group focusing on a particular concept.
Drugan said he will also adopt the philosophy of eliminating extra assessment testing, saying typically the classroom teachers already know where children are having problems and have classroom data to back it up.
While most of his staff are returning teachers, Drugan was able to hire three of his Barry teachers to fill vacant positions.
Cherie Curran, the new curriculum support specialist, said her main job will be to help teachers find better ways to reach students and will offer ideas and suggestions for new ideas for a child who may be struggling to learn a concept.
"We are hoping to take what was successful at Barry and try it here," she said.