Henry C. Conrad High School will return by the 2007-08 school year, mixing a focus on biotechnology and allied health career programs with a traditional program.
The last Conrad students to graduate from the high school in Woodcrest, near Newport, are members of the class of 1978, the year a federal court order for desegregation led to the closure of several schools to reassign students.
The Red Clay Consolidated School District has partnered with Delaware Technical & Community College, Christiana Care Health System, the Delaware Biotechnology Institute (a unit of the University of Delaware) and the DuPont Company to create the new school.
Although some Conrad alumni say their alma mater can never truly return, the overwhelming majority of them are excited about its resurrection as a high school.
“Can you imagine in a few years being able to see a Conrad football team?” said Joan Enslen, a 1975 graduate who lives in Granogue near Centreville.
The school would include grades six through 12, following the same, successful model implemented at Red Clay’s Cab Calloway School of the Arts, said Red Clay Superintendent Dr. Robert J. Andrzejewski.
Andrzejewski grew up in Woodcrest, and he served as Conrad Middle’s principal from 1991 to 1993. Although he graduated from Salesianum School, he remembers Conrad High as a fine school with strong community spirit.
“We’re hoping that by bringing back the school, that spirit will come with it as well,” he said.
Conrad High is designed for various types of students, who will eventually enter the workforce as blue collar or white collar workers.
“Our focus as a school district is really to try find a way for our students to enter the workforce, whether it’s before college or after college,” Andrzejewski said. “And we’re hoping that, with the help of our partners, this program will open doors to opportunities for students as well as be a source of pride for this community.”
Students who graduate from the new Conrad would enter the workforce immediately, pursue a two-year degree at Delaware Tech or pursue a four-year degree at the University of Delaware or another college, he said.
Some community members are concerned that the students in Conrad Middle School’s current attendance zone, which is composed primarily of a blue collar background, will not seek secondary education at the newly revamped school for the most part. But district officials counter that they have done several things to make the Conrad community aware of the changes under way and, what’s more, Andrzejewski has repeatedly said the Conrad attendance zone will have preference when it comes to determining enrollment.
In June, the Red Clay Board of Education approved a plan to disperse Conrad Middle students who choose not to attend the new program to the district’s other middle schools. At that meeting, school board President Irwin J. Becnel Jr. said the new Conrad program “is destined to be one of the premiere high schools in the state.”
The attendance zones were criticized for not adhering to the spirit of the Neighborhood Schools Act, but Andrzejewski countered that many Conrad families have already been using the choice program to send their children to other middle schools, and the new attendance zones reflect those patterns. Conrad has a capacity of more than 1,000, but it only had 652 students in 2005. In the 2006 Delaware Student Testing Program scores, it consistently ranked last or next to last among Red Clay’s middle schools.
Charles M. Cavanaugh, on the Red Clay board since its inception in 1981, said that if anything, the new program at Conrad will stop the loss of students it has experienced.
“It’s time we gave them a choice back in,” he said.
1965 graduate Connie Nichols Marro, of Rehoboth Beach, would love to see Conrad become a high school again. But, she would rather see high schools return as neighborhood schools.
But alumni like Carmine Balascio, a 1975 graduate, say choice or charter programs are the way to go in today’s open market. Balascio has not impressed with the quality of Delaware’s regular public schools.
“If things are the same when our daughter is old enough for high school, we would consider Wilmington Charter School,” he said.
But otherwise they will probably look only at private schools.
“I support reopening Conrad as a medical tech school with enthusiasm. That sounds like a school my wife and I might consider sending our daughter to.”
But Conrad High School sweethearts Rich and Terry Henderson (1964 and 1967, respectively) have reservations about having a sixth through 12th grade format.
“I have a problem when you have young children mixing with older children like that because I have a granddaughter and I notice that when she is around older children, she tends pick up things that she doesn’t really understand,” Rich Henderson said.
But 1976 alumna Ellyn Stanek Hutton, of Greenville, thinks “it would be great to utilize this building to serve the needs of the community.”
“As a nurse, I especially realize the need for a larger nursing pool to staff our hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and home care agencies,” she said.
Although 1975 grad Barbara (Green) Webb, of Newport, is not sure – as a parent – if she would like sixth graders intermingling with high school kids, she loves the concept for the new school.
Tinker Simpers, 1973 Conrad graduate, said she has no faith in the overall management of the public schools with the exception of charter schools. But Simpers does not support a combined middle-high school for Conrad, thinking it would be a social disaster.
1960 graduate Lois Jeanne (Harvey) Baillargeon, of Rehoboth Beach, disagreed.
“I think it would be a better use of the school,” she said, “and add a new spark to the area around Conrad.”
