By Sarah Harris
Larry Conaway thought he made a mistake during his first year as principal of New Light High School, an alternative public school in New Haven.
“In my first year I thought ‘oh my goodness, I made a mistake’. I said ‘what have I gotten myself into?’” Conaway said.
Located in a strip mall with no resources and only part-time staff, Conaway realized this new job was going to be more challenging than expected. But he refused to give up on his students.
Conaway is a trained social worker and trained administrator. When he first started in the field more than 30 years ago, it was in alternative education. He worked at Hyde School in Hamden, which was an alternative high school. Conaway then worked with a lot of alternative education-type kids at Wilbur Cross High School for 10 years.
Conaway is going into his fouth year as principal at New Light High School, and now has more resources, including 10 full-time staff members and part-time staff.
Alternative education means dealing with “second- and third-chance” students – children who have been expelled, jailed, experienced trauma, or dropped out of school.
“Kids who have given up on school, or school has given up on them,” Conaway said.
New Light creates individual schedules for students, making sure to be flexible. If a student cannot come in until 10 a.m. because of employment, they create a schedule around that. If a student needs a certain amount of credits, they create a schedule around that.
New Light is part of “Youth Stat,” a citywide initiative that connects students who need help with the right community resources — putting them on track to graduate, not drop out, according to the New Haven Independent.
New Light partners with businesses in the community due to lack of funding from the district. The partners include Write to Thrive, Integrated Wellness, Outreach Realty LLC, Farnam Associates LLC, Wells Fargo, Stop & Shop, Hamden Driving School and Miller Construction. These partners create job opportunities for students to learn new skills.
Conaway finds difficulty when reaching out to partners because businesses want kids who are going to go to college or kids who haven’t been arrested or kids who are in AP classes, which isn’t quite the population that New Light serves.
Wendy Hamilton, a 66-year-old local activist, just made a $20,000 donation to New Light. Conaway plans on using the donation to fill gaps such as building an art room, hiring a dance teacher and/or sculpture teacher, and to use the money in other departments that need the extra funding.
When asked how Conaway deals with different and difficult situations, Conaway responds with his academic philosophy.
“Student-centered and flexible. You gotta have the students’ best interest in mind and you got to be flexible. On the other side of that, the student has to hold their end of the bar,” he said.
Conaway deals with all sorts of backgrounds and home situations, including students from families of drug abuse, mental health issues, not graduating from high school, welfare, immigrant families, and non-English speaking families.
“It’s hard to educate or expose a student when they say ‘fuck you’ to you, like literally say it. Or ‘you’re not helping me’. And that’s what they’ve learned. And when they tell you that three or four times … you and I are human, too. It’s hard to recover from that,” he said.
Conaway stressed that the students he works with have good intentions, but they “drop the ball” because they’re not used to organizations, institutions and schools telling them that they’re on their side and working in their best interest.
So what made Conaway want to go from Wilbur Cross High School, the biggest school in the district, with an abundance of resources, to the smallest school in the district?
“Let me tell you this, and this is very important. Once you implement the appropriate intervention with these students, you get the best models out of them,” he said. “They’re the most loyal, the most appreciative. It’s so rewarding, once they get their diploma, it’s so rewarding.”
Sarah Harris is a senior journalism major at Quinnipiac University. She is writing about structural racism this spring. She can be reached at sarahanne.harris@quinnipiac.edu.
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