Laird Avenue Elementary to mark 90th anniversary

A cheerful learning setting prevails at Laird.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
WARREN -- As Laird Avenue Elementary prepares to celebrate its 90th birthday this week, it has the distinctions of being the oldest and highest performing of the 13 city school buildings on the state report card.
"It has a very positive feeling," said Michelle Chiaro, Laird's principal. "It's a happy building. It's not an old dingy building," she said, noting that student artwork and essays adorn the building's hallway bulletin boards.
A banner on the building's red brick facade proclaims the school's excellent standing on the state report card, which rates schools on their academic performance and attendance.
Another banner inside the building proclaims the school's state designation in 2003-04 as a School of Promise, meaning that its pupils have high academic achievement despite the modest financial means of their families.
Only about 20 schools statewide received that designation that year, Chiaro said, attributing Laird's success to the dedication of its teachers and the involvement of its parents.
About the school
The building, at 565 Laird Ave. S.E., exudes an early 20th Century charm, with its slate blackboards, hardwood floors and built-in wooden cabinets and drawers.
Nestled in a residential neighborhood in the shadows of Forum Health Trumbull Memorial Hospital and East Middle School, Laird now enrolls 293 students in kindergarten through fourth grade.
"We're pretty packed," Chiaro said of the building, which has three floors of classrooms and separate trailers housing its library and family liaison office. Today's enrollment, however, is dwarfed by the 533 students Laird housed in 1937.
Remnants of the building's original coal-fired furnace can be found in its basement. Today the building is heated by natural gas. Breakdowns of the old boiler system are frequent, Chiaro said.
The boiler room doubles as a teachers' lounge, and a basement multipurpose room functions as a cafeteria, gym and auditorium. Lacking an elevator, the building is not handicapped accessible.
Although every classroom has Internet access, wiring bundles taped to the computer lab wall and a shortage of electrical outlets give the building a makeshift adaptation to 21st Century technology.
Charm and character
Jeanne Killen, a reading teacher and literacy coordinator, who attended kindergarten through sixth grade at Laird, said some of her classmates' grandchildren are now pupils in the building.
For her, elements of Laird's special charm include the old residential neighborhood surrounding it, its exterior craftsmanship, the irreplaceable woodwork and the learning garden, large trees and winding driveway on its grounds.
"It has a lot of character," said kindergarten teacher Anita Shaw, who has taught in the building since 1982. "It's like a family. The staff feels like family. The kids feel like family."
Killen said her experience as a pupil at Laird during the 1960s made her feel "safe and secure, free from the stress of that decade." Discipline was strict then. "You had to follow the rules," she recalled. She credits her teachers at Laird with putting her on the path to becoming a teacher.
Among Killen's childhood memories of the building were of a milk machine in daily use, PTO card parties, room mothers, volunteer library moms, the daily walk to school, framed pictures in each classroom and the recently revived tradition of year-end carnivals.
The 90th birthday celebration will likely be the building's last major anniversary observance because school officials plan to replace all existing schools with five new ones by mid-2009 in the current $153 million construction project.
Chiaro said she'll be "very sad" to see Laird close and face the wrecking ball. Despite the building's limitations, she concluded: "It works for us now."
milliken@vindy.com