Bradley School Celebrates Its 50th Birthday

Students, staff and administrators celebrated the 50th birthday of Bradley Elementary School Thursday by hanging a banner outside the building, singing happy birthday” and honoring some of the school’s original educators.

The first principal, Angelo E. Doc” Dirienzo, and one of the original teachers, fifth-grade teacher Paul Ide, said the school is very different from when they first arrived in 1960.

Just the outside is different,” said Ide. The inside walls look the same.”

Both Ide, 73, and Dirienzo, 79, said the school’s population seems larger, and younger, than when they started.

In 1960, about 10 teachers taught more than 300 children in kindergarten through eighth grade. With only eight classrooms, students attended school in split shifts. Younger students attended school in the morning, and older students in the afternoons, for about four hours each day.

Parents would never let that happen today,” Dirienzo said.

Class sizes today are much smaller than teachers in the 1960s faced, Dirienzo said. 

Before coming to Bradley School in 1960, Dirienzo taught at Irving School, and had 37 students in his classes. Opening Bradley meant students could be more spread out, reducing class sizes to about 30 in all grades.

Today, two additions later, the school’s serves about 400 kindergarten through sixth-graders, and about 17 regular classroom teachers and 30 specialists and paraprofessionals required to keep up. Each class has about 25 students.

Use of the school has also changed. In 1960, St. Jude’s Church had not yet been built, and church officials used the building for their Sunday worship services.

Dean Miani, one of the last remaining members of the building committee that oversaw the school’s construction, said the eight-classroom school cost $515,000 to build in 1960. A four-room addition three years later cost about the same. 

These days, schools are much more expensive, Miani said, citing Derby Middle School’s $28 million building cost.

The school’s Parent Teacher Association picked up the cost of the $200 banner and put it up over the school’s entrance. PTA co-president Ginny Stadt said the organization had considered a formal dinner, but wanted to mark the anniversary with students.

Bradley School Principal Linda Coppola picked out the banner’s design, Stadt said, and chose green for the school colors.

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