New Haven Primary School

New Haven; East Allen County Schools; building dated 1967; previously Highland Terrace, renamed in the 2011 redesign; prekindergarten to grade 2; 1445 Berwick Lane

The first rung: New Haven Primary School is where New Haven begins school. It teaches the district's youngest children, prekindergarten through second grade, at 1445 Berwick Lane, and it also houses the East Allen Early Childhood Program, the district's early childhood teaching under the same roof. Its own handbook sends its graduates on directly: at the end of grade two its students transition to New Haven Intermediate School for grades three through six, the second rung of the town's ladder, before the junior high and the high school. For a school of five and six year olds, its record reaches surprisingly far back, because the building is older than the name on it, and older by a generation.

Highland Terrace: The district's facilities accounting dates the Berwick Lane building to 1967, and the district's capital accounts carry it under a paired name, "New Haven Primary (Highland Terrace)," which gives the building's first school away. The school's own Title I schoolwide plan states the succession outright: the building's school was "previously named Highland Terrace and serving grades K-5." Highland Terrace, then, is the 1967 school: a kindergarten through fifth grade elementary of the years when New Haven's schools still belonged to the township pattern that East Allen County Schools gathered up in the middle 1960s. No dedication account of the building, and no word of who or what Highland Terrace was named for, was reached in the sources consulted; both stand open below.

The renaming: The present name is a redesign name. The school's plan tracks the school's results under the New Haven Primary name beginning with school year 2011-12, out of the district-wide redesign that began during the summer of 2011, the same settlement that remade the town's whole ladder and cut the grades here to prekindergarten through second. The plan also says, a few pages from that date, that 2021-22 was the school's seventh year as "a reconfigured and renamed school," and a seventh year counted back from 2021-22 lands in 2015-16, not 2011-12. Both statements stand in the school's own document, and this entry prints them together rather than choosing between them; the name's first year and the reconfiguration's year may not be the same year, and the record as reached does not separate them.

The federal life of the building: The federal series runs under this school's identity from 1987 to the present, and it belongs to the building under both its names: four hundred twenty-nine students in 1987, a peak of five hundred seventy-three in 1999, the fat years of Highland Terrace, and four hundred seventy-five students in 2025, taught by thirty-three classroom teachers, the leaner present school of the little grades. The school's plan gives the same approximate population, about four hundred seventy-five students, and one harder figure with it: the share of its children receiving free or reduced lunch and textbook assistance rose over the plan's years to seventy-two percent, in a Title I school whose preschool program, district funded, serves thirty targeted New Haven area children in the same building.

The school's own words: The plan states the vision the building works under: "a nurturing community of diverse learners striving toward development of strong character and kindness, with academic excellence, and the love of learning for all students." It is printed here because it is the school's own sentence about itself, the kind of record a first school leaves in plans rather than in trophies.

People: Trent Culbertson is the principal named on the school's Title I schoolwide plan for 2021-22, and Adam Martin is the principal named on its parent student handbook for 2022-23, and the line is printed in that order, on the school's own papers. A name the commercial directories attach to this school for the same years, Renita Peters, is not printed: the district's own documents of those years place Peters as principal of Southwick Elementary School, and no district source reached attaches her to Berwick Lane.

Sources:

1. East Allen County Schools, board hearing and facility plan document, July 9, 2024: New Haven Primary dated 1967 by original construction; and East Allen County Schools capital projects planning, July 16, 2019: the building carried as "New Haven Primary (Highland Terrace)"
2. New Haven Primary School, Title I Schoolwide Plan 2021-2022 (East Allen County Schools): Principal Trent Culbertson; the building's school previously named Highland Terrace and serving grades K-5; the results under the new name beginning with school year 2011-12 and the redesign begun in the summer of 2011; the "seventh year" statement for 2021-22; the population of approximately 475 and the preschool program of 30 students; the free and reduced lunch share of 72 percent; and the school's vision
3. New Haven Primary School, Parent Student Handbook 2022-2023 and Handbook 2025-2026 (East Allen County Schools): Principal Adam Martin in the 2022-23 handbook; the East Allen Early Childhood Program housed at the school; and the transition to New Haven Intermediate School at the end of grade two
4. Public School Review, National Center for Education Statistics data for New Haven Primary School: the series of 1987 to 2025, 429 students in 1987, the peak of 573 in 1999, and 475 students with 33 teachers in 2025
5. Southwick Elementary School, School Improvement Plan 2021-2022 (East Allen County Schools): Principal Renita Peters named at Southwick, the district document that excludes the commercial directories' attachment of her name to this school