Canterbury Brook Academy of the Arts is at NYMA
Maybe, it was meant to be.
Last year Cornwall’s Kelly Trotta started a private school, Canterbury Brook Academy of the Arts (CBA).
All along, in her quest to open a physical school, she was scouting locations. She settled on the old Sacred Heart School building in Highland Falls and began working toward opening there this fall.
Then, that fell apart.
Trotta got busy, and, perhaps it was Mother Nature that led her to a new location, one that the actual Canterbury Brook runs right through.
CBA will open this September at 1 Faculty Drive in Cornwall-on-Hudson. That address might sound familiar — it’s part of the New York Military Academy campus. Trotta can’t wait to continue “ the incredible success and growth our students had while we worked on being in the physical building”.
Back to NYMA in a minute.
CBA will be the school home to about 90 students this coming school year, Trotta hopes, ranging from age four through grade 9. In the couple years ahead, Trotta says the school will add tenth through twelfth grades, as allowed by New York State, one per year. The first graduating class of CBA will complete school in 2027.
Trotta, her staff and faculty and even her students and their families have been busy in the last three weeks, since she took over the building at NYMA. It’s a one-floor facility, with large classrooms with big windows. She and her helpers have been busy painting, moving in furniture, and preparing for the installation of things like new dance floors.
CBA, Trotta says, “celebrates different learning styles” and uses dance, music, theater and visual arts to help her students learn. There will be two large dance studios, a music classroom and performance space, an art room, and, of course, academic classrooms. The students are grouped by age — transitional kindergarten (for children who are five by March 30, 2024) and kindergarten, grades 1-2, grades 3-4, grades 5-6, and grades 7, 8 and 9. It is expected there will be 12-15 children per class, with two teachers per class.
She says her school will have a full Social-Emotional Learning component, and that she believes in a “learning outside the box” environment for students who need it. In teacher-speak, she notes they use PAF (Preventing Academic Failure, a proven program for students with dyslexia), FOSS (Full Option Science System), OG (Orton Gillingham — an educational approach for teaching the structure and code of the English language), Cross-Curricular Literacy (establishing patterns of information between different academic subjects) and hands-on math.
That’s all in conjunction with field trips (“we went everywhere possible last year”), family events, community service, and, soon-to-be-put-in-place — a year-round, outdoor garden-style lunchroom that will look something like a greenhouse.
CBA is for “any child”, Trotta says, but especially for “kids who are not being served by their local public schools”. She says her students will be coming from both Cornwall and communities in the Hudson Valley, but also from Manhattan, Westchester County and Bergen County in N.J.
Now, back to the fact that the school is located on the NYMA campus.
Sitting in on an interview with Trotta last week was Angelena Huang, the superintendent of NYMA. When Trotta’s other location fell through, she reached out to Huang to see if there was any space on the NYMA campus where they could create a new partnership.
Huang, intrigued by Trotta’s unique educational approach, recognized the potential for an advantageous collaboration “We are two very motivated women who are very dedicated to kids,” Huang said. “Our big ideas align.”
In a ground-breaking move, Huang says she has provided an invaluable offer to host Trotta’s school in one of NYMA’s buildings. Notably, this alliance demonstrates Huang’s profound commitment to fostering community collaboration.
So, a deal was made, with some added benefits to both programs.
NYMA will welcome about 80-100 students when the new school year begins. Currently, NYMA is facing a shortage of art and music teachers, a hurdle for its students who need these subjects to fulfill their curriculum requirements. This shortfall is set to be addressed by Trotta’s faculty. In return, Trotta’s students will benefit from NYMA’s ample performance spaces and sprawling grounds.
With both schools operating under a rolling admission system, they anticipate growth as word spreads about their unique collaborative programs. NYMA is open to students in the sixth grade to twelve grade. Huang, unafraid of blurring traditional educational boundaries, said, “There is a lot more overlap than you would think in our two schools. We are not in competition; rather, we thrive together.”
She further added, “My goal is to make the NYMA the most prestigious private school in the northeast, and this partnership is a major step towards achieving that. I strongly believe CBA and NYMA will benefit from the partnership and together become one of the most innovative programs in K12 education.”
And in that, Huang says, the entire community will benefit.
Right now, Trotta is hosting weekly open houses from 12-2 and 6-8 on Tuesdays, with a ‘Pajama Story Time’ at the evening session. School is set to start on September 6.
For more information on the school, visit www.canterburybrookacademyofthearts.com; call 845-728-1925; or email admin@Canterbury BrookHSS.com
