Overview

ACES Mill Road School is an innovative program that serves students in Kindergarten through Grade eight, who have significant emotional and behavioral needs.  ACES Mill Road School brings together professional educators and staff who can meet students social, emotional and academic needs and support students in learning and growth.

Our Team

The staff and students at ACES Mill Road School are divided into teams to increase flexibility and better focus on students as individuals.  Each team consists of between 2-4 classroom.  Each classroom has a highly qualified teacher and teacher assistant assigned to the class.  Each team has a social worker assigned to those students and they provide weekly group counseling and support as needed.  Each team also has behavior technicians assigned to help support students and maintain a safe environment and provide reinforcement activities along with our BCBA’s who oversee the behavior system, provide instruction and support to staff and conduct more intensive student evaluation when needed.  In addition to this our school has a complete specials staff for art, music, P.E., health, home economics and library.  Our teachers are further supported by our Reading interventionists who provide additional reading instruction and intervention for students requiring that level of support.

Core Programming

The core programming at ACES Mill Road School utilizes a school-wide behavior system to address behavior throughout the school day and across all environments including transportation. Components of this system include the tracking and graphing of student “safe days”, developing goals and the use of individualized point sheets. Students can exchange the points they earn for fun activities, school store items and special field trips. Every classroom has a low student to staff ratio and provides engaging, hands-on standards based lessons. Each students’ academic performance is tracked by a combination of IEP goals/objectives, teacher created assessments and/or standardized computer-based assessments.

Trauma Informed Programming

The trauma informed programming recognizes that in many cases the challenging behaviors students present are manifestations of a history of some type of significant trauma the student has experienced or is currently experiencing. These traumas can be direct or indirect.  Students suffering from traumatic stress may not be able to verbalize their reactions to the trauma and generally have difficulty regulating their behaviors and emotions which has a major impact on their ability to function in a traditional school setting. The ACES Mill Road mental health team, in collaboration with trauma therapy support agencies, provide direct interventions to students to help students find positive ways to process traumatic stress.

The New Haven Urban Youth Elementary Program at ACES Mill Elementary School and ACES Mill Academy is for students, grades kindergarten through 5th grade, who are identified through the New Haven Board of Education Pupil Personnel Office as needing a more structured program in order to meet their academic, behavioral and social needs.

Current Participating Districts: