Cope School
- About Us
Mission: To help students develop and improve academic and social skills that will enable them to become successful learners. COPE provides a learning environment where skills are nurtured through positive interactions with faculty and peers built upon a common core of learning experiences centered on individual and collective student needs. Within a structured, therapeutic environment built around student needs, COPE works to promote life-long learning and responsible citizenship.Program Type: COPE School is a CT Department of Education licensed private, alternative day high school for students that have a difficult time adapting and succeeding in their local high schools due to substance use, emotional difficulties and challenging behaviors. COPE offers a highly structured student centered authentic curriculum program with a clinical and therapeutic emphasis on pro-social substance free behaviors that lead to academic success. Students are offered academics individual to their needs in small classes by special education teachers adept at implementing differentiated instruction and a team based therapeutic behavior management system that includes counseling, conflict resolution, and positive reinforcement.
Program Capacity: COPE School operates without a census cap and does not maintain waiting lists. Students that are eligible for services are accepted immediately.
Program Location: 425 Grant Street, Bridgeport, CT 06610
Phone: (203) 690-3936
Fax: 203) 337-4394Hours of Operation: Monday - Friday, 8:00am-1:50pm
School Director: Mr. Donald Tagg, MS, Sixth Year Educational Leadership
Eligibility: Students identified as having behavioral issues or substance use disorders or that are LD, ED, OHI/ADHD are eligible for services at COPE. Students must be between the ages of 14-21 years of age.
Class Size: Max class size - 1 teacher: 5 students
- Academic Program
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Faculty meets every month to review the academic and social progress of each student and to plan ways to work together in order to guide each student toward success.
- Individual one-to-one support for academics, as needed.
- Differentiated lessons that meet the individual needs of our students.
- Physical education at a well equipped athletic facility with experienced physical education faculty
- Offer supportive career skills and life skills education.
- Message from our Education Director
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For 26 years (as a special education program of the APT Foundation Inc) COPE School has a proven record of accomplishment providing education, mental health and substance use services, in a supportive setting, to over 1,400 adolescent high school students with multiple developmental needs.We are committed to the partnerships we have developed over the years with local public school systems to provide students with behavioral, psychological, and emotional difficulties the opportunity to experience classroom success and reintegrate into their community high school. To this end, we have documented progress with academics and behavior improvement: failing students successfully achieve credit completion; improved attendance; improved focus; strategies for self-awareness and positive behavior changes.
Our success is based on the belief that the COPE faculty promotes the school as a welcoming place where students feel accepted and can learn in a safe, relaxed, and supportive environment. Students like attending school at COPE because, “At COPE the teachers are here to help you and they listen to your problems,” said Bill and “The teachers don’t restrain us here," said Peter. We believe that within a safe and supportive environment, students will improve affective and cognitive skills and become successful learners!
Thank you for your interest in COPE school.
DonDonald Tagg, MS 6th Year
COPE Education Director