Consider one of CREC’s Early Childhood Magnet schools or the Charter School for Young Children on Asylum Hill to give your child a solid foundation for academic and social success. These programs provide your child with all the academic and social support that he or she needs to grow.

Every classroom has a certified teacher and a paraprofessional/assistant to maintain an adult-to-child ratio that ensures student success. Our professional staff is specially trained in early childhood curriculum and skilled in providing individualized developmentally appropriate educational opportunities.

Our Early Childhood Magnets and Charter School will provide a tuition-free school day program to preschool and kindergarten students (ages 3, 4, and 5). The programs will expand to serve elementary grades. Before and after school care will be provided to families for a fee.

Our Schools

The Charter School for Young Children on Asylum Hill
This is a socially and economically integrated school serving urban and suburban children from three years through grade three. The family-centered school provides programming focused on development of the whole child with an emphasis on literacy. Its state-of-the-art early childhood educational program is designed to meet the needs of young children and provide support and resources for families.

International Magnet School for Global Citizenship
This program aims to develop inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people who help to create a better and more peaceful world through intercultural understanding and respect. Students involved in an IB curriculum are encouraged across the world to become active, compassionate and lifelong learners who understand that other people, with their differences, can also be right.

Montessori Magnet School
As Connecticut’s first public interdistrict Montessori magnet school, CREC MMS represents a pioneering educational concept and offers a national model for excellent public Montessori implementation. The school offers a traditional Montessori education for students ages 3-12, extended child care for students participating in the full-day program and a diverse environment, situated in a modern, custom-built facility.

Reggio Magnet School of the Arts
This program is based on the following four guiding principles: Children must have some control over the direction of their learning; children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, seeing, and hearing; children have a relationship with other children and with material items in the world that children must be allowed to explore; and children must have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves. Parents are a vital component to the Reggio Emilia philosophy. Parents are viewed as partners, collaborators and advocates for their children. Teachers respect parents as each child's first teacher and involve parents in every aspect of the curriculum.

University of Hartford Magnet School
This school, located on the University of Hartford campus, employs Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences, which proposes that there are many kinds of intelligence that are important aspects of human capabilities. Therefore, in addition to linguistic and logical/mathematical intelligence, teaching also focuses on visual/spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, musical, naturalist, interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences.