Bristol Committee Votes To Formally Name Renovated School

By Dean Wright, The Bristol Press

August 30, 2021

The Bristol Memorial Boulevard Intradistrict Arts Magnet School Committee voted Thursday evening to formally name the school being renovated along Memorial Boulevard to the Bristol Arts and Innovation Magnet School, in other terms, Bristol AIMS.

“We’ve had a robust and respectful conversation and dialogue about that which I so appreciate about this group and I’m going to ask if we’re ready to vote regarding the motion which is to, moving forward, refer to our beloved school as the Bristol Arts and Innovation Magnet School,” Committee Chair Dr. Michael Dietter said.

All members of the committee approved the motion.

Conversation leading up the motion discussed the historical value of the building as well as its intent to serve as a regional symbol of educational progress and new thinking.

“I think that Bristol Arts and Innovation would probably be my choice only because I’m thinking of people who may not live in Bristol and may move to Bristol and hear there’s a Bristol arts magnet school. I think it may just encompass the entire city as opposed to something that would be a neighborhood school. Plus, it’s a whole new venture and it needs a new name, I think,” Mark Mazzarella said.

Dietter said the committee had a few choices a subcommittee had refined for the school before a final name was selected. The first was the Bristol Arts Magnet School, the second the Bristol Arts and Innovation Magnet School and the third the Memorial Boulevard Arts Magnet School.

“Where did the innovation come in?” asked committee member John Smith, who also made the motion to move the process forward of naming and committee member Chris Wilson seconded it.

Dietter answered that innovation had been considered in the name because some of the school’s course pathways were looking to embrace science, technology, arts and math and that name suggestions had hoped to incorporate that aspect of education into the school’s final name.

Smith said he remembered the previous Memorial Boulevard School was simply named so because of its location and it was not in connection with the Veterans Memorial Boulevard Park or its monuments.

“The school is an educational institution,” Smith said.”It never really was part of the meaning for what the boulevard was for. The boulevard was there to honor veterans. The building wasn’t built to do that. (Albert) Rockwell said I’ll give you the land and you will have a school there.”

Smith said he felt the word boulevard didn’t need to be in the school’s title because the committee was already looking to honor the original school’s donation by connecting its theatre facilities with the name Rockwell.

Wilson said that students were coming into a new and changed work world.

“This gives us a school that we can provide some of those unique experiences to our students ready for the work world and it's important to recognize innovation in the name,” Wilson said.

Albert Rockwell was a Bristol industrialist and philanthropist who served in the Connecticut House of Representatives in 1907 and 1909. He originally donated land for the creation of the Veterans Memorial Boulevard Park.