by: Henry Avery
CGS was founded in 1992 by Dr. William Jassey as the Center for Japanese Studies Abroad, originally enrolling 70 students from 7 towns in Fairfield County. Jassey, the head of foreign languages in Norwalk, had a lifelong love for Japanese culture and wanted to share his love with students. Jassey was also responsible for the Japanese programs at the Ponus and Roton middle schools. Our partnership with Kojo High School began that same year. Legend has it that Dr. Jassey, while on a trip to Japan, walked into the offices of several high schools and asked if they were willing to establish an exchange program with his brand-new school in America, and Kojo accepted his offer.
Not much else happened until 2006, when, under the direction of Mrs. Barbara Brier, the Arabic and Chinese programs were added and the school was renamed to the Center for Global Studies. Study Tours for these languages began soon after. During the first year, Arabic was taught in part by a teacher who was away from his home in Egypt on a program to teach Arabic through the U.S. State Department. Arabic study tours originally were to his home school in Rabat, Egypt, but they were moved to Morocco and Qatar because of safety concerns after the Arab Spring in 2010-11.
Dr. Jassey died in 2011. To honor him, it was proposed that CGS be renamed after Jassey. This proposal was extremely controversial. Those in favor of the renaming claimed that no other gesture would be proper to recognize such an important figure in CGS’s history. Others, mostly then-current students and teachers argued that renaming the entire school after one man was inappropriate. After all, Jassey was opposed to the addition of Chinese and Arabic in 2006. Furthermore, students argued that few students know who Brien McMahon was, as names lose their significance over time. Why should Jassey’s name be permanently affixed to the school when most will forget him in merely a few years? The student opposition had a point. How many of you reading this know who Brien McMahon is, let alone William Jassey?
In 2014, the state office for magnet schools - the Bureau of Choice Programs - froze changes in funding for all magnet schools. Previously, magnets received their funding based on the number of students that they had enrolled. Magnet schools, then, were able to admit as many students as they could, faculty and space permitting. In the 2014 school year, funding was frozen at the enrollment number from 2013. This freeze has continued through today. The lottery-based admissions system we have today at CGS is a direct result of this limitation. CGS can only enroll exactly 300 students over all of its grades - not one more. This usually breaks down to about 140 out-of-district students and 160 in-district students in a given year.
The Bureau of Choice Programs caused more changes in 2016, when most of the staff that had been with CGS from the beginning retired. Their replacements were against the school-within-a-school model that we have, arguing that if we only spend part of our time in CGS classes and the rest at a different school we must be a part-time magnet school. This change in classification left CGS with a 30% cut in funding. The changes we see in CGS today - the CGS sections of McMahon classes, the hiring of more CGS faculty to teach subjects like gym and health, the 7-year plan detailing our eventual complete separation from McMahon - are direct results of this new direction taken by the state. These changes aren’t just happening for the sake of change - they’re happening because our administrators have no choice. Without the funding of a full-time school, CGS is unable to provide us with the basic tenet of our school - the study of foreign language.
Directors of CGS
Dr. William Jassey - 1992-2000
Mr. Epifanio - 2000-02
Ms. Brier - 2002-04
Ms. Glass - 2004-06
Mr. Brian Fagan - 2006-07 (interim director)
Ms. McCarthy - 2007-15
Ms. Parham - 2015-Present