The former Rogers Elementary School, pictured, will serve as the Jamestown Public Schools’ Innovation Center. The center will host a new program to work with students with significant mental health and behavioral needs that require specialized instruction.

Jamestown Public Schools and Erie 2-Chautauqua-Cattaraugus BOCES (Board of Cooperative Educational Services) have agreed to a partnership that will house E2CCB programming at the Innovation Center at R.R. Rogers School, at 41 Hebner Street.

The Jamestown Public Schools Board of Education approved the agreement during its regular meeting on Aug. 29.

Under the agreement, the Innovation Center will host E2CCB’s new Bloom Program at Rogers for the next five years beginning this fall. The Bloom Program at Rogers is designed to serve students in the region who have more significant mental health and behavioral needs that require specialized instruction and therapies in a supportive, responsive, and nurturing classroom environment.

“Jamestown Public Schools and BOCES worked together to secure this site for a new E2CC BOCES program, which will operate at the Rogers school building,” said Dr. David O’Rourke, District Superintendent and Chief Executive Officer of Erie 2-Chautauqua-Cattaraugus BOCES. “The new location for BOCES will provide sustainable, intensive special education services to our component districts and their families. I’m deeply proud of the efforts of our BOCES faculty and staff, who developed this program option.

“We are very excited to partner with BOCES in this, the second phase of the reopening of Rogers Elementary School,” said Dr. Kevin Whitaker, JPS Superintendent. “The programming and supports for students that districts in the south county have had to send kids on long bus rides to get to are now right here in our neighborhood. I look forward to an expanding relationship with BOCES and their services for students and families in our region.”

Serving as the program’s Special Education Principal will be Patrick Langworthy. Langworthy previously served Jamestown Public Schools as a special education teacher and most recently as a teacher on special assignment supporting students and staff at S.G. Love Elementary School.

The Erie 2-Chautauqua-Cattaraugus BOCES is one of 37 BOCES in New York State. Erie 2-Chautauqua-Cattaraugus BOCES represents all the school districts in Chautauqua County, southern Erie County, and part of Cattaraugus County, a geographical area of 1,791 square miles.

JPS recently announced the first phase of a planned reopening of the Innovation Center, located in the former Rogers Elementary School building, beginning in September. In addition to BOCES programs, the building will temporarily host three classrooms of M.J. Fletcher Elementary School students for the duration of the 2023-24 school year, due to capital project work that will impact Fletcher instructional space. Phase Three of the center’s opening will include career and technical education programming that is slated to begin during the 2024-25 school year.

First opened as the second incarnation of R.R. Rogers Elementary School in 1976, the building closed as a full-time elementary school in 2012. Since then, it has housed several programs including the Success Academy program in 2019 and the T.E.A.M. program until the 2022-23 school year.