Gaeta ES/MS (formerly Joshua Barney School and Gaeta American School) History
Opened: 1967
Closed: 2008
Gaeta Elementary/Middle School was located in Gaeta, Italy. The Gaeta American School was originally named for Commodore Joshua Barney who was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 6, 1759. The Commodore originally served in the French Navy and then the American Navy. The Gaeta American School was known as the Joshua Barney School until a movement in the mid-1980s by administration to easily identify DoDDS schools as American entities. In 1967 when the first 170 students transferred from Villefranche’s Joshua Barney School located in Nice, France, they were housed in space leased from an Italian school in Old Gaeta. Sometime between 1967 and 1970 the school was moved to the NSA Detachment’s longtime facility on Corso Italia, next to the Rock Garden Hotel. The school occupies the first, second and third floors of the detachment. The top floor consisted of Navy Administrative offices. The three floors of the building were soon not large enough to contain the school and classes spread out to leased portions of neighboring buildings. It became obvious that the building needed a space of its own.
Two school principals, Betty Filosa and Andy Caro, and two Commanding Officers coordinated the efforts that culminated in the inauguration of the three-story building that became the school facility on July 12, 1974. Many dignitaries attended the opening of the school. The ceremony was held in the parking lot in front of the main entry of the school. The Sixth Fleet played. The children and teachers presented a program and a time capsule was placed behind a plaque on the left-hand wall by the entrance of the school.
The school served the dependents of the Sixth Fleet Command personnel, military contractors and civilians. The school was a three-floor, ten-room modern school building which housed spacious school facilities. The basement of the school housed a large multipurpose room which was used for school assemblies and programs during the day and as a community theater at night. A large full-size gymnasium, which belonged to the 6th Fleet Command, was entered into through the school building and was used solely by the school during school hours. A six-lane bowling alley was located below the gym. The school and recreation center were approximately ten blocks from the center of town. The school in Gaeta originally served students in grades kindergarten through eight with the high school students attending school in Naples.
In the 1981-82 school year, there were 325 students in grades kindergarten through eight. There were twelve staff members plus a learning disability/reading improvement specialist, a host nation teacher, a local national librarian and three educational aides.
During the 1987-88 school year, there were 300 students enrolled in the school with twelve teachers plus host nation, a speech therapist, and a combination learning disabilities and reading specialist. During this school year, the seventh and eighth graders were taught by a team of two teachers so a variety of course selections could be offered to all the students. The following school year the enrollment was 145 students K–8. There was one kindergarten, first grade and second grade. Additionally, there was a third/fourth grade combination class, a fifth/sixth combination and a seventh/eight combination class.
In the nineties, the enrollment remained consistent with about 150 students.
Gaeta American School had a strong community and parent relationships. The school had a Mentor Program where volunteers from the COMSIXFLEET, LaSalle, NSA Gaeta Security and family members visited the school on a regular basis. The NSA Military Police sponsored the D.A.R.E. program where a D.A.R.E. officer conducted a seventeen-week program for middle school students. PTAS and the Gaeta Spouse Organizations contributed to and sponsored a variety of activities in the school such as a storyteller, an opera house performance, the spelling bee, geography bee, and other schoolwide events.
In the early 2000’s there were twenty-three staff members at the school with a student enrollment of approximately two hundred twenty students in grades Kindergarten through sixth.
The school colors were blue and white and the mascot was the Dolphin. The school was closed in 2008.
Information from Essie Grant, former principal, and DoDDS School Information Guides