New Haven Independent

Board members and the parent group Teach Our Children (TOC) argued about it passionately, but never disrespectfully, at Monday night’s BOE meeting, where the board considered two policy proposals changing the rules on parental visitation and public input at board meetings.

Troupe Academy parent and a TOC leader, Hazel Jones (pictured above on left, with fellow member Ethel Lewis) also took issue with the second recommended policy change - that the BOE board chairperson “may, at his/her discretion, curtail public discussion at any time” during public meetings of the BOE. Even though she conceded that TOC and the BOE wanted the same thing - safe schools with ever-higher achieving children - “I’m concerned,” said Jones, “regarding school visits that at some time in the future, a principal could abuse the visitation policy and keep a parent away from her or his child. So that one little word change, from something like ‘require’ to ‘encourage’ will make a huge difference.”

And she also felt strongly, regarding BOE meetings that outright power to “curtail” discussion was too absolute. “Instead,” she suggested, “give criteria for curtailing, as you have suggested, such as not sticking to the subject, or excessive repetition, bad etiquette, or even exceeding a time limit. But if you just have power to curtail, maybe you’ll shut out someone completely. And that power is too absolute.”

Certainly no discussion was curtailed at this meeting. More than a hundred people were in attendance and a dozen speakers came to discuss the issues triggered, to a considerable extent, by an August 15 Register article titled “Board aims to muzzle speakers.” Even though a subsequent article clarified with the headline “Policy proposal would not halt public comment at city school board meetings,” the battle had been joined.

BOE staffers such as departing Chief Operating Officer Robin Golden, and BOE members, including the chair Dr. Brian Perkins and Mayor John DeStefano (pictured below), were as passionate as Jones in pointing out the generosity of public participation policies and, in their view the openness of school visitation procedures. “I’ve been here four years,” said Golden, who presided over the updating of the 1999 policy manual of the Board, of which these changes are part, “and at meetings I’ve never ever seen anyone turned away.”

“This new policy regarding meetings,” said Perkins “is just bringing the manual up to speed with best practice. In most situations, you would be allowed three minutes, but here and in the discussion we just had about the CMT scores, it was great to hear from parents, their concerns and criticisms.”

“And as to school visits,” the mayor chimed in, “I have been listening to several of you, and I think we really are all on the same page. The policy is absolutely welcoming. It says try to make an appointment. That’s in the interest of the school safety and orderliness, and if you can’t, then, well you can’t. But to suggest,” he went on, growing hot, “as your flyers have suggested,” especially in reprinting the Register article, but not the corrective article, “that there’s some kind of attempt to muzzle, that’s ridiculous. I’ve been in politics for twenty years, and I sense some kind of orchestrated campaign here,” he said. “Did you have assistance on this from ConnCAN (Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now)?”

When Jones said they had not, the mayor replied that he had been in touch with other groups that had called him in this regard urging the BOE not to make the suggested policy wording changes, “And, you know, they all used the same language, and none had read the entire policy. Just took the words out of the context of an extraordinarily welcoming policy. At minimum, this flyer, saying the Board wants to tell you to keep your mouths shut at public meetings is just complete misrepresentation.”

When this man, Chris Chevalier, husband of one of TOC’s founder’s Beverly Chevalier, and sitting beside TOC staffer Gwendolyn Forrest) said, “Your words” - requiring an appointment - “one day down the road could lead, for example, to a lockdown at a school,” Perkins objected strongly. “We are simply bringing best practice standards - encouraging, not requiring, appointments to visit. It is absolutely negligent to say we will not have a policy until something bad happens.”

And things do happen. The mayor mentioned that a number of years ago, a teacher was assaulted and killed in one of the city’s schools. “A policy is necessary, but it doesn’t exclude. I simply don’t read it that way.” And BOE member Michael Nast (not pictured) said he was principal of that school at the time. “What’s more, as superintendent in Woodbridge, we’ve had meetings where 500 people attended and they were hot indeed. We used time limits then.”

Was he suggesting he would be in favor of such an emendation, per Hazel Jones? Would the full BOE go for time limits for speakers at meetings and the spelling out of reasons for curtailment, such as not following proper etiquette, repetition, and so forth, in place of the blanket and what Jones saw as absolute power of the free-standing word “curtail.”?

It was unclear. BOE member Frances Padilla (sitting with fellow member Carlos Torre) said “I’ve been the board for eight years and this participation tonight is good, very good. I can assure you this is not a ‘cover our butts’ policy, either of the changes being discussed, in any way. We are simply updating the manual.”

“It’s also a question of respect for the teachers,” added BOE member Carlos Torre. “When possible, make an appointment,” it says. “Even in a world without crazy people to worry about entering a school, it’s respect. You don’t just drop by my house without calling. Because I can guarantee if a parent enters a classroom, the learning will stop. That’s just the way it is.”

“Look, we are working class parents,” replied Jones. “I’ve had to work two jobs often, and I don’t think the BOE accommodates working parents. It’s often hard to make an appointment. And the word “require” bothers us. Also “curtailing” without reasons for curtailing is scary. I don’t want anyone with that kind of power. I’m very happy with my son’s teachers at Troupe this year. But not always. We need access.” She said, in answer to the mayor’s inquiry, that she visited her son’s school perhaps 20 times a year. “The change in wording might seem small to you, but it’s big for us.”

So what was going on here? Power struggle or semantic issues? According to Patti Avallone, the supervisor of Title I programs and the coordinator of BOE parent training sessions for more than a dozen years, “Look, this is a good, open dialogue. Some of the TOC parents we met with (Ed: Avallone along with other BOE members and staff had met last week with TOC and tried to clarify misunderstandings, but the ‘inflammatory’ flyer the mayor referred to, was disseminated nevertheless afterwards, leading to hard feelings) had taken the training.”

“We need to walk the fine line between optimum safety for the kids and an open educational environment. That’s what this is about. Columbine has unfortunately changed the atmosphere.”

While Jones and others continued to insist that the revisions would limit parental rights to speak and potentially endanger children and, what’s more, there was a plain contradiction, they asserted, between curtailing discussion and requiring appointments and the BOE’s profession of openness, many other speakers, such as Carolyn Jackson, insisted the BOE policy was just fine. “I love NHPS’s open door policy,” said Jackson who has sent three kids through the system and is now grandmothering a seven-year-old girl in the NHPS. “‘If possible’ means the door is open, not closed. It simply means sign in the office, abide by the rules, as we teach the kids to do. I want prevention (for safety’s sake), not intervention. Now I can tell my grandparents and other groups exactly what the policy means.”

“Look, we’ve had a very robust discussion here, ” summed up Perkins. “Earlier, during the Board member discussion of the CMT scores, here tonight, many of you, many parents commented, participated with your questions, even though, technically, it was just for BOE members. That’s our policy. It’s very liberal, and open.”

Indeed, in an extensive CMT presentation about achievements of the system, especially the third and sixth grades and the higher performing schools, the mayor, after offering congratulations, questioned the superintendent once again about the lowest performing schools. In full view and hearing of the audience, he asked for a report on correlations between the transfer of students and CMT achievement; on the numbers of non-English speaking students taking the CMTs and how such findings might have impact on New Haven scores and how then NHPS would compare with the charters. “Whoa,” pleaded Superintendent Mayo, “Mr. Mayor, let me open my schools first. But, yes, you’ll get your report.”

When a TOC member asked for reassurances that the system wasn’t teaching to the test, and BOE member Torre provided it, the mayor said, “Fine, Carlos, but we get pounded in comparison to the charters and the state increasingly is going to peg funding to tests scores, so we need to figure this out…” In short, there was no shortage of robust discussion, as if the CMT debate, one of the frankest in the two years this reporter has covered the BOE, seemed as if it might have been intended to head off, with its example of openness, the criticism of TOC. If that was the intention, it did not work.

Although Jones and Superintendent Mayo did not exactly hug at the meeting’s conclusion, they both termed the evening fruitful. What’s next? At the next BOE meeting, in September, the policy revisions will have their final reading and be voted upon. Will the language be changed in the meanwhile? “We heard you, Hazel,” said the superintendent .

Will TOC in the meanwhile moderate its flyer and tone? “Maybe,” said Jones, “but not as long as there is a potential for our being shut out. Maybe we can change our language so it doesn’t appear we’re against the Board because we’re after, ultimately, the same thing.”

“We heard you, Hazel,” Mayo repeated, in his friendly, but close-to-the-vest tone, and the two left, almost the last two remaining in the large, empty, and nearly silent board room.

Reached by email for a comment, ConnCAN’s executive director Alex Johnston said, “Whatever their intentions, the recent proposals from the New Haven Board of Education on limiting public comment at meetings and restricting parents access to visit their children’s schools have communicated the opposite message - and members of TOC and other parents are understandably speaking up in response. Ideally, the outcome will be for the BOE to engage constructively with TOC and concerned parents across the city to ensure that the energy stirred up around this issue will be harnessed constructively to improve outcomes for kids across the whole district.”