New Haven Independent

She got a hearing — and some answers — at Monday night’s Board of Ed meeting.

Nicholas is a young woman who knows the New Haven Public Schools from the inside. She attended Celentano, King/Robinson, and graduated in 2007 from Common Ground High School, and she knows the good, and the sometimes not so good.

When she rose to speak during the public participation portion of the Board of Ed meeting, schools Superintendent Reginald Mayo asked the young woman what school she attended. However, she was there no longer as a student but in a new capacity, as a paid intern with Teach Our Children (TOC), the advocacy and education organizing group for low to moderate-income NHPS parents.

A relatively new organization, TOC was founded in 2006 with a focus both to transform the schools in positive directions and also, in the process, to train low to moderate-income parents as leaders in that effort. Part of that training is the placing of young people like Nicholas in leadership-spokesperson positions. Nicholas’s internship is being funded by Public Allies, a leadership training organization akin to Americorps. And TOC’s important gadfly work has been recognized recently with grants from some half dozen funders including $70,000 over two years from the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.

According to the group’s organizer and one of its founders, Gwendolyn Forrest (pictured above with Nicholas), it’s in the very nature of TOC’s work for there to be tension between the parents and school decision-makers. TOC, which has a core of some 25 very active parents, and a membership of some 250, recently found itself in the spotlight as it organized and protested around changes in BOE policy requiring parents to make appointments to visit their kids’ schools and the degree of discretion of the BOE chair to terminate discussions at BOE public meetings.

TOC organized around these issues, spoke at board meetings — occasionally mixing it up in a spirited fashion with members including, at one point, the mayor. They wrote letters, called, made suggestions for changed language, and requested meetings with the press, including this newspaper, to get their perspective out. Result: The final BOE language was changed in both instances.

For example, now appointments are “strongly suggested,” which was the TOC wording change, as opposed to “required.” Forrest said this might seem minor but was a meaningful TOC victory, and a positive educational policy change important to many working parents who might just have to pop in to see a teacher or check on their kids. Leaving it up to the discretion of the principals at individual schools was not enough for TOC; they wanted it enshrined in the policy book itself.

“Of course there’s tension in what we do,” she said, “but the tension was and is productive.”

So what kind of tension was young Jasmine Nicholas potentially brewing up Monday night? She was there to ask for clarifications about the BOE’s suspension policy, which had been discussed at the previous meeting. “You said alternatives to suspension were being discussed. Can you tell us what they are?”

Superintendent Mayo, told Nicholas they were still being worked through, especially to provide consistency.

“And what about the visits to the community?” Nicholas continued. “You had said the community was going to be involved in the discussion on changes in suspension policy. Have those meetings been set up?”

Mayo said that was in process also.

Then the mayor himself spoke up and asked Nicholas what she thought might be good venues for the meetings.

“I think maybe libraries” was her answer.

The superintendent assured Nicholas and TOC that they would set up community meetings within the next weeks and let them know. She seemed satisfied, and sat down.

What did Nicholas think of the mayor’s interest and asking her what she thought on the matter?

“I think that’s very cool,” she answered.