New Haven Independent

The board’s chief operating officer was speaking at Monday night’s BOE meeting on the flickering hopes for a resuscitation of funding for the Early Reading Success program, which has been cut but, to Clark’s eyes, not yet quite killed.

He’s pinning his hopes on an upcoming special session of the state legislature. However, a spokesman for House Speaker Jim Amann Tuesday cautioned against hoping for the school readiness money to be reconsidered.

The state-funded program costs $2.3 million a year in Nhew Haven and pays for some 19 reading coaches and mentors’ salaries and oodles of material. It is universally acknowledged as a key to Elm City CMT [Connecticut Mastery Test] reading gains in recent years. The state legislature didn’t refund the program this year, so the city announced late last week that it’s cutting it.

Click here to read a previous story on 11th hour attempts, which failed.

“Look,” said Clark (pictured holding the initial BOE budget with BOE’s director of communications Catherine Sullivan DeCarlo), “it’s hard really to quite know what actually happened in the smoked filled rooms up there, what deals were cut. But they’ve got to see we’ve made all this success in third grade reading and elsewhere. It’s because we’ve implemented these steps over the years — Early Reading Success is one of several — and then they take it away! It’s crazy, but I still think there’s hope.”

The hope he referred to was a legislators’ meeting scheduled for early June in Hartford. “They’re going to discuss a range of matters like the conveyance tax,” said Clark, “and Early Reading Success re-funding could be another of the issues on the table. I’m hoping.”

New Haven State Sen. Toni Harp has also vowed to fight to restore the money.

However, Larry Perosino, spokesman for House Speaker Amann, said that the real estate conveyance tax is the only issue on the agenda for a special session. If another issue makes it onto the agenda, it’ll probably ethics reform, he said.

“New Haven gets an increase of $6 million in state grants over last year under the 2009 budget, which was touted as historic for its record investments in town aid and health care when it was passed last year,” Perosino said.

“Although the Democrats fought for even more funding for our cities this year, particularly in school readiness programming and PILOT payments, these and other initiatives were rejected by the governor. With a projected state budget deficit and declining state revenues, as well as no ability to override a gubernatorial veto, we had to focus on preserving and protecting our current investments.”

The reading readiness program was funded in the first year of the 2008-09 biennial state budget, but not for the second year. In whatever arrangement legislative Democrats made with the Republican governor, Clark suggested, leaders had to know that without action, the program would be unfunded and die in the second year.

Clark wasn’t interested in a blame game, only in pointing out — well, to use an intemperate word that would hardly ever escape the lawyerly lips of the self-controlled chief operating officer, yet he seemed to be suggesting — the stupidity of terminating funding for a proven model for success.

If his optimism proved unjustified, have steps already been taken to alert the 19 coaches and mentors that they might not have those positions beginning in September?

“You’ve got to remember that these are all highly trained, qualified, certified teachers, the 19 coaches and mentors. There will be openings in the NHPS system for them — we have 40 to 50 teacher openings a year. The problem is that they’ve carved out this unique role modeling lessons and training teachers and working with students, based on data and research. They well can command other jobs in other districts where these people, who are very talented and experienced now, thanks to us, might prefer to go. To our great loss!”

Clark said that he and Superintendent Reginald Mayo have been spending a lot of time at City Hall doing the BOE’s part to trim its budget in light of the state cuts. “Even if we retain the coaches and mentors in other positions,” he said, “there will be a net budget reduction. It has to be that way.”

But Clark was still hoping.

Stay tuned.