New Haven Independent

The two agencies, LEAP and Amistad America, are working on a voyage for young people to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Their plan emerged as one hopeful sign during a public session New Haven’s state legislators held at City Hall Saturday to explain the gravity of the Connecticut’s budget crisis.

The state faces a projected $7 billion deficit over the next two years. So the proposed budget working its way through the legislature contains deep cuts to not-for-profits.

As nonprofits hit hard by the recession look for ways to keep afloat, LEAP and Amistad America are among those finding ways to work together to make resources stretch further.

LEAP Executive Director Eric Clemons said the test voyage of that partnership is already underway. LEAP is a youth program based on Jefferson Street. Amistad America runs educational trips on a replica of the schooner that carried the slaves led by Singbe Pieh who revolted and won their freedom in New Haven.

“We’re looking at having our LEAP kids create a critical mass of young people to go to Amistad and learn about aquatics and boating, and then from those kids Amistad will choose who they want to take on a journey to Halifax, Nova Scotia,” Clemons said.

Clemons and Amistad America President Gregory Belanger (pictured above) discussed their joint venture at a town hall forum that brought together representatives of local nonprofits and members of New Haven’s legislative delegation, including Senate Appropriations Committee chairwoman Toni Harp and Senate Majority Leader Martin Looney. Also attending were State Reps. Cameron Staples, Toni Walker, Patricia Dillon, Juan Candelaria, Robert Megna and Gary Holder-Winfield.

Cooperation with Amistad America, Clemons said, was “just one example of things we’re doing to leverage not just money but relationships.” Though times are tough, he said, the motivation for organizations to work together more closely could have lasting benefits even after the recession.

“These forums are very important to us,” said Amistad’s Belanger, who covered the state legislator 20 years ago as a reporter for the New Haven Register. “But this is more like inside baseball. What the public is going to hear is each of these nonprofits asking for their little piece and not seeing how we work together and how there’s a synergy.”

Community Action Agency of New Haven CEO Amos Smith said his organization is also pursuing partnerships, including an “asset-building collaborative” made up of 10 local organizations and a recent effort between the Community Foundation and Gateway Community College on the Center for Working Students.

“The usual divisiveness that goes on with nonprofits needs to stop,” Smith said.

Sen. Harp said she was encouraged by the efforts made by nonprofits to cooperate and adapt in the face of budget cuts.

“I’ve never heard that before,” she said. “I think it’s a really good thing, and I really like the fact that they can develop synergies and maybe provide a richer environment for the people they serve by coming together.”

Parents Speak Up For Amistad Academy

The students of Amistad Academy schools stand to be among the biggest losers in the governor’s proposed budget, which cuts funding for charter schools by 500 students, or about $5 million. (Amistad Acadey is a wholly separate organization from Amistad America.)

Dacia Toll, founding principal of Amistad Academy and president of its umbrella organization, Achievement First, said that given how charter schools grow, with additional grade levels added as students advance, the stakes are high.

“If the funding is not provided,” she said, “Amistad Elementary School, which has a kindergarten through second grade, won’t get its continuation to third grade. And Amistad High School, which we’ve built up to 11th grade, won’t have a 12th grade.”

Parents of Amistad Academy students put faces to the numbers, urging legislators not to cut their children’s educations short.

Khadijah Muhammad (pictured), said her 7-year-old daughter, Amistad second-grader Aziza, told her to talk to the legislators and “let them know that she’s stressed.”

“I told all four of my children that I want them to give me a bachelor’s degree,” Muhammad said. “But my daughter came to me and said, ‘I can’t get my degree if our senators don’t make sure I get my third grade.’”

Santia Bennett, whose son Julius Bennett is an 11th grader at Amistad High School, said the budget cut would have a direct impact on her son’s education at a crucial time.

“I’m a single parent and I have help from my mother raising him,” she said. “The biggest thing that is affecting us is that his 12th grade year will not be able to continue at Amistad Academy.”

Her son had placed in the advanced section on the state’s CAPT testing and the 93rd percentile on his PSAT’s, Bennett said. Her son now has a good chance at getting into a top college. She does not want to see him forced to leave the school for his final year of high school.

“This is a student they tried to put in special education in the public schools in New Haven,” she said.

Toll said Julius’s success story at the high school is just one of many.

“These kids have 100 percent efficiency on the reading, writing and science sections of the CAPT,” she said. “They out-scored Madison, they out-scored Guilford, and now literally we’re going to leave them one year before they matriculate to college because we don’t have funding for their 12th grade year.”

Toll said a rally of charter school supporters at the sate Capitol is planned for April 2 at 5 p.m.