Finnegan Schick Photo
Hundreds of New Haveners cast votes Tuesday night — not for a candidate, but for ways to strengthen the city.
They voted and shared opinions at a “City Transformation Expo” in the Beecher School Cafeteria, where the common theme appeared be common cause — that New Haven works best when groups work together rather than in “silos.”
City agencies and over 50 community groups organized the event to begin seeking consensus on a myriad of topics from economic development and transportation to crime and public health. Organizers showed participants a draft version of an in-progress Harp administration “City Transformation Plan.”
In 20-minute sessions, those in attendance walked around the room, “voting” for particular initiatives by placing a sticker below posters. These posters bore statistics about the city and outlined three different ways to move forward on each issue.
“This is the tried and true method of community organizing and planning entities,” said Lee Cruz, director of community outreach at the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven. “There is data, which is important, but equally driving this is the community.”
Community outreach groups, many focused on education, displayed information at tables in the lobby. Many people spoke about the importance of collaboration, especially when it comes to New Haven schools.
“Each school has priorities,” said Liana Epstein, project manager for a group called City Atlas: New Haven. A charter school like Common Ground could benefit from collaborating with local farms, churches, Yale and the Urban Resources Initiative (URI) when teaching sustainability, she said. This collaboration is happening, but some people would like to see more.
Common Ground has collaborated with the parks department, Urban Resources Initiative, and Audubon CT to create “urban oases” for wildlife throughout the city. (Read about that here.) Joel Tolman, director of community engagement for Common Ground, said making the entire city a wildlife oasis is too large a project for a single organization, which is why they are partnering with other groups to approach the task one backyard and city square at a time.
Tolman said Common Ground is also working with six public schools to restore greenspaces around the city. Ten parks and plots of land are being cleaned and cleared of invasive plants. In some, playgrounds were installed.
“On their own, individual investments will make a difference,” Tolman said, but he emphasized how collaboration can create more substantial change. There are silos between New Haven’s charter and public schools, he said. “There’s a lot of divisiveness.”
Yet collaboration can take many shapes, and some groups fill-in the educational gaps left by public schools.
NHPS Backpack Ambassadors.
Read to Grow is bringing the books directly to the students while school libraries are closed. In summertime, New Haven Public School “backpack ambassadors” encourage students to read. Other groups, like the New Haven Free Public Library, host summer reading programs and book clubs to prevent a relapse in reading ability.
“The child of today will be the adults and leaders of tomorrow,” said Mayor Toni Harp.
Harp pointed to the brain research that concludes that early childhood development, between the nine months and two years, can have lasting effects on adult cognitive ability.
“We’ve got to make sure that kids are educated,” she said, but added that “we need to remediate the way we’ve educated them.”
One collaborative project, in which the school system works with United Way, is Parent University. The parent-training initiative provides free workshops for parents on helping their children with homework, dealing with stress management, and how to deal with behavioral issues, said Adriana Joseph, the school system’s deputy chief of youth family and community engagement.
Parent University’s two larger sites will soon branch out to five or six smaller “satellite neighborhood” locations. Parents often struggle to come in for workshops, Joseph said, which is why Parent University is planning to reach parents in their communities.
“If we all have a common goal in mind and commit to it, we can get a lot more done,” said Jennifer Heath, United Way’s executive vice president. “It’s important to have agreement.”
Heath said students need help at every moment of their life, not just in school. “Wraparound support” makes sure children do after-school activities and are active and learning during the summer, she said.
New Haven schools are not all the same, and disparities in school quality persist across the city’s underprivileged neighborhoods. Through the School of Choice Program, New Haven students can attend a school outside the city in towns like North Haven, East Haven, and Wallingford. This program fosters ethnic and economic diversity in the region’s schools, said Lisa Kaston, program developer and grant writer at Area Cooperative Educational Services (ACES).
“There are a lot of moving pieces to this puzzle, but it’s a shared effort,” said New Haven Director of Arts, Culture and Tourism Andrew Wolf.
At the end of the expo, the posters were plastered with stickers, evidence that the community had a lot to say, even when they disagreed.
“There’s a whole movement around collective impact,” said city consultant James Farnam. “Everything’s related to everything else.”
I was there checking out the tables. I still think the BIG city problem is homelessness and also our air pollution (25% here have asthma). I spoke to Channel 8 to encourage them to interview me and others on that subject.