Aliyya Swaby Photo
The crowd at Martinez School Monday night.
After listening to 40 passionate speeches over four hours, Mayor Toni Harp proclaimed herself “not opposed” to a controversial proposed financial partnership between Achievement First (AF) charter network and the Board of Ed to create an experimental school called Elm City Imagine. But she added she is “not ready to sign on the dotted line” until kinks are worked out.
Mayor Harp’s red power suit coincidentally matched the color scheme of many parents and teachers who showed up at Martinez School Monday night to oppose the partnership and wore red to show their unity. Equally organized proponents of the proposal wore blue stickers.
The crowd showed up for a Board of Education meeting to weigh in on a proposal aimed to show that charter proponents and a school board can work together in New Haven. So far, as the evening demonstrated, the proposal has sparked the kind of political warfare seen in other cities.
Both sides came out in force Monday night’s meeting, the first public presentation of the controversial proposal, after a snowstorm prevented a Jan. 26 Board of Ed meeting from going forward.
Harries, Board of Ed President Carlos Torre, Mayor Harp Monday night.
Superintendent Garth Harries said the board will continue the conversation at its Governance and Finance and Operations committee meetings, both Feb. 17, at 5:30 p.m. and 4 p.m. respectively. Public comments will be allowed at the 5:30 p.m. Governance Committee meeting. The board will likely vote on the proposal Feb. 23, the next full board meeting, Harries said.
Starting as a K‑1 and eventually expanding to fourth grade, Elm City Imagine will be AF’s first school using the “Greenfield” model. The model, designed with the help of the inventor of the computer mouse, is aimed at inventing the school of the future. It encompasses a variety of creative teaching and learning methods, including a calendar alternating eight weeks of regular classes with two weeks of career “expeditions” and daily blocks of “self-directed learning.” AF is also planning to create a Greenfield middle school beginning with next year’s fifth graders at Elm City College Prep Middle School.
At Monday’s meeting, AF CEO Dacia Toll gave a detailed presentation of what the school and the partnership would look like, and took questions from board members, before the floor opened for extensive public comment. Click here to see a presentation AF prepared for the meeting, detailing plans for Elm City Imagine.
Board members Che Dawson and Alex Johnston voluntarily recused themselves from the discussion and vote, due to existing or perceived conflicts of interest. Dawson works AF. Johnston is the former CEO of the pro-charter group ConnCANN.
In advance of the night’s discussion, AF submitted an “open letter” to the Board of Ed last Friday in favor of the proposal, which was signed by 50 major community leaders, including alders, university presidents and local business leaders. On the other side, a collective of parents and union teachers published an open letter online in opposition to the partnership and are currently collecting signatures.
The Basics
From the Achievement First presentation.
In contrast to the red-shirted sea of opposition, Toll joined other proponents of the partnership in wearing blue stickers that read “I support Elm City Imagine” in white letters. She responded to previous negative public comments on AF policies by aggregating and releasing data on percentages of English language learners, recipients of free or reduced lunch, special education students, student suspensions, student transfers out, and staff demographics — at AF schools compared to district schools.
Superintendent Garth Harries provided a draft of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the district and AF, which hashes out the details of the partnership. Toll and Harries previously said the district would provide $2,000 in cash and in-kind services per student for a school that AF would run and staff. That number has since been drastically reduced to $700 per child total from the district, not including the legally required contribution for transportation and special education services. The state provides about $11,000 per child to charter schools.
Click here to read the draft MoU.
From the Achievement First presentation.
Harries said he would use Elm City Imagine to reduce overcrowding in existing schools. He was more specific about that plan in a letter he presented to the Board of Ed and the public: “This fiscal advantage, along with careful enrollment planning, would enable the District to target class size reduction starting in Kindergarten in 5 to 9 NHPS schools: at 5 schools, class size-reduction would be ~9 student reduction or a target of ~17 students per class; at 9 schools, it would be ~5 students and ~21 students per class.”
Click here to read that letter.
“Will it take some resources for this to happen? Yes. Is this a good way to enable class size reduction, which is a significant priority? Absolutely,” Harries said to the Independent after the meeting.
From the Achievement First presentation.
“The idea is to focus on the most challenging schools,” Toll said. Teachers union President Dave Cicarella has criticized charter schools for reaping accolades for better test scores than district schools, while serving a cherry-picked, more stable population of students. Toll said she would ensure Elm City Imagine draws a wide range of students through “proactive,” “repeated,” and “targeted” outreach through district pre‑K programs, the housing authority and the state Department of Children and Families.
Additionally, all families from New Haven pre‑K and early childhood programs such as Head Start will be automatically placed into lotteries for AF schools — unless they make another choice — and can opt out if admitted. Families who do not participate in the school placement process are often low-income with fewer resources and less awareness of how the system works, Toll said. She called that a “social justice issue.”
From the Achievement First presentation.
Critics have also drawn attention to AF’s policy of not accepting students in the middle of the year, while students with behavioral problems leave the charter network for district schools. Toll presented data showing that 2.1 percent of students this year transferred out, compared to 1 percent at non-AF charter schools Common Ground and Highville, and 3.5 percent at Board of Ed neighborhood schools. Those students leave primarily due to “school culture and discipline concerns,” Toll said. But those are also often “our highest-need kids. We do want to play a more active role” in their educations,” she said.
As part of the MoU, students would not be able to leave Amistad or Elm City schools for district schools other than through the standard school placement system — except under exceptional circumstances. Other key parts of the MoU include establishing of a forum to share best practices, avoiding direct public criticism of each other, including AF school data in yearly district reports, and partnering on “philanthropic resources.”
“It’s really heartening for me to hear you confront some of the criticisms that have been waged against your schools,” Mayor Harp said. “I commend you for taking the criticism and trying to find a way to address it.”
Public Weighs In
Forty-two teachers, administrators, parents and community members signed up to speak before the Board of Ed Monday night; a slightly larger number of opponents than school proponents of Elm City Imagine spoke. Board members allowed everyone a standard two-minute comment, except for Cicarella and Keisha Hannans, of the New Haven School Administrators Association, both of who were allowed to take as much time as they chose.
Hannans (pictured), the principal of Celentano School, urged the district to use its resources to solve budget crises in its own schools before thinking about a new one. Cuts have decreased money for student intervention support and new technology, she said.
“No disrespect to Achievement First, but your organization does not need our money to open your school. You already hired your principal” and other staff members, she said. “You partnered with a group that has a multimillion dollar campaign going on. You don’t need our money. We are not on solid financial ground.”
Cicarella has maintained that the district should not trust AF as a partner and that the charter network should adopt the policies in the MoU on its own accord, before the district should opening a school with them.
“Adopt these policies across all your schools in your network without reservation and without holding a gun to our heads, saying, ‘Well we’re going to do it as long as you give us a new school.’ Where have you been for the last 15 years? Why haven’t you been here at the Board with these policies?” he said, to applause from the audience.
“In addition to being put on paper, we need to see that those are going to be followed with fidelity … They said they’re not going to do any negative rhetoric, but they told me that in June, they said that publicly and we still get those statements,” Cicarella said. “Anything on paper can be circumvented.”
A few expressed frustration with Harries for considering the partnership. The superintendent said he is sure he and the teachers union will continue to work well together: “The teachers and the administrators are certainly very valuable partners. We have done and will continue to work together. Even as Dave [Cicarella] and I talk about these issues, we continue to need to run the district and continue to make the best decisions we can on other issues that are not related to this.”
Several AF administrators spoke up to defend their schools’ internal policies and provide an alternative view of charter schools. Cecil Barnes, Amistad dean of students, denounced the “steady diet of misinformation going on” throughout the public hearing. AF cannot be blindly compared to other charter schools across the country, he said.
Parent Regina Berryman used the forum to advocate for her 4‑year-old great-grandchild, who had lost out on a few charter school choices in the past. She said she wants her great-grandchild to attend a small, intimate school like Elm City Imagine.
Hillhouse High School alum and Westville Alder Darryl Brackeen, Jr., an employee of pro-charter group ConnCANN, spoke in favor of Elm City Imagine. “I believe in more quality options. Options such as, yes, Elm City Imagine. This is another opportunity … an opportunity for parents and the school district to have more accountability over the charters in New Haven public schools. This is not a debate over who’s right and who’s wrong. There are lives on the line,” he said.
Speaking as a parent, his peer East Rock Alder Anna Festa took the opposite approach, stating that the district already has “so many choices.”
“I thank Mayor Harp for wearing red tonight,” Career High School teacher Terence McTague joked upon taking the mic. He asked the Board of Ed “to consider the creation of an independent review board, similar to the city’s nonexistent police review board,” creating a mechanism for the community to provide significant input on the proposal. The review board would “iron out this partnership and make it a true partnership,” McTague said, adding that he personally was not in favor of Elm City Imagine.
The public is invited to comment at the Governance Committee meeting Feb. 17; Harries said he will announce the meeting’s location soon, likely in a school in order to be able to accommodate a large number.
For previous coverage:
• On Eve Of Ed Board Debate, 50 Heavy-Hitters Back Charter Plan
• Teachers, Parents Organize Against Charter Deal
• The School Of The Future Gets A Dry Run
• Teachers Union Prez Pens “Imagine” Critique
• Charter Plans Detailed; Parents Weigh In
• Elm City Imagine Sparks Debate
• NHPS, AF Team Up On Experimental School
• Elm City Charter Eyed For Futuristic “Conversion”
• City’s Charter Network Hires San Francisco Firm To Design The K‑8 Public School Of The Future
The contentiousness of this issue underscores 2 points: our current education system is producing mediocre results; it is economically unsustainable. The most radical proposal, e.g. from the Libertarian Party, is for govt to completely remove itself from involvement in education: "Education is best provided by the free market, achieving greater quality, accountability and efficiency with more diversity of choice. Recognizing that the education of children is a parental responsibility, we would restore authority to parents to determine the education of their children, without interference from government. Parents should have control of and responsibility for all funds expended for their children's education." http://www.lp.org/platform While this proposal likely would be unpalatable to a majority of voters and parents, this meeting underscores the fact that few people are happy with the status quo—except perhaps those who benefit financially from the current system.