Trump Unites Once-Fractious Ed Board

Until a month ago, the Board of Education was publicly at war with itself. Now it’s singing a tune that sounds a bit more like Kumbaya.

It took the appointment of an interim superintendent and, it seems, the election of Donald Trump as the next U.S. president to change the tune.

The Board of Ed (BOE) has notably not had one public blow up since former Superintendent Garth Harries resigned a month ago and his predecessor, Reggie Mayo, was tapped to return to serve as interim superintendent. And members are vowing to do their best to keep it that way particularly in the face of a Trump presidency.

At the latest in what are becoming strikingly civil regular meetings — after months in which even ​“marriage therapy” couldn’t bring the BOE’s factions together — board members voted unanimously Monday night in support of joining forces with the mayor’s office and the Board of Alders to host a workshop seeking strategies for promoting civility and discouraging bullying in the wake of a presidential election season heavy with themes of anti-Semitism, Islamaphobia, anti-immigration, anti-blackness and misogyny.

And board members suggested that if the president elect has no plans to rein in his behavior or that of some of his supporters, then New Haven’s leaders must lead by example.

A noticeable rise in hate crimes post-election has been documented by the Southern Poverty Law Center. News reports from around the country have told of students chanting ​“Trump,” and ​“build a wall,” at Latino students, as well as of black children being slurred with the n‑word, taunted with nooses and told to ​“go back to the cotton farm.”

The recent vandalism of a concession stand at the Wilbur Cross High School Athletic Complex with spray-painted swastikas and invoking the president-elect’s name was enough to get city leaders to look for solutions.

Mayor Toni Harp, who also serves as BOE president, said that because of the ugly rhetoric of the recent election cycle, concerns have been raised that young people in particular will start mimicking the behavior that they witnessed on the campaign trail, and might feel that they have been given license to behave badly.

She said the goal of the workshop will be to review current policies on issues like bullying — what they are, how they’re implemented and enforced — and to give the public an opportunity to weigh in about what exists and what additional policies might be needed. Such a workshop dovetails with a ​“Kindness Initiative” Harp launched in October.

“We will open it up to hear from the public — policies that they would like to see us implement — so that we can reduce the discomfort that has really been unleashed when you think about it, that perhaps was there in the shadows, but is now front and center and could create a negative school environment,” Harp said

One of the first board members to endorse the idea was Ed Joyner, one of Harp’s persistent critics this past year. Though he once famously insisted in a public meeting that Harp ​“slow her roll,” he agreed that the board should sign on to the workshop and said he was certain that the Board of Ed ​“will set a proper example for how to work together in areas of disagreement.”

“It’s pretty clear nationally that leadership does set a standard,” he said. ​“But it also does the same thing locally. This has been common for the last eight years and it was crystallized in this particular election.”

Joyner said he does a lot of work with schools and school districts on conflict resolution. He said he has been contacted recently to work with districts on problems that appear to stem from racial animus. But having taught in New Haven schools, he said one of the elephants in the room when it comes to issues of civility and bullying is the overarching problem of defiance.

“The only thing a teacher needs from a kid to teach them effectively is cooperation, and they need it from the parents too,” he said. ​“We can’t have parents telling kids not to respect teachers, or parents coming to the school disrespecting teachers. I understand that we’re trying to do restorative justice, but not at the expense of order and the rights of other students in the school.”

Fellow board member Carlos Torres cited a need to address what might be a lax response to disrespect or bullying in the classroom because the culture in New Haven is not one of disrespect.

“We strive at every chance that we get to be respectful to each other,” he said. ​“We have built in this city a culture of respect, recognition, making everybody feel they belong. I think we have a strong [culture] here and I think we need to protect it.”

Joyner said that he doesn’t believe the president-elect’s behavior will spill over into New Haven if the members of the community remain committed to each other. While the Trump administration will have some influence on the education budget, Joyner said the ability to use the office as a bully pulpit to try to force school districts to change course is a bigger concern.

“If we stay strong together, if we treat each other with respect and if we insist on justice and fairness, we’ll be OK,” he said. ​“It won’t be easy but we can’t allow ourselves to lay down and have the people at the top bully us. We have to be courageous and we have to insist on good working relationships with each other so that we set good examples for the kids.”

Speaking Of Bullying…

Board member Darnell Goldson raised the question of how the board might develop policy in the face of a president-elect who has vowed to take federal money away from ​“sanctuary cities” like New Haven.

“The president-elect has suggested he’s going to bully us,” he said to Harp. ​“They have said if you are a sanctuary city, they’re coming after us. You said there may be a time where they start coming into the school system trying to take children out. What statement do we make, and how do we develop policy that reflects what our core values are as a board of education?”

Harp said that before Donald Trump was elected the city had not thought through that particular problem. But now that he is president elect, Interim Superintendent Reggie Mayo is on the case.

“We’ve thought about what it means to be a sanctuary city. We’ve thought about what it means to make sure that our police does not operate as a function of ICE [the Immigration and Customs and Enforcement Agency]. But we really haven’t thought about how it affects our school building,” Harp said. ​“What if the parents are detained and the kids are in school —what is our policy?

“I’ve got to thank Dr. Mayo. He has his staff working on it. We are in a very different world based on the lack of civility that has been demonstrated, and really what is to be a change in core values, of what I consider to be American values, that says we value everyone. Clearly, there are those who see things slightly differently in this election that their candidate won.”

Mayo said his team is looking at policies that other cities have. He raised some concerns that federal power supersedes local authority.

“We’re going to have something for you in about a month, and we’re going to carry that to some of the communities to see what they think, keeping in mind you can’t do anything when the feds come,” he told board members Monday night. ​“The local police can’t do anything. I pulled the police chief aside and said, ​‘Suppose those guys come into a school. What am I going to do?’ I don’t think that’s ever happened before, but the local police can’t do a thing. We can come up, I hope, with something that will be meaningful and not just a waste of time.”

Goldson, who has been in the mix of his fair share of heated debates since being elected to the board, said that he wants to see a joint statement from the board and the student council given that most movements are led by young people. He also pushed back — respectfully — against Mayo’s tied-hands premise.

“There’s always something we can do,” he said. ​“When they didn’t legally allow us to sit in the front of the bus, we did something about it. I’m not suggesting that we take up arms against the federal government, but I do think that there are statements that we can make and things that we can do to make sure that the public understands, and that the president elect and his folks understand where we stand on these issues.”

Goldson supported the joint workshop in theory, but he questioned how much impact the school system could have on the behavior of children who are in their care only six or seven hours a day.

“They’re probably learning more in their homes and in the community in terms of how to treat each other and adults,” he said. ​“It starts at home. I know my daughter won’t go to school and talk to a teacher a certain way, because she’s been taught a certain way. But we certainly should have the discussion. It’s a challenge that we’re going to continue to have to have discussions around.

“But we have to balance our desire to work with these children and bring them along,” Goldson added. ​“Certainly some of them are not going to give at first. Obviously the solution is not just putting them out [of school], because then they become a problem out in the street, a problem in the criminal justice system.”

Joyner said that modeling compassion, kindness and hard work can have a powerful impact on children especially in a time where people are modeling behaviors and values that are in opposition of such things.

“The reason you’re seeing this ripple effect of negativity across the country now is because you’ve had people talking about grabbing peoples’ private parts, you’ve had people talking about someone couldn’t be a [fair judge] because they came from a Mexican-American background,” he said. ​“It’s really that juvenile level of leadership that is very, very dangerous, and since we can’t control the stuff at the top, we can control how we behave. We can control the kind of standards we set for children and adults in our own system.

“I think a byproduct of all the stuff they see on television — that’s fiction. But now it’s fact,” Joyner added. ​“They didn’t see Cookie on Empire talking smack. They saw the person that is going to run this country for the next four years talking smack, and unless they have strong people in their environments letting them know that’s not right then children will imitate that type of behavior and we have to hold them accountable and we have to hold adults accountable.”

Board member Mike Nast said that he was glad that the district and the city is being proactive, having this discussion around not just policies and procedure if immigration ever shows up on the district door step, but about the issues of civility and bullying.

“There are a lot of districts that are talking about this, so with all the negativity, there is a positive because people are talking,” he said.

Student board member Coral Ortiz, who has been known to plead for collaboration and conciliation from her feuding counterparts on the board, thanked all the adults for taking action.

“I see a lot of kids who come from other countries in my school, who are refugees from other countries, and they’re scared,” she said. ​“They’re dead scared and I think it’s good we’re making a statement that says we, as your leaders are supporting you. I’m really happy to be part of a board that promotes stopping bullying in general.”