Christopher Peak Photo
Students play outside Celentano School on Friday afternoon.
Aliyya Swaby Photo
Principal Keisha Redd-Hannans.
New Haven’s Board of Education is reexamining security policies citywide after parents raised questions about why security guards at Celentano School recently conducted searches of all students before letting them enter the building.
The searches took place April 12 at Celentano Biotech, Health, and Medical Magnet, a PreK‑8 school on Prospect Hill, have split parents into two camps. One incensed group claims their children’s rights were violated in unjustified prying; the other shrugs it off as a necessary measure to keep their kids safe.
According to parents who witnessed the scene while dropping off their kids, around five district security staff told students to place their backpacks and purses on tables, then rummaged through belongings. The security staff also patted down middle-schoolers’ clothes, from their shoulders to their shoes, parents added.
No contraband was found in the school-wide search, district officials reported.
Since then, parents have brought their concerns to the Board of Ed, which plans to discuss the episode and examine system-wide policies at its next meeting.
That dispute reflects a systemwide dynamic. “Security is a concern for everyone, not only for stuff but especially for students. And it’s always a balancing act,” said teachers union President David Cicarella. “We want everyone to feel safe, to be secure, but we also don’t want to be so onerous that it interferes, that kids are feeling like they’re being targeted.” The key to a successful policy? “The messaging has got to be clear.”
Neither side of the Celentano debate has received information about what specific security threat warranted the entry inspections, leading some parents to question whether Celentano followed the district’s stated policy on student searches and school board members to wonder if the full-scale searches will continue at other schools.
According to New Haven Public Schools’s student handbook, which is posted online and sent home in annual orientation packets, an individual student may be searched “if there are reasonable grounds for suspecting the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school.” A group of students, “where no particular student within the group is suspected,” may be searched “only if there is a reasonable suspicion of conduct immediately harmful to students, staff or school property.”
That policy seems to conflict with a letter that Principal Keisha Redd-Hannans sent home to parents on the day of the search, assuring them there had been no imminent danger. “Please know that there has not been any reported security threat to our students, parents or staff,” she wrote. (Click here to read the full letter.)
Redd-Hannans declined an interview with the Independent, ordering a reporter “to vacate the premises.” Through district officials, the principal later indicated that she felt it was reasonable to conduct school-wide entry inspections due to parents’ complaints about students’ possession of items that violated school policy. (The district would not elaborate on what specific items were suspected.) Based on those concerns, Redd-Hannans consulted with the district’s chief of security to authorize a search.
Older students interviewed at the school said that Celentano initiated the crackdown to flush out a wallet and cell phone that had been stolen the day prior, on April 11, and reported to police.
Christopher Peak Photo
Security officer on duty at Celentano.
In a written statement, Redd-Hannans said she’s trying to “balance” the interests of students and staff with those of parents and visitors “to make the decisions which promote the safest environment of all.”
“As a school administrator responsible for the education and well-being of over 400 students, it is incumbent upon me to consistently review school operations and to engage in proactive supports where appropriate,” she added.
In her letter home to parents, Redd-Hannans also indicated that the district’s security team routinely conducted the “proactive” searches at various schools and “will continue to rotate to various schools throughout the district,” she wrote.
Will Clark, the school district’s chief operating officer, said that most of these entry inspections are centered on the high schools and specific events, like a major sports game. He declined to say if there had been other searches at elementary and middle schools this year.
At their last meeting, on May 22, Board of Education members requested more information about the district’s protocols.
“I’m concerned about having a blanket search policy which is not based on an actual threat, and thereby criminalizing normal attendance at a New Haven public school,” Darnell Goldson, one of the board’s two elected representatives, wrote in an email to the Independent. “Why would we make this sort of search a ‘normal’ process for these children? Are we training them to accept less personal freedom?”
Contributed Photo
H. Carl Moerschbacher and his son.
Some parents, too, dispute Redd-Hannans’s rationale for a school-wide search, particularly for younger kids.
H. Carl Moerschbacher, a graduate student at Yale Divinity School and the father of a second-grade son, has been dogging the district for information. He sent a footnoted five-page letter (including references to court rulings and law review articles, such as a University of Colorado Law Review article entitled “Random Suspicionless Searches of Students’ Belongings: A Legal, Empirical, and Normative Analysis”) to Superintendent Reggie Mayo and the school board on May 3. The letter argued that the “random, suspicionless searches of students’ personal belongings and bodies” had violated students right against unlawful searches and engendered mistrust, particularly for minority students. In the note, Moerschbacher called for the district “to cease conducting these searches” and instead implement alternative safety measures “that will both maintain students’ dignity and help students understand the value of their constitutional rights.” (Read the full letter here.)
Lydia Acevedo, the mother of two first and third graders, said she was “upset” that no warning had been given to parents. After seeing how “scared” her children looked, she voiced her complaints to Celentano’s leadership, she added.
And older students said the search felt “invasive of our personal space,” eight-graders Daycus Bailey-Julian and Andre Moodie said.
(The district would not say if security guards informed students of their right to consent to a search, an added step that is permitted but not required by district policy.)
Other parents said they were glad Redd-Hannans authorized the checkpoint.
“Safety is the most important,” said Hongmei Jia, the mother of a fourth-grader, “and when I knew that, I didn’t have an issue.”
Kamara Jones, the mother of a fifth-grader, said the methods seemed reasonable. Without metal detectors at the front door, a manual frisk is the only way to locate weapons, she said, and “we really don’t want [metal detectors]. That would be a bad look for an elementary school.”
In her letter, Redd-Hannans asked parents to discuss the entry inspections with their children, “to utilize it as an opportunity to talk about being safe at school, at home, and in the community.”
My sister was told by my nephew's teacher that security officers were instructed by Mrs. Redd-Hannans to confiscate "fidget spinners." Seems a bit heavy handed and no wonder there was no threat to the students. Although "fidget spinners" can be disruptive I think Mrs. Redd-Hannans has taking this to far.