nothin MLK-Amistad Sale Gets A Unanimous Thumbs Up | New Haven Independent

MLK-Amistad Sale Gets A Unanimous Thumbs Up

Allan Appel Photo

AF staffer Anjie Dawkins & parent Robyn Enyiema at City Hall vote.

Despite a last-minute push from Newhallville pastors, a plan to sell a vacant New Haven school to charter school operator Achievement First sailed through to a preliminary approval — and revealed the results of a neighborhood-level transition of political power.

The Board of Aldermen’s Community Development Committee voted unanimously to approve the plan after hours of debate in City Hall Thursday night.

The plan involves the city’s selling the former Martin Luther King School at 580 Dixwell Ave. for $1.5 million to the charter organization.

Achievement First plans to raze the rambling structure, clean up the pollution on the site, and build from the ground up a new $35 million, 75,000 square-foot high school for a projected 550 students.

The building will be the new home of the now crammed yet fast growing Amistad high school, now residing in two inadequate buildings on Prince and Welch Streets in the Hill.

Achievement First co-founder and chief Dacia Toll said $24 million of the total $35 million will come from the state, with the balance of $11 million coming from private fundraising. The organization has $6 million of that, she said. Getting the balance is doable, but the sooner the land disposition agreement before the board is signed, the faster that can happen, she added.

The unanimous vote of approval by the committee followed three and a half hours of debate that was mostly couched in a context of praise for how much the proposal will do for the Newhallville community.

The critics’ stated concern was over process, and whether AF had involved enough of the neighborhood in negotiations over the deal’s community benefits.”

Wearing bright red T‑shirts hailing their school, parents, AF staff, kids, and neighbors came before the Community Development Committee in the packed aldermanic chamber Thursday night.

Of the 20 speakers, nearly all praised AF’s high-expectations style as well as its track record in providing community access and benefits at the new Amistad Elementary School on Edgewood Avenue, which AF built on the bones of the old Dwight School.

Earlier this month the planned sale for the new Newhallville-based high school cleared the City Plan Commission. It also had an airing at the Board of Zoning Appeals, to which it returns for zoning variances if the full Board of Aldermen approve the sale itself.

That vote should take place in mid-December.

Click here for details of the plan and here for a story on objections to the plan raised by Rev. Boise Kimber and other local Newhallville clergy.

Kimber was present Thursday night, made his statement, but was not in the chamber at the time of the final vote.

After the meeting, Toll said, We’re thrilled by the unanimous vote.”

The debate was sparked by Kimber and other local clergy concerned that the Newhallville alderwomen who spearheaded the effort, Delphine Clyburn and Brenda Foskey-Cyrus, had not sufficiently consulted them. Nor in their view had the rookie alders locked down with AF a community benefits agreement” that secured jobs for local residents during the construction and access to the new school for neighborhood kids, among other issues. (Click here to read responses AF prepared to questions raised at a Newhallville management team meeting.)

Kimber has for decades been a prominent Newhallville powerbroker known for garnering African-American votes for the campaigns of Mayor John DeSefano and his supporters; labor-backed candidates such as Clyburn and Foskey-Cyrus changed the game in the last election. Kimber offered a critique of the school plan Thursday night that was personal and at times plaintive:

I am a senior pastor in Newhallville and Dixwell,” he pleaded. I’ve been on the corner of Hazel and Dixwell for 26 years. I paid my dues to Newhallville. Don’t leave me out of the process.”

After Rev. James Newman, president of the Greater New Haven Clergy Association, echoed Kimber in the need for AF’s agreement to provide jobs for local people, Fair Haven Alderwoman Migdalia Castro (at right in photo) offered a different take.

I respect the clergy, but it bothers me, the community benefits [discussion],” she said. The most important benefit is [for] the kids. We are not talking about Yale or a big institution. We’re already benefiting, and we’ll benefit more.”

Yes, but we have kids whose parents don’t have jobs” and therefore can’t provide their kids]with shoes to wear to school, Newman responded, with rising temper.

Foskey-Cyrus, who presided over the meeting with quiet determination, said, We will have an [community benefits] agreement.”

In a sign of the shift in power in the neighborhood, speaker after speaker reported how the management team meetings that heard from AF were so well attended, without clergymen, that the meetings had to be shifted from the small room at the police substation to the Lincoln-Bassett School.

Speaking carefully in language that she said she rarely uses, Clyburn added, I [have] felt that Newhallville had been raped [by the results of previous development] by its leaders form City Hall and the neighborhood. That’s [now] in the past.”

In the end, Hill Alderwoman Jackie James-Evans called for another meeting with the clergyman before the full board votes on the agreement.

That was not made a condition of approval. Nor was Quinnipiac Meadows Alderman Mark Stopa’s request that details of the community benefits agreement, which were not included in the material voted on, be presented to the full board.

After the meeting, Toll said the major outstanding detail of the agreement to be worked out is how neighborhood preference can be given to kids at the nearby Elm City College Prep Middle School, on Dixwell not far from the proposed to new high school.

It makes sense to have a neighborhood preference arrangement. It’s a state decision, but we are supportive of it,” she said.

Who Speaks For Newhallville?

Following is the text of an article published before Thursday night’s vote.

Who speaks for Newhallville? That question surfaced again Thursday as a group affiliated with the Rev. Boise Kimber joined his quest to delay the sale of an empty public school to a charter organization.

The group, the Greater New Haven Clergy Association, which Kimber ran for years, issued a statement Thursday calling on the Board of Aldermen to hold up the planned sale of former Martin Luther King School at 580 Dixwell Ave. to Achievement First. The not-for-profit charter organization plans to build a new home there for Achievement First Amistad High School, which is now in cramped quarters on Prince Street.

The clergy issued the statement as the aldermanic Community Development Committee prepares to hold a public hearing and possible vote on the deal Thursday night. The group asked the aldermen to delay approving the deal until Achievement First has held two more public meetings with neighbors and has settled a community benefits agreement.

Paul Bass File Photo

Newhallville Alderwomen Clyburn (center) & Foskey-Cyrus (right) with West River Alderwoman Tyisha Walker.

Complicating the debate: Other Newhallville leaders — including committee Chair Brenda Foskey-Cyrus and fellow Alderwoman Delphine Clyburn — have for months participated in meetings with Achievement First on the plan. They have endorsed the sale and said the neighborhood does, too. Three open community meetings in all took place.

Achievement First argues that it already has done what the clergy group is asking for: met with the neighborhood and agreed to community benefits.”

Foskey-Cyrus said Thursday that Achievement First has agreed to neighbors’ requests for access to the building, to jobs, and to classroom seats.

So the debate comes down in part to how to define the neighborhood, and which group of leaders represents it.

The project sailed through the City Plan Commission with the help of Newhallville neighbors and Alderwomen Foskey-Cyrus and Clyburn, then hit a roadblock on Nov. 13 in the form of the Rev. Boise Kimber, a prominent Newhallville minister with a church across the street from the school.

Thomas MacMillan Photo

Rev. Kimber speaks against the plan at a zoning hearing two weeks ago.

In a press release issued Thursday, the Greater New Haven Clergy Association joined Kimber in speaking out against the project.

Association President James Newman III, whose Starr Street church sits only a few blocks away from the site, said he first learned of the project when Kimber shared the news at a clergy meeting.

We just found out about it recently,” Newman said in an interview Thursday. My church is three blocks away. I didn’t know anything about it.”

Newman said he plans to show up to tonight’s aldermanic meeting at 6 p.m. in City Hall to air his concerns.

Achievement First spokesman Mel Ochoa responded that his group has sought neighborhood input. Achievement First has attended three community input meetings organized by and/or coordinated with the alderwomen, one at the Stetson Branch Library and two at Lincoln-Bassett School — one of which was with the Newhallville Community Management Team.”

Achievement First official Candace Dorman tells zoning board about the groups’ Newhallville meetings.

Achievement First is working closely with Newhallville Alderwomen Delphine Clyburn and Brenda Foskey-Cyrus to gather community input and create a community development agreement that would detail neighborhood access to the high school,” he said. As it did at the Amistad Middle School on Edgewood, Achievement First plans to allow neighbors access to common spaces.

The alderwomen were elected to office last year on a slate that did not enjoy the Rev. Kimber’s support. In a conversation Thursday, Foskey-Cyrus said Achievement First heard out neighbors at the public meetings; she said the school responded.

We are on the same page,” Foskey-Cyrus said. I think it will be a win-win situation.”

Rev. Newman, meanwhile, questioned whether the city is getting a good deal. The property, a 24,000-square-foot building on 5.6 acres of land, was appraised at $2.9 million in fair market value during the last revaluation. The city proposes selling it to Achievement First for $1.5 million. Achievement First would tear down the building and erect a three-story, 75,000 square-foot charter high school there for 550 students. The state is expected to pay $24 million of the $35 million total cost.

AF’s Ochoa said the sale price is equal to the highest appraisal, $2,135,000, minus the cost of PCB and asbestos removal.

Newman’s group issued a list of questions about the sale, including the number of jobs that will go to New Haveners and whether the school will set aside seats for neighborhood kids. He called for a new committee, including neighbors and local businessmen, to convene to discuss a community benefits agreement.

Achievement First will not give admissions preference to Newhallville residents, Ochoa said. The high school gives first dibs on admission to students in its three middle schools, two in New Haven and one in Bridgeport. Ochoa noted that the schools are public; students get in by an annual lottery conducted by New Haven Public Schools.

Amistad High barely has room for students from its three feeder schools; it does not have the capacity to accept additional kids, Ochoa said.

However, he argued that local families are well-represented in the school: 19 percent of Amistad High students (57 out of 301) hail from Newhallville and Dixwell’s Wards 20, 21 and 22. Just over a quarter of AF students in the two New Haven middle schools, or 341 of 1,289, hail from Wards 20, 21 and 22, Ochoa said.

Ochoa said AF won’t set aside construction jobs just for Newhallville residents. But AF will publicize the jobs through New Haven Works and the Newhallville Leadership Team, and all contractors and subcontractors will abide by state, municipal and self-imposed benchmarks to ensure the local community workforce has access to these opportunities,” he said. At least 6.9 percent of work hours will be carried out by women, 25 percent by minorities, 15 percent by apprentices, 25 percent by New Haven residents and 5 percent by ex-felons, Ochoa said.

AF subcontracts its cleaning and cafeteria jobs to two private companies, which prioritize local hiring,” Ochoa said. In response to a concern from Newhallville, the organization will audit those contracts to make sure the custodial and food service staff working at our high school facility receive living wages,” Ochoa said.

Plans presented to the zoning board.

Newman noted the project does not meet zoning requirements. The plan requires zoning variances for the height of the building, its signs, and the number of parking spaces. An application is pending before the Board of Zoning Appeals. Ochoa said the zoning questions should be dealt with separately from the sale of the property.

Newman called for more scrutiny of the deal.

They sell this property and they want everybody to jump on board and everyone is supposed to shut their mouth and like it,” Newman said. That’s really bad. I want to see how they are going to benefit our community by moving here and changing the whole dynamics of the community.”

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