Three-quarters of the school’s students will show “more than a year’s progress” on standardized tests. The school’s overall test scores will “close the gap to the district average in five years.”
Those are two of the benchmarks New Haven will use to determine if its experiment with handing over a troubled school to private managers is succeeding.
Those standards show up in the fine print of a contract school officials have negotiated with New Jersey-based Renaissance Schools Services, LLC to run Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy.
The school system Wednesday released a copy of that draft contract in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the Independent. Members of the Board of Education received a summary of the contract at a meeting Monday night, but not the full contract itself.
Click here to read the draft of the contract.
The $456,000 annual contract — which can be renewed up to five times — will come before the Board of Ed next Monday night. It represents the latest ambitious experiment of New Haven’s school reform drive, which aims to try a host of different strategies to “turn around” failing schools and make other schools better. The city hopes to get the money to pay Renaissance through a federal School Improvement Grant (SIG); firm is charging $800 per student.
If approved, the contract would mark the first time a for-profit company manages a sizable New Haven public school. Other New Haven experiments so far have included reaching labor agreements to grade teachers and administrators and make it easier to fire people; grading schools’ performance, then implementing targeted plans to improve them; allowing a public school principal to hire and fire all teachers and change work rules (at Katherine Brennan); requiring teachers to work longer days and to eat lunch with students (Barnard); hiring a not-for-profit charter company to run a small school for some of the system’s most troubled kids (Domus Academy); and giving principals at two of the highest-performing schools (Edgewood and Davis) room to try out new ideas.
At Clemente, a pre-K‑8 with 538 students, Renaissance — which has already begun working at the school in anticipation of the contract being improved — would put three of its own employees in charge: a “head of school,” an “achievement administrator,” and an “operations administrator.” They’d be able to hire and fire the rest of the staff. They also agree to abide by union work rules, including the length of the school day. Click here for a background story on the deal and on Renaissance.
Clemente, on Columbus Avenue in the Hill, is a “Tier III” — or “consistently low-performing” — school, according to the city’s rankings. Last year 25 percent of its student reached “goal or above” on the math portion of the Connecticut Mastery Test, 18 percent on reading, 16 percent on writing, and 8 percent on science. The system budgeted $3.5 million to run the school next year.
As the first deal of its kind in New Haven, the Clemente arrangement involved working out lots of fine-point details for operating a hybrid school, managed by a for-profit company but still part of the public district. Some of those details are laid out in the proposed contract.
The final version of the contract coming before the board next Monday night may contain some slight changes.
“I suspect that the final version of the agreement may be altered and will perhaps be in two parts,” said school system Chief Operating Officer Will Clark. “One part for the start up and one for next fiscal year. I do not expect the financial terms or the other requirements and deliverables to be altered however as there is solid agreement between the parties on those terms and we are hopeful of approval.”
Metrics Of Success
Melissa Bailey File Photo
The contract spells out some of the bases on which the schools will decide whether Renaissance in fact makes “substantial progress” toward turning around Clemente.
One category: “Engagement.” Renaissance has three years to get more kids attending school, more parents attending report card nights, and higher “rates of satisfaction” on the “school climate” survey. Parents rated the school in the bottom category (“needs improvement” in three of five categories in last year’s survey: academic expectations, collaboration and communication. They gave the school the second-lowest ranking (“Sa‑,” or or “satisfactory”) in the other two categories, “engagement” and “safety and respect.” Teachers offered a similar assessment; students were more positive (three “Sa-” ratings, two “Sa+”).
In the academic category, the contract calls for three-quarters of the student body to “demonstrat[e] more than a year’s progress” on a host of tests and other measures.
It also calls for enough “student progress” on Connecticut Mastery Tests to earn the school “safe harbor” status under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. It envisions Clemente students topping the “55th percentile” of scores citywide and the student body closing “the gap to the district in 5 years.”
Protecting Each Side’s Interest
Some of the other fine-print details of the deal between the school board (aka “The District”) and Renaissance (aka “RSS”):
• RSS has until July 15 to submit a “school improvement plan.”
• RSS doesn’t pay any of the school’s operating expenses.
• RSS would get a $400,000 “termination fee” if the school board cancels the contract in the first year, $300,000 in the second.
• The school board promises not to raid any RSS “HQ [headquarters] personnel” for at least two years.
• Top school management will be put on the RSS payroll.
• The district will “take all measures reasonably necessary” to help RSS protects its “proprietary” training information from “being disclosed to or used by any third party without RSS’s prior written approval, which may be withheld in its sole and absolute discretion. Upon RSS’ request, the District shall require all District personnel or agents to agree in writing that they shall not disclose to any third party, publish, copy, transmit to any third party, modify, alter, or utilize the Proprietary Information without RSS’s prior written consent. Nothing herein contained shall be construed in a manner that would cause the District to act or fail to act in a manner that would cause the District to be in violation of any State open records law.”
• RSS and the district indemnify each other from lawsuits or other costs “occurring or allegedly occurring due to the negligent conduct or willful misconduct of RSS or of its employees, managers, members, officers, directors, subcontractors, or agents.”
• RSS is an “independent contractor,” not employee. That means its three employees at the school shall not have the same rights as district employees.
The city HOPES to get the money through a Federal Grant??
So, this isn't paid for NOW, but it MIGHT BE.
What about future contracts -- do we HOPE the Federal Grants continue, or does the Mayor HOPE the taxpayers forget when they start paying the bill.