Allan Appel Photo
Junior Gysel Montufar, head of Hillhouse High’s math club, posed this numbers question to Mayor John DeStefano based on his proposed new school budget: Cut $166,255 from the textbook fund. That leaves a remainder of $617,777. Divide by 20,000 students. Resulting quotient: Only $31 per student for textbooks for the whole year, when the average text costs more than twice that amount. Do you care?
If I didn’t, the mayor responded, I wouldn’t be at this meeting.
The exchange took place at the parish house Saturday afternoon as Gysel (pictured above with the mayor) and her grassroots student group called Youth Unleashed, which is allied with Teach Our Children, held an open forum calling for “common sense investment in our school system.” The meeting drew 30 supporters to the Center Church on the Green.
They called on the city to spend more on textbooks, more nurses, workers, and librarians, and less on administrators.
The mayor showed up at the group’s invitation. Because of conflicts and misunderstanding on both sides related to scheduling, he couldn’t stay long. Gysel said she was angry and hurt by the mayor’s hasty departure.
DeStefano had received the students briefly earlier in the week when Youth Unleashed paid an impromptu visit to his office. “I think it’s great kids are involved. Let’s have a forum to talk. All I ask is a little respect when we talk,” he told them.
Then he gave them his card and raced off to a Virgen de Cisne soccer league inauguration, to which he said he had made a prior commitment.
The encounter recalled similar confrontations in years past when Teach Our Children (TOC), an advocacy group for low and moderate income parents, got its start with lobbying for better textbooks, more protections against bullying and suspensions, and more Spanish translation of school materials.
The difference this time around, said TOC coordinator Camelle Scott, is that the city is in the midst of a potentially draconian budget crunch. Amid a fiscal crisis, the schools already cut 42 jobs and up to 150 more may be cut next year to fill a $14.6 million budget gap.
For TOC the other important difference is that “I am suddenly blessed with all these student leaders,” said Scott.
Youth Unleashed, which is headquartered at Hillhouse High School, began about a year ago with a group brought together at St. Andrews Episcopal Church in Newhallville by Yale School of Divinity organizers. The group recently joined forces with TOC. The kids and the parents meet separately, then come together with one voice for such events as Saturday’s forum, said Scott.
At Saturday’s meeting, Hillhouse student Terrell Roman testified his textbooks are water damaged, badly scratched and missing pages.
That was the case as well with the history text of Daishawn Crudup, a student leader and football tight end at Hillhouse who was designated Youth Unleashed’s press liaison.
He said Hillhouse Principal Kermit Carolina saw to it that his books and others were replaced. The popular former Hillhouse basketball coach is in his first year as principal.
Other speakers called for more monitors on school buses particularly carrying the littler kids, and a rethinking the firing of nurses and librarians.
Scott said that the group has about 40 members, including students from Career High, Wilbur Cross, Metropolitan Business Academy, Eli Whitney, and the Amistad Academy charter high school.
Scott said Youth Unleashed is not connected with the activities of Isaiah Lee and other Wilbur Cross students who have also mounted protests at the mayor’s doorstep regarding the school budget priorities, clashing with Cross’s principal.
Hillhouse Principal Kermit Carolina.
The new group’s core is at Hilllhouse, whose principal, by contrast, has met with the students and encouraged them to speak up. “Mr. Carolina has an open-door policy. We love him for it. He has meetings with us every week,” said Daishawn.
“I want to be here to support my kids,” said Carolina, who attended Saturday’s event.
A former student activist himself, he raised his fingers in the air to note that just four Chinese students triggered the Tiananmen Square protests in China in 1989.
“History tells you students bring about change,” he said.
He recounted how as a college student he had helped lead hundreds of his fellow Southern Connecticut State University students in demonstrations to support the election of John Daniels as the city’s first African-American mayor in 1989. And when Daniels didn’t deliver, the students continued to hold him accountable, said Carolina.
Now Carolina is an official, on the “inside.”
“There is a gap between the mayor and this group. The mayor feels deeply about the city. This group is passionate [too]. The mayor said he was looking for the process [and the time] to make it happen. It’s a clash of schedules, not values,” he said of the brevity of DeStefano’s appearance.
Gysel Montufar (left) & Camelle Scott.
The meeting ended inconclusively. “I hope this is not going to be the end,” said Gysel. The group’s next open meeting of the group is scheduled for May 19 at 6:00 p.m. at the TOC office at 129 Church St.
I missed the Mayor's appearance, but I was greatly impressed by the youth and by Principal Carolina. Kudos to them all for pushing each other - they make New Haven a better place.