New Haven Independent

posted by: Disgusted with All on September 2, 2010  11:12am

This school will be ruined within 6 months (like all the rest) because the kids don’t care what they do in it. Let’s see how much parent involvement will take place when they see what their little darlings have done. Let’s see if the community pays for any of the after school programs, they’ll get those for free also at the cost to the city when the overtime builds up to keep the school open. Another brilliant idea for the locals.

posted by: Kells on September 2, 2010  11:59am

Disgusted with All,

What would make you think the school would be ruined in 6 months? Because of the area it’s in? I haven’t seen any of the rebuilt schools ruined. You also should not assume that the parents don’t care and are not involved. The neighborhood needs something like this and i’m glad that it’s been done. I hope everything goes well and that the children are getting a good education.

posted by: anon on September 2, 2010  12:55pm

Good summer programs matter, school buildings don’t. 

Students forget 50% of what they learn during the year each summer, which is the main reason why our lower-income public school population generally lags so far behind peers in other districts.

Will this new building be used for high-quality, challenging, all-day summer programs available to every student who wants to attend? 

Or are we just planning to let more students rot year after year?

posted by: Kells on September 2, 2010  1:13pm

Anon I agree with you, the new buildings are not what matters. What matters is what’s being taught on the inside. Like I said I hope the children are getting a good education.

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on September 2, 2010  2:26pm

The quality of facilities are absolutely an important part of an education. However, they are not a determining factor in whether or not a child will succeed in school, but they do help determine how well or how poorly a student will perform in school. An involved teacher and up-to-date facilities will not make up for routine beatings from neighborhood bullies, nighttime gun fire, drug addicted mothers, etc, but a child from a stable family and neighborhood who has involved parents won’t do much better than a less fortunate peer if the school is falling apart and the teachers are not engaging.
Education is not just about schools and not just about neighborhoods, its both. Easy access to employment stabilizes families and communities, which then translates to stable environments for children to grow up in that often leads to better at-home preparedness and a more well-rounded personality gained from diverse sources in the community. Schools should have curriculum that relies more on critical thinking backed up by the basics of math, reading and writing with recreation interspersed throughout the day.
Schools aren’t that difficult. You just take an established neighborhood with a sizable family population and construct a building where well-educated people from the community work and teach children. This absolutely simple tradition has been completely morphed into the strange system we have today where parents will pick where they lived based on the quality of the school district. Its absolutely ridiculous that we don’t see how this has directly caused the situation we have today of under-performing students in communities with hardly any access to jobs and that import teachers from the outside.
The advent of the affordable automobile let loose by the subsidized federal highways and the retention of archaic municipal boundaries has created an income segregation more extreme than anything that had previously existed in this country. The answer is not to artificially prop up the next generation of children at the expense of tax payers to become technology wizzes that move money around on computer screens in an increasingly financialized economy. We need jobs for all different skill levels, housing for all different incomes, stores for all different needs, recreational spaces for all different preferences, and civic spaces for us all to get together and make sure everyone is represented and each of these things should exist in walkable communities that are connected by transit, bike and car infrastructure to other communities.
Suburban school students perform better than inner city school students on average because all the involved and steadily employed parents move to the suburbs and the uninvolved and chronically unemployed parents can’t move out of the city. We have to get rid of all the policies and subsidies that make suburbia possible and we need to reinvest in our towns and cities to make them attractive for the middle classes. We need to get over the idea that we can create utopias through specialized planning, no one is smart enough to perfectly design anything from a building to a neighborhood to a government program. We just have to do the best job we can to make inclusive places for diverse groups of people to interact with each other ans solve problems-its called civic life and we used to have it here in New Haven before elitist planners decided to scatter the most involved and hardworking class of people across the landscape in isolated car dependent suburban subdivisions to spend their lives driving around in cars and sitting on the couch watching tv.

posted by: Doyens on September 2, 2010  3:54pm

The fundamental question is was this school needed? With no master plan, fewer students than larger cities in our state, we have ten more schools than they do. Did we need to spend this $45 million and should we be building any more? Doubtful.

posted by: Jonathan Hopkins on September 2, 2010  6:44pm

Doyens,
You’re right about the lack of master planning, and it is going to come back and bite us in the butt in due time. However, I think the problem is less about under populated school buildings and more about location and size of schools in relation to neighborhoods. I think the idea was to build schools that would attract more parents, so instead of designing them for the existing population, they were designed for a future where more parents would voluntarily send their children to the schools.
A well thought out master plan should have designed the schools around a future where neighborhood children from all different backgrounds walked to elementary and middle schools, and took the city bus to one of several high schools down town. The magnet program is just a way of covering up neighborhood segregation. Perhaps a couple magnet schools would be good, as competition to private schools, but all other elementary and middle schools should simply be neighborhoods schools.
With limited resources the question becomes what to do first? Job creation for the existing under and unemployed populations is the first step. Then large incentives and infrastructure/beautification improvement projects aimed at encouraging the middle classes to move back to cities and help create a market for cafes, restaurants, groceries, and other stores that require low wage low skill jobs. Followed by business incentives to help diversify job growth. There should also be financial help for people who want to restore old buildings to their former glory to combat some of the inevitable subdividing of houses into apartments by developers that will happen when neighborhoods become more desirable and demand for housing increases. Schools, at this point, can be reworked to encourage better teaching practices, more effective and engaging curriculum, and other reform measures now taking place. The idea that our schools are currently in dire trouble is simply false. Every single conventional public school in this city has graduated college bound, successful students. The core problems do not lie within the schools or even with bad teachers, because most bad teachers are only ineffective because they have to deal with emotionally disturbed students and kids who simply can’t control themselves.

Its also not quite fair to compare suburban public schools with inner city public schools because suburban schools are actually semi-private. In order to attend those schools, your parents have to be able to afford a certain lifestyle, so these schools in effect are not open to the public, but only a certain demographic.

posted by: D2 on September 5, 2010  12:14pm

I am very curious about the professionalism, or the lack off, the integrity (if any)of the so called professionals that are employed at the New Haven Public Schools Administrative Offices, starting from the top down… .  Communication and confidentiality i.e. not discussing employees to others is not the way to effectively and procedurally operate a Human Resources department.  I have heard many horror stories from the teachers of that school system about the unprofessional behavior they have experienced from various personnel and read about the mismanagement and cover up of the Head-start Program funds. I realize in this economic climate budgets are tight,lay-offs/pink slips are inevitable, emotions and egos are running high but it is not necessary to loose site of why these people were put in these positions.  Where is the integrity in doing the job that they get paid very well to do? Someone, the Mayor or whoever needs to rethink and re-assess the people that are in these positions.  Many of my family members worked in the New Haven Public schools many years ago with the Dr.Tirrozi’s, the Jack Chasin’s, Ralph Goglia’s, Mr. Beatty and the Charley Twyman’s of the world, so I do know some history. Let’s make a change on how the school system runs their business and be the exemplary school system in all areas not just in certain programs.

posted by: Teachergal on September 5, 2010  3:48pm

Jonathan:  Its also not quite fair to compare suburban public schools with inner city public schools because suburban schools are actually semi-private. In order to attend those schools, your parents have to be able to afford a certain lifestyle, so these schools in effect are not open to the public, but only a certain demographic.

Are you kidding me? There are many different demographics in the suburbs. I’m thinking you have specific wealthy suburbs in mind when you make such a comment. Most suburban communities have a mix of economics, advantaged and disadvantaged. Maybe not to the same degree as new haven but prevalent nonetheless.

One thing I do know about the suburban schools is that class size is generally 20 or less and new havens class size is generally 25 or more. I just spoke to a kindergarten teacher inNH whobhad 27 students.  That’s a major problem in urban Ed.

posted by: Courtland S. Wilson Branch Library on September 8, 2010  7:50pm

Welcome home!...Your neighbor across the way is looking forward to sharing in the community building going on.  We are the library.  Our cousin in public education We both have amazing resources and strengths to partner with. 

By the way, this building is celebrating its fourth birthday in October.  Many skeptics felt that building a vibrant, comprehensive library right here was a waste of time.  Well, they were wrong.  Hill residents of every age, background, religion, economic level and gender have made the Courtland Wilson branch a strong, lively and engaging resource for everyone.  This building is loved and treated with respect by the community.  I have great faith that the Roberto Clemente Leadership Academy will be embraced and nurtured lovingly by the Hill.  Your neighbor is glad that you are home.