New Hillhouse Principal Readies 4 ​“Academies”

Teachers walk into the office at James Hillhouse High School with requests for the new school year starting next week, like new whiteboards or the use of a prep room. One asks the secretary, who sits behind a desk near the back window, if the principal is in. He is, but he will be in meetings nearly all day, the secretary says, jotting down the teacher’s message.

Kermit Carolina, the new principal, has had a full to-do-list these days as he prepares to take over the city’s second largest high school, and bring to it a new mission.

Carolina has all the energy one would expect of a relatively young administrator, especially one with a wife and two children. He started carrying a small voice recorder in his pocket this summer to capture useful thoughts, and he admits that he isn’t getting much sleep with the beginning of the year approaching. Not afraid of his work following him home, Carolina, 42, recently put a desk in his bedroom.

Carolina knows that test scores and surveys show that Hillhouse needs to improve the education it’s giving New Haven students. A native of the city and former basketball coach and assistant principal of Hillhouse, Carolina spent most of this summer working with his staff to reorganize the near 900-student comprehensive school into themed academies. Also, he’s guiding Hillhouse as it takes part in New Haven’s teacher evaluation system that will require increased classroom observation and provide improved professional development to teachers.

James Hillhouse High School, named for the 18th century U.S. congressman from New Haven, has been around since 1859. Today the school straddles the border between the city’s predominantly black Dixwell and Newhallville neighborhoods, and it draws students from throughout the city. Last year, nearly 52 percent of Hillhouse students qualified for the federal free or reduced lunch program.

The school has been cited as low-performing by the state’s Education Department for the past six years, and this year the school was one of the five lowest performing high schools in the state. Only 34 percent of the school’s 10th-graders met proficient levels in math; 33.5 percent in science; 46 percent in reading; and 57.6 percent in writing.

A recent survey conducted by the district highlighted the need to change the school’s culture. More than 41 percent of students said that they cared about Hillhouse as a school, and only 44 percent of students feel safe there.

The hope, then, is that Carolina, as a New Havener with experience of the city’s schools, and his staff can transform the school.

Hillhouse’s doors will open Sept. 1 with a freshmen academy and three themed academies inside. The academies will focus on humanities, education, law and public service; science, technology and math; and communication, arts and business. Students are neatly distributed between the academies, with the communications, arts and business track pulling the most students. Carolina hopes to carefully introduce a new culture to the school, beginning with next year’s freshmen.

“Changing culture in the building is a process. It’s not a one-year thing,” Carolina said, adding that the freshmen academy, whose students will wear uniforms of navy blue tops and khaki bottoms, will be the focus.

Breaking up large high schools into manageable sized academies is a growing national trend for transforming low-performing schools, according to Deborah Richards, the accountability and improvement bureau chief for the state’s Department of Education.

In academy-based schools ​“kids have ongoing connections with people in the school — which is very hard to happen in a very large high school — and create more personal relationships. Additionally, teachers have more of an idea of strengths and challenges for kids and can provide more customized and individual interventions based on what their needs are,” she said.

This year, Carolina visited Hillcrest Academy on Highland Avenue in Queens, NY, in preparation for setting up the themed academies, and spoke with the principal there. Hillcrest Academy was recently reorganized into small learning communities much like the system that Carolina is introducing at Hillhouse through a federal School Improvement Grant funded by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

The principal offered advice to Carolina about ​“the pain the building went through” with their changes, also noting that principals often approach reform with apprehensions, like a person who needs to pull off an adhesive bandage.

“I decided that we are going to snatch the Band Aid off,” Carolina said. ​“We’re not going to do this in increments. We’re going to go after it and attack it.”

With the grant, Hillhouse will also extend the school day from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., creating time for makeup classes, a new system for suspensions and a place to integrate new students to Hillhouse.

The school may also have community programs in the evening, pending another grant. Carolina ran a similar afternoon community school at Katherine Brennan Middle School when he volunteered there during his undergraduate studies at Southern Connecticut State University.
Similar community connections — like learning woodworking at Winchester Elementary School, playing basketball at the Dixwell Community House, and taking trumpet lessons at the Dixwell Avenue United Church — were what kept Carolina focused, he said, growing up in the Ashmun Street housing projects with his mother and brother. A 3‑by-4-foot photograph of the housing project hangs prominently on his office wall. ​“There was a sense of extended family in the housing projects,” he said. ​“But there also was crime, teen pregnancy, a lot of other things, parts of that vicious cycle that could have grabbed me and pulled me in.”

Carolina stayed in New Haven schools, moving from Winchester Elementary School to Troupe Middle School and attending Wilbur Cross High School, a rival of Hillhouse in New Haven. To mitigate any apparent conflict of interest when he was later coaching basketball at Hillhouse, Carolina would reassure his basketball players, ​“I’m bred in red, but I live blue,” referring to the school colors from Wilbur Cross and Hillhouse, respectively.

He didn’t play basketball for Wilbur Cross, but he was on the newspaper staff. ​“I still tease him about it. Kermit coming around with his newspaper,” said Renard Sutton, a high school friend and current assistant coach of Hillhouse’s basketball team.

The reason that Carolina, who coached Hillhouse’s basketball team to two state championships, didn’t play basketball in high school is that he worked instead. He took a job his uncle lined for him at the Yale co-op, knowing that if he played he would probably be ​“a bench guy at best,” he said.

When he was working at Katherine Brennan Middle 18 years ago, Carolina began the Hot Shots Basketball Camp as a summer program that includes both game time and reading time.

Both of Carolina’s assistant coaches noted that he used basketball as a motivation for students’ success when he coached. ​“We’ve had to sit players, cut players, because they haven’t got it academically,” said Hillhouse’s assistant coach, Tyrese Sullivan, who also played basketball under Carolina in a youth league. ​“And but he’s never going to tell them that they’re off the team because that’s the easy way out. He’s going to make them work to get their grades up.”

Students who know Carolina recognize how he gets results. ​“He has a countermove for anything anyone throws at him. He’s from New Haven. He knows that you got to survive out here,” said Jason Burgo, a senior at Hillhouse who played for the basketball team last year.

This method of persistence with students informed Hillhouse’s new suspension policy. With the addition of the evening session, students who are suspended don’t just get a day off, according to Carolina. They instead have to attend evening classes until they finish their normal work. ​“It’s not going to be the traditional form of suspension where students are sent home for three days or five days and don’t do anything but watch television,” Carolina said.

Before Carolina took the job, he hoped to increase in-class observations by at least 50 percent. The 2010-11 teachers’ union contract, which is reforming teacher evaluations in New Haven, requires school administrators to regularly observe each teacher and formally evaluate them at least twice a year.

Hillhouse has 85 teachers and seven administrators, and the number of administrators may dip to five next year, according to Carolina. With reduced administrative numbers, Carolina and the remaining assistant administrators will be busy doubling the frequency of last year’s classroom visits to about 4 – 5 teachers per week.

Thursday, Carolina walked through his office, dodging lighting equipment and a camera tripod. While two teachers were setting up the equipment, one broke a framed photo of Kobe Byrant that was sitting on a table. ​“It’s OK. You didn’t break Kobe,” Carolina said.

They were taping his DVD-introduction to students for the new school year. After getting direction from the teachers and taking a few minutes to look over his script, he began, ​“I’d like to take this chance to introduce myself as the new principal. …” He stopped, realizing his speaking pace wasn’t natural, then continued. ​“I’d like to introduce. …” He paused again. Repeating the opening a few more times, he eventually nailed it and continued, appearing more comfortable behind the big principal’s desk as taping continued.