Day After Fire, Metro Regroups

Metropolitan Business Academy students left their smoke-scarred high school Wednesday and assembled in Hillhouse’s Floyd Little Fieldhouse to shoot hoops and play Four Square volleyball — and come together as a community at a time when it’s tough to be a teacher or a student.

A fire a day earlier damaged a second-floor boys’ bathroom and left officials concerned about air quality in the building, which lacks natural ventilation.

“They said, ​‘You’re going to the Fieldhouse’” for school on Wednesday, recalled Principal Sequella Coleman. ​“I said: ​‘Can I have my guys?’”

Her ​“guys” include gym teachers Joe Raffone, Richard Natlo, and Sean Portley (with whom she is pictured above). They are part of the ​“Project Pride” team, which the school system revived from the dead during the pandemic to help kids navigate stresses that have led to an increase in misbehavior (like setting fires in bathrooms). It’s part of a broader push for more ​“social-emotional learning” (SEL) support.

Wednesday was a half-day on the school calendars. The busses brought Metro students across town to the Fieldhouse. Two hundred thirty of the interdistrict magnet school’s 403 students showed up; Coleman had them all gathered with staffers in the gym for a morning designed as ​“an outlet for kids to understand they’re safe, that school will continue.” Some played basketball; others lifted weights. The Pride team engaged dozens in a netless game of fusion ​“four square volleyball.” 

Games like that encourage cooperation, said Portley. ​“It softens them a little bit” and is ​“fun for kids who don’t always participate” in sports.

Another focus: Just have people see each other and interact. ​“Everything’s been on computer; there’s no relationships anymore. We work on that,” said Portley.

“Today is exactly what we needed. Kids needed time to spread out, to be active, to be with friends in an environment where we are all safe,” observed Stephen Staysniak (pictured), who teaches English, journalism, and restorative justice classes.

“Today was fun. Everybody got to come together,” agreed senior Robert Burroughs.

Sealed Windows Kept In Smoke

At first Burroughs (pictured above) thought it was a fire drill when the alarms sounded at Metro Tuesday at 9:59 a.m. and students were led outside. Then fire trucks arrived from the Woodward Avenue and Grand Avenue stations. The students were brought back out of the cold into the gymnasium to learn what happened and to be sent home.

“It was really hard to know there was a fire in your building [that] breaks your routine, and to know somebody in your community put people at risk.”

The fire remains under investigation. It is suspected to have been deliberately set. Cellphone videos spread as quickly as the smoke among students. Investigators are looking into whether the fire was an example of the viral ​“Devious Licks” TikTok challenge occurring at schools in the state and nationwide since 2021.

Sophomore Nick Clement (pictured), who joined in the four square volleyball, said he, too, was surprised it turned out to be a real fire. He was a little disappointed that he couldn’t proceed with his plan for the day: interviewing teachers for a documentary he’s making. ​“It’s kind of irresponsible, stupid” for a student to start a fire, he said.

“A part of me is shocked. A part of me isn’t” because of an increased level of student misbehavior that sometimes ​“makes it kind of hard to be at school,” said sophomore Atlas Salter. ​“Our principal is pretty good at closing it down. The school is great. The teachers are great.”

The firefighters were able to promptly knock down the fire, which someone started by igniting paper towels and toilet paper in the second-floor bathroom, without flames spreading through the building.

Smoke did spread through the building. A crew from the Lombard Street fire station worked with school facilities people to limit the spread ​“as best as they could,” said Assistant Fire Chief Justin McCarthy. ​“We had fans everywhere trying to get odorous smoke out. The building, while it’s a beautiful structure, doesn’t have a lot of natural ventilation.” The windows don’t open. It was built that way on purpose, to keep out asthma-causing diesel-exhaust from the adjacent interstate. (Read more about that here.)

TikTok Traces?

Principal Coleman (pictured) was wondering about the potential TikTok-fire connection Wednesday morning. She said social media pressures combined with pandemic-related pressures and general societal unrest have spread into the schools to increase disruption.

Coleman has more perspective than most on waves of student behavior: She has worked in New Haven public schools since 1980 both inside the schools and in the central office. She has served as principal of various schools for 20 years.

On one level, social media has made more visible misbehavior that always existed, she observed Wednesday while monitoring the activity inside the Fieldhouse. But now ​“it’s bolder. It’s more in your face and less remorseful.”

“It’s a hard time to be young,” teacher Staysniak said of the increased disruption reflected in Tuesday’s fire, noting that many students have lost people they care about to Covid-19 or to gun violence. ​“The kids need more,” he said — yet teachers and administrators have struggled to do more with less. Schools citywide struggle with staff shortages; Metro is down three teachers, an English Language Learner (ELL) staffer, a full-time nurse, and paraprofessionals.

City teachers union President Leslie Blatteau, a former Metro teacher, echoed that concern. The union is organizing people to testify at a state legislative hearing in Hartford Friday in favor of a bill to increase school funding. Her union is also supporting a bill to tackle indoor air quality at schools.

Along with teachers and support staff, schools need more money to address air quality and HVAC maintenance, Blatteau argued. The fallout of Tuesday’s fire at Metro is the latest example of problems revealed throughout the system since the pandemic’s onset.

Tuesday’s Metro incident prompted Blatteau to revisit Kathleen Cushman’s 2003 book Fires in the Bathroom: Advice for Teachers From High School Students. She said it contains lessons that remain pressing today: ​“It’s a reminder we need to prioritize listening to young people so we can center their needs. We also have to prioritize listening to teachers. Teachers are the ones working most directly with our kids. When we do, we’ll see less fires in the bathroom and more of what you saw today in the Fieldhouse.”

Schools spokesperson Justin Harmon said ​“the plan” is for classes to resume Thursday at the Metro building. ​“The damage was mostly smoke in the hallway adjacent to the restroom where the fire started. Most of the work is cleaning and painting.”

Robert Burroughs is ready to move on. ​“Handle it. I know you got it,” he told Principal Coleman, who had also been his principal when he attended Davis Street Magnet School. With the help of an e‑commerce and entrepreneurship class he takes at business-oriented Metro, he has been building up a sneaker-buying and reselling company he has launched called Clock In Kicks. (Click on the above video to watch him tell that story.) He has started pulling in hundreds of dollars a month; his growth plans can help him afford to travel back and forth starting next year to Virginia, where he will study business at Hampton University.