Daniels Teacher: Please Keep Us Safe

John C. Daniels School teacher Jane Roth pleaded to the Board of Education to help save her school’s students and staff from having to see overdoses on the school’s property, used syringes scattered around the campus, and drug-users shooting up just outside the Congress Avenue bounds of where children learn and play.

Roth raised those concerns Monday night during a Board of Education meeting that saw teachers from across the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district speak up about various pressing safety issues. The meeting took place both online and in person at Barack Obama School at 69 Farnham Ave.

Roth and other New Haven educators testified during the public comments section of Monday’s meeting to raise awareness about safety issues that cause some school staff to fear coming to school everyday. Some concerns mentioned were initially brought to the district’s attention more than a year ago. 

They ranged from drug users in the Hill climbing onto John C. Daniels Interdistrict Magnet School of International Communication property at 569 Congress Ave. to a long-broken public-address (PA) system at Metropolitan Business Academy that could make it difficult for administrators to communicate with teachers and students en masse during an emergency.

On Wednesday, a school security guard outside Daniels spoke about homeless people and drug users heading over from a corner outside of the adjacent APT Foundation methadone clinic and over to the school’s property. Two APT patients the Independent spoke with, meanwhile, praised the clinic’s effective medical treatment — even as they differed over the clinic’s impact on the Hill area’s quality of life. 

The mayor, who is also a member of the Board of Education, updated school staff and the community during Monday’s meeting on planned responses.

Cleaning Up Syringes, Human Waste

Roth, a special education teacher and union steward at John C. Daniels, testified during Monday’s meeting about her school being impacted by the domino effect of drug addiction and homelessness epidemics. 

She reported that two years ago a four-page email with an additional four pages of photos was shared with the school board, Supt. Iline Tracey, and the New Haven police that ​“chronicled in great details the hazardous and safety concerns” occurring at John C. Daniels. 

Roth said the documents have been sent to district leaders relaying staff concerns about finding cars being broken into, people overdosing in the school parking lot, others camping out on the campus, and an attempted robbery of a bus driver at the school’s dismissal. Hill neighbors have long raised concerns about the APT Foundation’s methadone clinic right across the street from John C. Daniels and the impact it has on neighbors’ and school members’ safety and quality of life. Patients, meanwhile, have spoken out about how the medication assisted treatment provided at that facility saves lives.

“One of the most egregious conditions that still exist today is that our building manager, who arrives at 6 a.m., in order to ensure safe entry for students and staff, he must clear the area surrounding the school of syringes and drug paraphernalia,” Roth said. ​“He also cleans the area, which is used as a toilet, of human waste and urine.”

She added, ​“Very little was done, and certainly nothing long lasting since the email of two years ago.”

In March, she continued, a two-page email was sent to NHPS officials Vivanna Conner, Michael Finley, and Thomas Lamb, and Mayor Justin Elicker with more photos of the school’s condition and reports of incidents such as when a parent came to the school for a parent teacher conference and, upon leaving the building, came across someone shooting up drugs. That same evening the parent withdrew her child from the school. 

Two weeks ago the teachers union president asked the mayor for an update on solutions and got the response, ​“We’re working on it,” Roth said. A week ago the school’s principal asked the mayor about plans and was also told, ​“We’re working on it.” 

“After two years, the John C Daniels community earned and deserves a far better response than the cold, callous, indifferent response, ​‘We’re working on it,’ ” Roth said on Monday.

Marianne Maloney, a math teacher at New Haven Academy and chief steward of the city’s teachers union, spoke about ongoing safety problems at John C. Daniels School. 

“Problems we currently face at Daniels, and we do face them together, as we all work to serve our teachers and our children are not long-lived and are not insurmountable,” she said. 

“What changed as a result of Covid-closed schools is that the school campus became an available open space,” she said. ​“and like any other vacuum it invited population. The population who filled the void is not compatible with a school campus.”

Maloney pressed the board to ​“recall the vision you had for our schools when you made your commitment to the board.” 

“Our teachers come to that building everyday prepared to open young minds to wonder, but in order to enter they face the harsher realities of our city as do our children,” she said. ​“We can take back that campus.”

She concluded that boundaries must be reset and redefined school as a sacred place. 

“We have the resources to defend that if we choose to dedicate them to that purpose. The need is immediate. We are losing teachers and students as we speak,” she said.

In response to the concerns brought up at Monday’s meeting about John C Daniels School, Mayor Elicker said he has been working with city staff, NHPS Chief of Operations Thomas Lamb, and others to walk the school site a year and a half ago to identify areas needing improvements.

“The city paid for the installation of the fence that’s separated the field from the school itself,” he said. ​“And through my conversations with the principal, that has improved.”

Elicker said the fence has gotten needed repairs when it was breached. 

Two weeks ago the field was mowed after the principal also expressed concerns about this to him. 

He said he has been communicating with Lamb over the past week about possibly increasing the height of the fence ​“around the alcove area where people have been sleeping in, because while the fence is locked and we’ve installed additional cameras and lighting, people can still get over the fencing area.” 

Elicker said that the city is looking to work with the school district to raise the fence and that the city has increased its police presence over the past year at the school’s pick up and drop off time.

He added that ​“there are people that are struggling very much in our community. It’s important for us to provide more services to them. We have worked to do so with Elm City COMPASS, and we’ll be expanding the hours of Elm City COMPASS.” 

He concluded that the city is in conversation with the APT Foundation about relocating the methadone treatment site nearby the school to a more appropriate site, he said. ​“I think we all can agree that around an elementary school is not the best site for APT’s services.”

Board member Darnell Goldson said the board has received emails from educators about students smoking in the school buildings and heard from a teacher Monday who reported that they were ​“harassed by a student so bad trying to get on the elevator that she had to take a week off of school because she didn’t feel safe.”

"Not A Good Environment For The Kids"

On Wednesday morning, the Independent swung by Daniels School for a firsthand look at the Congress Avenue-Ward Street corner that has the school on one side and the methadone clinic on the other.

Al Heard, a Westville native who has worked as a school security guard at Daniels for the past five years, confirmed that the concern raised at Monday’s Board of Ed meeting about people leaving drug paraphernalia and trying to climb onto school grounds is true.

“Look at it, dude,” he said, gesturing towards a dozen people standing a few dozen feet away at the Congress-Ward corner. ​“It’s the APT. It’s not a good environment for the kids.”

He said that he regularly has usher adults away from the kids playground area on the south side of the school’s campus. He noted that the city and the school district’s putting up of a fence around the playground and the athletic field has helped deter people from coming in to use drugs or sleep. But people still try.

Has he personally found syringes on the school’s edges and campus?

“Of course,” he said, mostly by the dumpsters on Ward and by the school parking lot on the other side off of Baldwin.

Heard praised John C. Daniels as a great school, a place he loves to work. But the APT clinic across the street and the many people who hang out in the area with clear drug problems, he said, makes it a hard and unpleasant place for kids to be.

“I try to do the best can,” he said.

On the other side of the Vernon-Ward intersection closer to the methadone clinic, APT patients offered different takes on the teacher’s and school security guard’s critique.

Some, like a New Havener and eight-year APT patient named Tanya, said she doesn’t see anyone ever break into school grounds to sleep or use drugs.

Tito Cabrera, a fellow APT patient who lives on Grand Avenue and has been receiving treatment on Congress for three years, disagreed. ​“It’s the truth,” he said about the teacher’s and guard’s concerns. ​“You’ve got a real bad homeless population in New Haven,” and everywhere in the country, he said.

Cabrera said he’d like to see APT moved to a different location far away from an elementary school. ​“You can’t have it so near,” he said.

Tanya disagreed. ​“Don’t move the APT,” she said. It helps too many people where it is right now to move it to another location. ​“They’re not gonna move it far,” Cabrera countered.

Where Cabrera and Tanya were on full agreement, however, was on how APT and its medication assisted treatment has helped them in their own lives struggling with addiction.

“APT is a very good program,” Tanya said. ​“It helps people staying clean from the streets.”

In Need Of A New PA

Also on Monday night, an educator at Metropolitan Business Academy, Maxwell Comando, testified about his school’s lack of a functioning PA system for more than a year. This includes the a school bell system that is not working. 

“Metro is a place of vibrant learning but there are some systems in place that have created conditions that many teachers feel fearful when they’re in the building,” he said. 

Comando said building work orders have been put into the districts system and the issue has been discussed at steward meetings and School Planning & Management Team (SPMT) meetings. 

For months Comando said staff were told a bid was out for the repairing of the system.

At Monday’s meeting the Board of Education did vote unanimously to approve four purchase orders for Emergency Fire Panel repairs at Cross High School, and for PA Clock and Bell upgrades for Hillhouse, Wilbur Cross, and Metro. 

“If there were ever a code red, a building lock down, nobody except a few classrooms or spaces on the first floor would be able to hear it,” Comando said during his public testimony. ​“In fact when there was a recent code red for all buildings even though it happened after dismissal time, there was no communication of it, and if there was no teachers were able to hear it.” 

Teachers have expressed extreme concern, Comando said, while also working to offer creative solutions to the issue. 

Metro staff have improvised by creating remind alerts and email chains for if any threats were to occur in the building, Comando said.

“But the fact of the matter is these are still insufficient in a moment of crisis,” he added. ​“I just want to raise this to the board, raise this issue to the mayor that in a moment of extreme chaos and crisis there are people who would not be able to receive the information that they need to stay safe and more importantly to keep the children that we teach safe.” 

Comando also expressed his solidarity with the John C Daniels team and push for better safety at the school.