U.S. Education Secretary Boosts New Supe

The nation’s top education official came to the Cove Wednesday night to pledge his support for the city’s new superintendent and fellow Boricua, as part of a hundreds-strong celebration of New Haven’s Puerto Rican community.

U.S. Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona offered those words of praise as the featured guest speaker at the Puerto Ricans United, Inc.‘s (PRU) annual fundraiser at Anthony’s Ocean View at 450 Lighthouse Rd.

Over 400 people filled the waterfront ballroom and dining hall to back the work of PRU, a nonprofit led by Joe Rodriguez that hosts an annual festival on the Green and that celebrates Greater New Haven’s Puerto Rican community year round. 

Cardona, a former Meriden assistant superintendent and state education commissioner whom President Biden tapped to lead the country’s Department of Education more than three years ago, anchored the three hour-plus event with a 12-minute speech touting the work of so many leaders in the room.

One who he singled out for praise time and again Wednesday night was Madeline Negrón, who is still in her first month as the new superintendent of the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district.

“Tonight we celebrate boricua excellence,” Cardona said. ​“We also have some giants of our community in the audience tonight. I’m proud to see Dr. Madeline Negrón here, the first Puerto Rican to serve as superintendent of New Haven Public Schools.”

“Madeline is a friend of mine and Marissa’s,” he continued, in reference to his wife Marissa Cardonna. ​“And let me tell you: we are 1,000 percent behind you, Dr. Negrón. I need this room to build a foundation of support of love and prayer around the new superintendent and her family. All the kids of New Haven will benefit from you being here.”

(Full disclosure [and spousal pride], one of the awardees at Wednesday’s gala was this reporter’s wife, Lucy Gellman, who won the Arts & Culture award for her coverage of the city’s Puerto Rican community in the Arts Paper. Other gala awardees on Wednesday included Rev. Edwin Perez Jr., City Angels Baseball Academy, and Maritza Rosa.)

Cardona exhorted the applauding crowd before him to show up in full force to the PRU fest on the Green on Aug. 12 — and to continue to ​“celebrate the beautiful Puerto Rican culture here in New Haven, celebrate louder than ever, the next generation of impressionable Puerto Ricans are listening.” 

Then he returned to Negrón’s historic appointment as the head of NHPS: ​“We need you to do what you do, so that when Madeline has a rough day at work, she remembers that she has taino blood in her veins,” he said. 

Before closing out his speech for the night, Cardona bumped the work that he and his educational colleagues are doing in Washington, D.C. to support Puerto Ricans in particular and all students across the country.

Number one, he said, ​“we are making this country multilingual. We know bilingualism and biculturalism is a superpower. Many of our kids have it. It’s time the rest of the country catch up. For too long Spanish-speaking kids and families were looked at like they have a deficit. Pero esa cambia ahoy.”

“We recognize if you speak two languages, you’re smarter, gifted, more likely to have success in life,” he said. ​“So we’re pushing for multilingual education in every school across the country,” in part by investing $890 million every year towards such initiatives. ​“We’re hiring bilingual teachers and leaders at the federal Department of Education to lead this work in the U.S.”

And ​“numero dos,” he said, ​“we are fixing the education system in Puerto Rico.”

In his first month as secretary, Cardona said, the Biden administration ​“delivered $6 billion to the kids of Puerto Rico.” He praised his special advisor and fellow Connecticut‑D.C. import Chris Soto for ​“leading the rebuilding of Puerto Rican schools for the U.S.”

“We’re going to get things done,” Cardona promised. ​“In the last two years that we’ve prioritized our work in Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico gave their teachers a raise for the first time in 12 years.” And they ​“put a nurse in every school” and have hired ​“hundreds of new school psychologists.” 

Cardona concluded his speech by again thanking PRU and the Connecticut Puerto Rican community from which he comes.

“I do what I do, because you do what you do,” he said. ​“You lift me. You lift us. You give voice to the generations before us that we’re silenced. You give purpose to the generation that’s coming.”

Cardona recalled once saying that he is ​“as American as apple pie and rice and beans.”

“And I meant it.”