School District Sees Mayor’s Budget Bump — & Seeks $12M More

Heather, how long should any parent wait for a public school, a New Haven public school, to get "good?" Two years, four years, maybe six years, maybe never? Should a parent's child and the parent's tax money be a placeholder for some far-off, possibly never-to-be-realized future good public school? We both know how damaging years spent in an underperforming school/district are to the young mind. Time never to be recovered. New Haven Public Schools have continually failed in their primary responsibility. No amount of money will fix NHPS in the foreseeable future, and maybe never. Parents should not have to sacrifice their children's most significant opportunity for a better life waiting for that change. Track the scores of NHPS for, let's say, the past twenty years, and tell me what you see. Catholic schools don't just "kick out" underperforming students. They may dismiss students who chronically exhibit behavioral problems as they should. The public schools should do so, too, but they won't (hopefully addressed at another time). Catholic and private schools' responsibility is to educate those students who want to be educated and are available to be educated. The Catholic Schools I'm familiar with are often havens for many "underperforming students"; students who were "underperforming" precisely because the public school environments were so toxic. The idea of "stealing" money from public schools to pay for school choices is insulting. To consign students to a system of education that has consistently failed more than half of its students (and many students of color) for years and years is the real insult. I know the teachers' unions hate it (of which I was a member). Still, several states, and growing, have implemented programs allowing taxpayers to use public funds to support private schools, including Catholic Schools. CT/NH, being the liberal progressive union bastions that they are, will fight these real opportunities for educational advancement tooth and nail.

Well, Heather, you're talking about systemic, political, financial, and social changes that may or may not ever happen in NH/CT. The best, most optimistic prediction is maybe some small cosmetic changes well into the future. While we're waiting for what really needs to be seismic changes, thousands of kids in NH are currently on a path to something close to functional illiteracy. NHPS hasn't produced "good" education for the majority; since when? NHI commentators may or may not represent NH's larger population of individuals concerned about the state of NHPS's historical lack of success. Still, many of their comments should give some pause. I could be wrong, but you seem to be saying, "If only my proposed changes could take effect "tomorrow," things would be fine." We both know that "tomorrow" often never comes, at least not fast enough to fix the current educational damage and the damage that has been going on for many years. Again, review the historical data for NHPS and tell me what you see. Then, tell me how things will look in the next five to ten years. If you are not fairly positive there is going to be a considerable turnaround or even a small but significant turnaround; then we've possibly consigned several more generations to second-class status.
By and large, Catholic Schools and many private schools/charter schools have worked out a formula for success. You'll say that's because they" kick out" underperforming students. Again, my counter is that they take many underperforming students and often turn them into more consistently good "performers." There are ways NHPS could emulate the Catholic School/Private School models. Of course, they won't.

More states use taxpayer dollars to help people pay for private school Stateline.
More States Use Tax Dollars to Help People Pay for Private Schools (governing.com)
Supreme Court Says Taxpayer Money Can Go to Religious Schools | TIME

You have some good suggestions. One thing that helps behavioral issues is more easily accessed social workers as needed by students throughout the day, and smaller classes so students get more individual attention from the teachers, and more trained specialists and trained paras for students with learning disabilities and behavioral issues to assist the students in classrooms. Part of the failed promise of mainstreaming was that any student who needed extra help who would have been in special education classes when mainstreamed would get a para or specialist to assist them along with the teacher in the classrooms, but the funding and the staffing was not put in place to make this possible.
Another thing that would help is homeroom social emotional learning lessons and checkins for the first class of the day, with stress relief, meditation, yoga and other coping techniques being taught to our students so they can learn to identify, express and manage their emotions in a safe healthy way, and to find possible solutions to resolve their issues.
Social media and internet access on cell phones is causing major issues with addiction to technology, mental illness, distractions, etc. While its very hard in this day and age of mass shootings to think of removing students access to their phones, maybe the schools can have an intranet system instead of internet access inside schools, and all students must keep their phones in their backpacks and not allowed to take them out unless required by the classroom lessons that required them, like digital literacy and responsible use and critical thinking of internet use.

@RedAlert23 & Heather C: Agreed, good suggestions all. One thing NHPS should do is create three or four smaller schools around NH specifically for those students who are exhibiting chronic behavioral issues and disruptive anti-social tendencies. One or more schools would be for elementary students, and one or more would be for middle-aged students. Each school would educate around fifty or sixty students, with a class size of no more than ten. These schools would be critically staffed only by administrators, teachers, paras, school psychologists, social workers, and outreach/parent liaisons who were dedicated, fully invested, and skilled in working with these challenging students. The curriculum would follow the regular NHPS curriculum, with the addition of weekly group "counseling/talk-through sessions." Students would be required to complete a minimum of at least one successful school year before returning to their sending school. Placing these students in a more educationally therapeutic educational setting would have immediate and long-term benefits for the sending schools, the parents, and most importantly, these students. The regular NHPS are too big, too loose, and too ill-equipped to deal with regularly occurring chaos, to say nothing of dealing with the chaotic behaviors of chronically disruptive students. It is well past the time NHPS took back serious control of its learning environments. These kinds of schools were in place in NH and were successful throughout the early to late 2000s. Unfortunately, things moved too far from the intended vision when the NHPS central office began placing too many students and unskilled, ineffectual staff into these schools. When managed well, these schools can be an honest and serious boon to New Haven.

ElvinTapperRedAlert23
Mar 11, 2024 11:06 am
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@RedAlert23 & Heather C:

As to your comment on creating small supportive schools for students who may need extra help for a year or two or four friending on their needs with specially trained staff and smaller classrooms. Yes, yes, and yes!!!
I attended HSC in the 1980s, and several of the students were kicked out of or had fled the much larger high schools or some from private or charter schools and flourished and graduated from HSC. We had a fantastic counselor/social worker who understood adolescent psychology, teachers who were motivated and team teacher taught classes, and social emotional checkin homerooms for the first class of the day lead by teachers in small groups in the classrooms for all students.
We had almost no student conflicts and a family atmosphere and it was a great alternative to the insanity of how huge and impersonal it was at Hillhouse or Cross. Every teacher knew every childs name and at least a little bit about their personality and their situation, and any child felt safe going to a teacher, the principal or the social worker to talk about anything they needed to throughout the day.
Many students at that school would have dropped out or gotten into fights or simply get socially promoted out of school if they didnt have HSC as an alternative.