Close Brennan-Rogers? Not So Fast …

On a large poster board, Brennan-Rogers paraprofessional Joneya Kasperzyk wrote ​“Real kids. Real futures. Don’t close the door on our dreams,” as she and a dozen other staffers and parents gathered at the Shack to advocate for their West Rock public school not to be closed. 

That sign-making meetup took place Thursday at the 333 Valley St. community center.

It was held two days after the last day of school, as Brennan-Rogers staffers got right back to work with planning out a new lesson. 

This lesson wasn’t for students, but instead for New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district leadership. 

On Tuesday, Supt. Madeline Negrón announced that Brennan-Rogers — a PreK‑8 school on Wilmot Road — might be closed next school year in order to help mitigate an expected $16.5 million budget deficit. Negrón explained her reasoning for the Brennan-Rogers potential shutdown in a letter to families in which she wrote that, if the school were to be closed, NHPS would ​“implement a special lottery process for the families affected to ensure that all 132 students have access to quality educational opportunities.” Negrón also reportedly met with Brennan-Rogers staff at around dismissal time Tuesday to let them know about the possibility of the school’s closure.

Meanwhile, the district has also already committed to closing the Dixwell neighborhood’s community school, Wexler-Grant, and merging its student population with that of Newhallville’s Lincoln-Bassett School next school year. And, as recently as last week, the mayor and superintendent said that the budget deficit for next fiscal year — which starts July 1 — makes layoffs of teachers, central office staff, and school support staffers ​“unavoidable.”

After Tuesday’s meeting with the superintendent, Brennan-Rogers staffers reached out to West Rock/West Hills Alder Honda Smith for support. Smith invited the staff to use the community room at 333 Valley St. to talk through their concerns and make posters to bring with them when attending Monday’s full Board of Education meeting, where the superintendent may formally propose closing Brennan-Rogers.

Staff plan to speak up at Monday’s board meeting about why they think closing Brennan-Rogers would cause more harm than good.

As Kasperzyk made her protest poster at The Shack Thursday, she thought of her own upbringing in West Hills and her goal to return back to her community to support its youth. 

As a former student of the now-closed West Rock STREAM Academy, Kasperzyk said Brennan-Rogers is the ​“last [school] building standing for people from this area.” 

“Why are they trying to show these kids that their community can’t support them?” she asked.

Kasperzyk added, ​“A lot of the staff can connect with the kids. It’s easier for us to reach them because we know where they’re coming from. Not everywhere has that.”

She said that she is not fully confident in the superintendent’s promise that school staff and students won’t be left to fall through the cracks. She concluded that staff and students were still adjusting to having the Clarence Rogers building of the Brennan-Rogers campus shuttered last year. 

After learning of the superintendent’s proposal to potentially close the West Rock school, Brennan-Rogers teacher Charlene Neal-Palmer said it would be a ​“disservice to continue to target schools in the Black and brown communities.” 

She suggested that before the district look to close any school buildings, particularly neighborhood schools, it should first give the city back all vacant school properties to help close NHPS’ budget deficit. 

The educators who gathered at the Shack Thursday noted that Brennan-Rogers is positioned in the heart of three housing projects, and is the neighborhood’s only community school. 

Neal-Palmer said that at Tuesday’s meeting with the superintendent, she asked how much it would save the district if Brennan-Rogers were closed. She said the superintendent replied that she did not have the numbers at that time. 

“It’s not just closing a building. It’s closing a legacy,” Neal-Palmer, who has been an educator since 1996, said. 

Others questioned whether there will be savings if West Hills and West Rock students will now have to be bussed to others areas of town instead of being able to walk to the neighborhood school. 

As she taped a yard stick to a poster Thursday, Brennan-Rogers parent Maria Harris-Paige blamed the district for the low enrollment at the school. 

She said she was notified in May that the district would close Brennan-Rogers’ pre-school program next academic year. After sending her own kids to Brennan-Rogers over the course of the past 25 years, Harris-Paige had to send her grandkid to Barnard School mid-year now making it so she has family at three different schools around the district. 

During the 2022 – 23 school year, NHPS gave Brennan-Rogers families the opportunity to move their students to other schools in the district due to teacher vacancies at Brennan-Rogers. Ever since then, educators at Thursday’s gathering said, the school’s enrollment has decreased to the level of having only one class per grade level. 

This has allowed educators and students to have small class sizes and more tolerable caseloads, staffers said Thursday. 

“Although the numbers are small, there’s a great need,” said one staffer. 

Others noted that the impact of closing Brennan-Rogers will affect more than just the school’s staff and students. That’s because the school’s gym is available for open gym for the neighborhood, and some educators frequently stay after school to offer homework help to any youth in the neighborhood.

Brennan-Rogers 6th-8th grade Read 180 teacher Soraya Potter described the school community as a village. She made a poster Thursday that read, ​“It takes a village with Brennan Rogers crew.”

While Potter has been an educator for the the past 37 years, she said that since she’s arrived at Brennan-Rogers, ​“I don’t want to leave.” 

Even though Potter is eligible to retire, she said, continuing to work with the Brennan-Rogers school community is ​“worth it for me.” 

She said the sense of community that staff and students have built is deep, and the the possibility of the school closing is ​“heartbreaking.”

“Middle school is where the least change should happen for kids,” she added.

Kasperzyk agreed, stating that the closure could be difficult for students already dealing with personal trauma, and therefore result in them reverting back to the isolation or misbehavior that Brennan-Rogers staff have spent years mitigating through one-on-one support.

Brennan-Rogers grandparent Elizabeth Yarborough, meanwhile, has lived in Westville Manor for the past 30 years. She has custody of her two grandsons, both of whom attend Brennan-Rogers. She also put her own four sons through the school.

For the past seven years, Yarborough has been a ​“volunteer grandparent” with Brennan-Rogers kindergarteners every day from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.

“I want to see more kids grow up and learn in their communities. Why would you want to push them out their community?” Yarborough asked. 

Another parent, Jennifer Chancio, also lives in Westville Manor. Her daughter graduated from Brennan-Rogers this year and her son will be a rising eighth grader. 

She learned about the possible school closure from Yarborough on Thursday.

Chancio said she appreciates the close proximity of the school. She worries that her son might not be able to walk just eight minutes to school and instead will have to wake up earlier to be bussed elsewhere. ​“My son is so hard to get up in the morning. And I’ll be helping my daughter as a ninth grader figuring things out,” she said. ​“It’s going to be rough on me.”

The Brennan-Rogers staff plan to phone bank over the next few days to inform families who are unaware of the possible closure and push the community to advocate for keeping the school open. 

In another corner of the Shack’s community room, Kristin Kazakewic called out, ​“Hot off the press!” as she removed her Cricut portable heat press machine from a blue t‑shirt, now decorated with the words ​“BRStrong.”

Kazakewic, who has been an educator for 15 years, said Brennan-Rogers has been her favorite place to work because of the school community. 

“All that this community is, has driven me to stay,” she said. 

She said that while at the meeting with the superintendent on the last day of school, all she could think about was the lengths Brennan-Rogers staff go to support the students. From buying students’ groceries and Christmas gifts because they’ve lost parents to helping students get therapeutic support to deal with trauma. 

“These kids deal with so much. We are the only sense of stability for a lot of them,” she said. 

She too suggested the district mitigate next year’s budget by first ​“cutting from the top.”

Alder Honda Smith said Thursday that Brennan-Rogers’ small class sizes are better for its high-needs student population and staff. She added that if the school is closed, she worries the neighborhood will no longer have a polling place. 

“I don’t want voter suppression. They’re suppressing us enough by taking all these schools,” she said. 

She argued that the declining student population at Brennan-Rogers has been due to the district ​“putting fear” in families who send their students to the West Rock/West Hills neighborhood. ​“That’s what’s hurting us. Taking them out the school as if we have bad people and kids here, when we don’t,” she said. 

Smith urged the superintendent to have a community forum with the neighborhood rather than just sending out emails as a means of conversation.

“An urban community should not be without a community school,” she said. ​“I’m going to fight until the end.”