nothin Daniels Parents Plead With Birks On Staff Cuts | New Haven Independent

Daniels Parents Plead With Birks On Staff Cuts

Allan Appel Photo

Daniels parent Maria Flores at protest.

The John C. Daniels Inderdistrict Magnet School library has become a ghost town.” The science fair, the school play, the book fair, and the student-made school bulletin are in jeaprody. The website is not being updated. Setting up and linking the teachers’ computers have also become difficult.

Meanwhile, the school’s longtime library media specialist, Patricia McGovern, the person who knows where to find the light switch in the auditorium and every room key, has been cut from full to half time. That has meant a loss of institutional memory in a school that has seen changing leadership over the last years.

Birks fields questions.

Parents from the John C. Daniels Inderdistrict Magnet School of Communication in the Hill brought those concerns Monday morning to Dr. Carol Birks when the schools superintendent appeared at a meet-and-greet at the Atwater Senior Center in Fair Haven.

Birks was on the sixth of her meet-and-greets about town fielding questions from parents about consequences of a first round of cuts to the schools aimed at closing a budget deficit.

After sharing details of her own hardscrabble upbringing and educational opportunities that helped her rise above poverty, Birks warned her listeners —about 75 coffee-klotching seniors and parents from across the city – that more cuts are coming.

This year’s school budget deficit remains at $8.4 million. By law, it needs to be closed.

Birks drew a red line: The classroom – not the library – must come first.

Teresa Padilla: Cuts could hurt her special-needs daughter.

Daniels parents came with signs and a polite but outspoken urgency about the effects of cuts on their school.

Birk’s response: She apologized to the Daniels’ parents for not responding sooner to a letter sent from them to her, but reminded them cuts across the board in all schools have been needed to close, thus far, close to $11 million of what began as a $19.3 million deficit.

She also reminded the outspoken but polite parents that the decision has not been made ex cathedra, but that the principal was involved in the decisions of what to cut at the school.

The parents did score an immediate meeting with Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment Iline Tracey, who, along with other central office staff, was accompanying Birks.

But the meeting did not come without a caveat. We can prevail only if we focus on the instructional core: 22,000 kids are counting on us to make the decisions, including the ones I need to make legally,” Birks said, like balancing the Board of Education budget.

As the Daniels parents went off into the comfortable side room of the newly remodeled senior center to meet with Tracey and Deputy Superintendent, Evelise Velazquez, Birks added that many schools are sharing library media specialists. Only the largest schools, like the major high schools, have them full time. I can’t guarantee the outcome will be different” at Daniels, she said.

The Red Line

Birks encounters Daniels parent Sylvester Salcedo.

As the parents sat down in a circle around Tracey, she introduced the latest hire at the board’s central office, Evelise Velazquez, only eight days on the job.

Earlier Birks had defended, to the larger audience, her hiring of certain skilled central office staff to supervise and maintain compliance requirements for school social workers, English Language Learners.

In the smaller gathering Velazaquez played variations on that theme to the Daniels parents.

We’re making hard decisions that we shouldn’t have to make,” she began.

Here are some highlights of the backing-and-forthing between both sides facing a conflict between relentless financial pressure and the profound impulse to do right by children:

Velazquez.

Parent Maria Flores: Our purpose is to get this position filled full time. Not just the position but the person. I understand budget cuts, but we are passionate and we are not going away.”

Velazquez: The question is how can we cut the 8.5 percent at Daniels (the percentage required at each school). That’s how the position became vulnerable.”

Parent Michelle Morgan: We’re trying to articulate something more. Memory is not strong at the top. We’ve had this parade of principals and vice principals That’s why we’re so fired up about Pat McGovern.”

Velazquez: Okay, this gives me context.”

Morgan: She’s the holder of the … culture of the school. What makes it strong.”

Parent Melissa Vera: [McGovern] also lost her [staff] support.”

Tracey: I’m 30 years in [the school system]. I know something of John C. Daniels. The larger schools get full time library specialists. All the schools the size of Daniels got that cut. I feel your passion, but more cuts are coming. Where’s it going to come from? God knows! From all the other things apart from the classroom. We make sure the classroom teachers are there.”

Tracey, right, exchanges ideas with parent Michelle Morgan.

Velazquez: We’re going to come up against budget restrainst again next year. It has to be less about the person and more how the system can carry on.”

Parent Sylvester Salcedo: I’d like to bring other ideas into the mix, like how money from Yale or other neighbors can come in.”

Tracey: That’s right, people!”

Morgan: We need to figure out how the school system can help us get more partners.”

Parent Diane Newlan: Budget cuts are numbers, but teachers are people. They love our students. Those bonds are broken when a teacher cuts cut.”

Tracey: I hear you loud and clear. And we do value parents. At the same, we have not looked at personalities. In some schools there are tears [because of staff cuts]. I understand, but I have to preserve the classroom across the district.”

A meeting between Velazquez and the full PTO at Daniels was set tentatively for 6 p.m. on Sept. 27. The superintendent said she will try to attend.

Meanwhile, Mayor Toni Harp addressed the issue of guidance-counselor cuts in response to a question from a caller to her latest Mayor Monday” appearance Thursday on WNHH FM.

She noted that with an $8 million outstanding Board of Education deficit, overall cuts will continue.

We’re used to having robust resource sin the New HavenPublic Schools. It’s just not that way anymore,” she said.

Noting that Daniels is a pre-K‑8 school, she said that the Board of Ed decided to move more of the guidance counselors we have left into high school, where it really is important that kdis have access to someone who can help them maneuver the whole college experience.”

Click on the video to watch the full episode of Mayor Monday” on WNHH FM

This episode of Mayor Monday” was made possible with the support of Gateway Community College and Berchem Moses P.C.

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