Mayor Adds Voice To Calls To Save Church Street School

Hamden Mayor Curt Leng has added his voice to a chorus of parents, teachers, and community members calling on the Board of Education to reverse a unanimous 2018 vote to shutter Church Street School.

“Schools are extended families in many ways,” Leng wrote in a Wednesday letter to the board.

“The value of Church Street has never been in question. That said, the depth of this value and direct positive impact this school and supporting partners offer Hamden families became just crystal clear as our community faced and continues to combat the global pandemic.”

“I know that we can work together to accomplish a potentially transformative effort while avoiding the unintended, and likely irreparable, harm that the closure of this loved community asset would cause,” he added.

The original decision to close Church Street was one component of Hamden’s Reimagine, Restructure, Results Initiative (known as 3R). By shutting down both Church Street and Shepherd Glen, two of Hamden’s eight public elementary schools, incorporating Wintergreen magnet school back into the public school system, and moving sixth graders into a physically expanded middle school, the district planned to establish room within the final seven elementary schools for sliding-scale tuition based pre‑K.

The initiative has gotten more complicated as new obstacles and backlash have altered the plan’s original trajectory. Since 2018, the district has officially re-secured Wintergreen, which was previously leased by ACES and home to a magnet school, for public use. That building has capacity for 600 children.

Myron Hul was one of the nine BOE members to vote ​“yes” in favor of the 3R program three years back. He is no longer on the board, but told the Independent that while ​“a lot of consideration” was given to the potential impacts of closing the two schools, ​“it was still deemed to be in the best interest of Hamden in its entirety to reduce the footprint of the district’s school building holdings, to consolidate the students, to offer services during the transition of the students… and to make that transition as easy as possible.”

He said that one variable ​“driving” the district-wide restructuring of schools was the goal to reduce expenditures associated with the costs of a ​“declining student population,” a budgetary issue that was identified by the Legislative Council.

Even before the pandemic, schools were operating below capacity across the board given declines in enrollment, according to BOE Chair Arturo Perez-Cabello. Therefore, one idea was to cut costs by decreasing the number of available facilities and increasing the number of students in each school.

That said, Perez-Cabello acknowledged that 3R ​“is a complex, evolving process,” adding that the district will have to continue discussing ​“the most efficient way to use the facilities.”

He said the first step in that long process is determining whether the town will get the appropriate funding to build a new wing for the middle school. Construction on the middle school was supposed to take place during 2020, but was postponed due to the pandemic. The town is currently applying for more financial support from the state because the price of construction rose by $6 million during that time.

Once sixth graders theoretically moved into the middle school, the district would begin drafting new attendance zones. So if the board follows that protocol, whether or not the board determines if Church Street and Shepherd Glen should remain open could take years to officially decide.

Hul added that the board reviewed every elementary school in depth before identifying Church Street and Shepherd Glen as the schools they would choose to close. He cited location and travel logistics as well as pre-existing problems within schools as the primary reasons for picking those two.

For example, he said, West Woods, a neighborhood in northern Hamden, would have been difficult to close given those students typically live disproportionately far away from other schools in town. Shepherd Glen, he said, has a more centralized location that would allow for easier redistribution of students and give the town a new space that could be maximally useful for alternative purposes. In addition, Hul and others have asserted that Shepherd Glen will require a major renovation project soon; closing the school could avoid that issue altogether.

He added that he voted for closing Church Street on a ​“razor thin margin of difference” because he did not think that it had a maximally effective layout for delivering curriculum, in comparison to other spaces.

“If things have changed and the decision of the board and actions of the mayor need to be reexamined, so be it,” Hul stated. ​“But the decisions of the past board of education were sound, logical, and they followed the tenet of the council’s request.”

Racel Redux

Another supposed goal of 3R was to confront ​“racial imbalances” across Hamden’s school system.

Church Street and Shepherd Glen are two of Hamden’s most diverse schools. Both are located in the southern part of town.

Church Street is primarily made up of Black and Hispanic students, with 88 percent nonwhite enrollment. Shepherd Glen hosts the most children and families who immigrated to the U.S. from other countries. The school represents students from 60 countries and who speak 24 different languages; the school’s website states that their top two languages spoken, other than English, are Arabic and Mandarin.

But, according to state statute, in any district with greater than 50 percent minority enrollment, any individual school with between 25 and 75 percent minority enrollment is deemed a ​“diverse school,” and does not have to address an imbalance. Therefore, a school like Spring Glen, which has 35 percent minority enrollment — about 27 percent below the district’s average — is considered racially diverse while both Church Street and Shepherd Glen are ​“imbalanced” according to the state.

Hul said that the fact that Church Street and Shepherd Glen are technically ​“racially imbalanced” was not a ​“significant sway factor” for him. Since so much time would pass between when attendance zones would be revised and students redistributed, he figured that population and demographic shifts would inevitably occur during that waiting period.

He said that despite finding state statutes ​“archaic” and ill-fitted to the specific demographics of Hamden, racial ​“balancing” would be required down the line — but that such an issue should be seriously considered later in the process.

However, the fact remains that two of Hamden’s most diverse schools were targeted to be shuttered.

Families Face Uncertainty

Andrea Gloria-Soria, the president of the recently developed PTA at Church Street, told the Independent that the prolonged unpredictability of 3R has caused considerable stress for her and other families. (For the purposes of her interview with the Independent, she said, she was speaking personally, not representing the PTA.)

“We didn’t know where our kids were going to be,” she said, noting that her daughter, Amalia, started kindergarten the year that the original vote occurred.

She said that she has received changing messages over the years: for a while, she was told Church Street students would have to make two moves between three different schools while the middle school was being completed, though ultimately the Board of Ed scrapped that idea.

Gloria-Soria has been one of the most active advocates for keeping Church Street alive. When she saw the mayor’s message, she said, ​“we were happy to hear that all the effort we’re putting in — speaking up about how important the school is for our community and our children — is working and the message is being received.”

She said that while she and her partner have ​“strong jobs” and the resources to access stable transportation, she is ​“trying to speak out for the majority” of those who live in her neighborhood — those who she stated don’t have transportation or usually walk to school everyday, or are not comfortable speaking English.

“If my kid is sick and I have to go pick them up and I don’t have a car, how am I gonna get there?” she said. She noted that Wintergreen is not as physically accessible as Church Street to families.

Gloria-Soria added that parents fear their kids will be taken out of a diverse community and placed in schools where they might ​“stand out” and be ​“bullied.”

Gloria-Soria asked why the town would take back Wintergreen if it meant closing down two Hamden schools. ​“It’s absolutely ridiculous to close functional schools,” she stated.

She pointed out how many other buildings in Hamden are underutilized. She suggested the town sell the Hamden Public Schools Central Office on Putnam Avenue or figure out how to successfully bring in money from the abandoned middle school on Newhall Street rather than extracting from her community.

Though Mayor Leng was one of the ​“leaders in the endeavor to sell the school,” according to Myron Hul, Leng stated that his original preference, before the board made the final decision, was to sell Wintergreen to ACES in order to use that available money to renovate the current elementary schools.

Gloria-Soria said the school is also one of the neighborhood’s greatest assets.

“A school thriving makes the neighborhood thrive, and that makes the city thrive,” she asserted, suggesting that the district figure out how to bolster the school’s pre-existing programs in order to invest in the area’s economic growth. Then, she said, rather than distributing Church Street kids, other families would find themselves attracted to Church Street.

She called the current notion of racial balancing the equivalent of ​“watered down racial inequality.”

If people are going to move where they feel comfortable living, people of color will continue to move to the sixth district surrounding Church Street whether or not the school itself moves, she added. In other words, some believe that the Board of Education should rethink the underlying roots and implications of school segregation in Hamden.

Melissa Kaplan was another Board of Education member who initially supported the idea to close the schools, along with the rest of the board.

“Since then I’ve made it very, very clear that I’ve become a voice of dissent,” she said.

“Going forward we need to be much more mindful in our decisions,” she said, ​“otherwise we will continue to disadvantage and disenfranchise” certain Hamden communities.

She said that after the vote, she and other board members took tours around the two schools and listened to parents and community members.

“We have to listen to those who are going to be most impacted by those decisions,” she stated. ​“It shouldn’t have taken the board so long to seek out those voices.”

Kaplan suggested that there are some people on the board who ​“want to follow procedure,” but said that ​“will procedure is good as a baseline … we need to adapt to the needs of our community.”

“Nothing’s been finalized, so there’s still plenty of opportunities,” she added, to rethink the ​“reimagine and restructure” plan.

Notably, the mayor did not mention Shepherd Glen in his letter to the BOE.

Sangeetha, a mother of two whose son Advaith is a rising sixth grader at Shepherd Glen, told the Independent why she hopes that school will also be protected from closure or sale.

Sangeetha is originally from India. ​“The moment I stepped into Shepherd Glen,” she recalled, ​“the first thing I noticed is that they have a big banner, a ​‘Welcome’ banner written in so many different languages, always hanging there. I saw ​‘Welcome’ written in Hindi.”

At an open house her family attended before Advaith started kindergarten, she noticed flags lining the cafeteria. She soon learned that each time a student from a different country arrived at the school, staff would put up a new flag representing their original home.

Having so many immigrant families in one place has meant, according to Sangeetha, personal accommodations and understanding that she’s not sure would be afforded at other schools. ​“We feel safe there,” she said.

Sangeetha was also one of 90 residents displaced by a four-alarm fire on Mix Avenue this month. She said that when Advaith’s teacher found out about the fire, she found out which students were affected and gathered resources. The school psychologist offered to connect Advaith and his family to counselors. Other school staff collected toiletries. And Advaith’s teacher even met him in the park one day to play soccer and just talk.

When Sangeetha’s family had to look for a new place to live, her son was ​“afraid” he wouldn’t be able to continue at his school. Though her family has now relocated to a new place on Mix Avenue, she said that teachers at the school promised to figure out how to get Advaith enrolled at Shepherd Glen for his final year, regardless of what district or neighborhood they wound up in.

“Many people say ​‘my grandma came here’ or have histories with their schools. I have only these six years… I’m sentimentally attached” she said, speaking on behalf of many families at Shepherd Glen.

The mayor said in a separate conversation with the Independent that the town ​“It makes all the sense in the world to keep Shepherd Glen open if we could afford it and if the number of students wasn’t declining for us as a town.”

He added that the building needs a ​“like-new renovation,” which would cost $25 million to complete. He added that the Legislative Council originally approved funding for that renovation, but then rescinded the offer when the Hamden’s schools came up with 3R.

In his opinion, a new discussion needs to take place — and that should ​“include Shepherd Glen.”

In the meantime, he said his focus is to get everyone to ​“put our nose to the grindstone” and figure out how to keep Church Street ​“a successful elementary school with the addition of an active youth center.”