Paul Bass Photo
Bag the Escape? Put high school kids on the city bus?
Not so simple, in the view of Mayor Toni Harp.
Harp expressed skepticism about the two notions — cutting education costs by running fewer school buses and killing a planned new 30,000-square-foot teen drop-in center and homeless shelter called the Escape — during her latest appearance on WNHH FM’s “Mayor Monday” program.
Those two notions arose among some school board members and Independent reader-commenters over the past week during discussions about the proposed $547 million city operating budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1. The Board of Education is scrambling to find millions of dollars of cuts. And the Harp administration is seeking an 11 percent tax increase.
Officials originally said the Escape would open in 2016. Then it encountered unanticipated roof and electrical problems. City Youth Services Director Jason Bartlett testified at a budget hearing last Thursday that the Escape will indeed open this year — If the alders approve $50,000 in new bonding and release $200,000 in sequestered bonding money approved last year.
Alders expressed frustration at the delays and questioned whether the building will ever open. Commenters to an article on the hearing suggested ditching the project because of its high cost and because the city’s building a new home for the Dixwell Community “Q” House blocks away.
Harp rejected that idea on Monday’s program, saying that the two projects — the Escape and the Q House — will meet different needs.
“The Escape is really for older teenagers. It’s a drop-in place. It’s also going to be a place for homeless and runaway youth,” she said.
While the Q House will serve some older kids as well, it will focus on younger kids, she said. It will have a big gym and house the new Stetson Library Branch, a senior center, and a health clinic. It wouldn’t have room for the drop-in center or the social services organizations that will set up on site at the Escape to help troubled teens, Harp said.
The school bus question arose at last week’s meeting of the Board of Education Finance Committee. Members pushed school officials to find ways to cut the $25 million in annual spending on transporting kids to school by bus. Member Darnell Goldson suggested having high-schoolers ride CT Transit buses to school. Schools Chief Operating Officer Will Clark said he doubts that would save money because the same school buses transport kids from lower grades, as well.
Mayor Harp Monday added a second objection: the school system’s efforts to reduce chronic absenteeism.
“You really want kids to come to school. If you make it harder for kids to come to school, you may lose the attendance we’re working so hard to get,” she said.
She called the bus question “very complicated. We have so many magnet schools. We are bringing kids from all over the region to come to school here in New Haven. We are required by state law to find a way for them to get to school.” An estimated 750 of the 4,883 high-schoolers signed up to ride school buses hail from the suburbs.
Click here to read about a 2016 proposal by former schools finance chief Victor De La Paz to cut $1.5 million a year in school bus costs. (The idea was not approved.)
Click on or download the above audio file or the Facebook Live video below for the full episode of WNHH FM’s “Mayor Monday” program.
This episode of “Mayor Monday” was made possible with the support of Gateway Community College and Berchem Moses P.C.
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