Melinda Tuhus Photo
A local NAACP member wanted to know how to get parents more involved in New Haven’s school reform drive. Responded Schools Superintendent Reggie Mayo: It’s a constant struggle.
The Rev. Harold Brooks (pictured) asked his question after Mayo made a half-hour presentation Thursday night to the NAACP’s monthly meeting at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on Whalley Avenue about the city’s ambitious school reform plan.
Brooks asked how Mayo plans to get parents “involved and invested” in school reform and their own children’s education. Mayo joked that if he knew the answer, “I’d be going around the country making a lot more money than I make.” He said it’s a constant struggle, with some schools having more success than others.
“We’re trying to work with parents to work with parents,” he said. Come April, parents will be going out into the neighborhoods teamed up with college students “facing parents one on one, saying, ‘Come on. We need you — PTA meeting tonight.’” He said he hopes that will bring more parents into active participation.
Mayo noted that a new state law requires lowest-performing schools to establish new councils including teachers, parents and, at the high-school level, students. “After three years, that group can have a say in whether a school would be reconstituted — throwing everybody out and putting a new principal in.” (The councils are advisory only.)
After the meeting, Brooks said he was satisfied with Mayo’s response. “I’m also concerned about the overall reaching out to the community,” he said. “Because if education is the civil rights issue for folks in our community, then folks have to be aware of that and be pro-active because you can be involved to a certain degree but you need to be more pro-active in terms of setting the stage and moving beyond” the status quo.
Plumbers
Mayo anticipated another question from the audience at the beginning of his talk when he alluded to the Yale- and Community Foundation-funded New Haven Promise program, which will provide scholarships to state schools for high school graduates meeting certain academic, attendance and behavioral standards.
“When I say anything about college, people usually look at me and say, ‘Mayo, everyone is not going to college; what are you going to do about the other kids?’ My thing is, whether a kid goes to college or not, we ought to be able to prepare a kid if they so choose to go to college.”
Darryl Hugley (pictured) asked what’s in the Promise for those kids who don’t want to go to college, who may want to pursue public service or one of the trades.
“We have a small program with some of the service industry, some of the public safety pieces where kids can become emergency medical technicians,” Mayo said. “Gary Tinney [leader of the African American firefighters’ organization and an NAACP member] wants to start a program for our kids to become firemen and policemen. So I don’t mind setting up a couple courses for kids. They still have to know how to read at the 12th grade level, and write, and do some math.”
The Promise program does not target money for entering those careers, an issue that’s been raised before.
“I think there should be options for particularly urban dwellers of color in all sectors of society,” Brooks said. “If we’re going to compete in a global market we have to focus on higher learning, so I think that’s what we should be doing, but there’s a small sector that are better with their hands, so I think we should provide something for them as far as trade schools. It would not be a bad component to add.”
We do not have a plumbing gap in New Haven. We have an achievement gap. The Promise is about increasing 4-year college matriculation among our low income largely minority population.
We shouldn't expect the Promise program to be all things to all people. And if New Haven school reform is successful and we have flipped the ratio of college grads to non-college grads from 20/80 to 80/20 - it will be great news to all area plumbers, electricians, contractors, waiters, taxi drivers, etc.