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Kimber: Too many Latino appointments. Colon: “Ridiculous.”
Board members Ed Joyner and Darnell Goldson consult with security chief Thaddeus Reddish (center) about handling unruly meeting.
Rev. Boise Kimber knows how to fill a room — especially with political opponents he has riled up.
Wednesday night leading Latino politicians helped pack a Board of Education meeting to swing back at the controversial minister’s public suggestions that Hispanics are getting too many top jobs.
At Wednesday night’s Board of Education meeting, Hispanic leaders turned out in force, packing the cafeteria at Celentano Biotech, Health, and Medical Magnet School, to respond to comments that the controversial minister made at a sparsely attended meeting last month suggesting that too many top jobs go to Latinos.
At that meeting two weeks ago, Kimber said white parents and brown politicians had meddled in Superintendent Carol Birks’s administrative reorganization (keeping on three six-figure supervisors for bilingual programs in Central Office and a magnet resource coordinator at New Haven Academy), while black leaders had stayed silent about cuts and moves that affected their community.
“I want you all to take the politics out of moving people and deal with the real issue of education our children,” Kimber said. “The black community has not protested on not one move of anybody. We ain’t said nothing about you all having three [English Learner] directors. We said nothing about you all moving our people across town. But if you want to move one assistant principal, want to move one guidance counselor, everybody from the other communities are getting their kids to write letters. Let’s stop playing the game. Allow [Birks] to do her job.”
Alders Ron Hurt, Sal DeCola, Richard Furlow, Dave Reyes, Jose Crespo, and Evelyn Rodriguez gather at the back of the cafeteria.
At the most recent meeting Wednesday night, during a record-long public comment period — with nearly as many speeches as at meetings about school closures and teacher layoffs — Tamiko Jackson-McArthur, the board’s secretary, called off a roster of lawmakers, clergy, students and activists. The fiery speeches drowned out the alarms from her cell-phone timer, announcing the end of their three minutes.
It’s unclear what motivated the turnout. Were the speakers genuinely offended by Kimber’s comments? Were they protecting the supervisors who’ve been targeted as an unnecessary expense? Or were they simply flexing their organizing muscle before a new superintendent made further moves?
The event was surely political. (More alders showed up than at any school event in recent history.) But the speakers also made a powerful statement about their kids: As demographics have changed in New Haven, Latino students, particularly the 2,850 with limited English, can’t be ignored any longer.
DeStefano Era’s Over
Alder Dolores Colon: I’m looking out for Newhallville and Dixwell as much as Fair Haven and the Hill.
From the very start of public comment, State Rep. Juan Candelaria went after Rev. Kimber for trying to “attack and divide communities.” He argued that New Haven needs more faculty to teach students with limited English.
“In New Haven Public Schools, 45 percent are Latinos and almost 16 percent are English learners. That is why it is important — and justifiable — that we have the resources in place to provide supports districtwide, from central office to the classroom,” Candelaria said. “So, when someone stands here in front of this board and attacks Latino educators — our community — suggesting we have enough, it is simply ludicrous. It is an attempt to divide and conquer.”
Others were more pointed in their jabs at Rev. Kimber, calling him out for trying to bring back the tactics ex-Mayor John DeStefano used to keep a hold on City Hall for decades.
“To have Rev. Kimber come in here and say that the Hispanics have too many jobs is ridiculous,” said Hill Alder Dolores Colon, the chair of the Black and Hispanic Caucus. “We are trying to get jobs from Yale and the hospital for people from Dixwell, Dwight and Newhallville. We are not looking at color; we are fighting for jobs.
“We want to hire positions based on what this person can do for the students,” she went on. “If they’re looking for jobs in our city, we don’t want them to be held back by the color of their skin or their accent. We want them to be hired because they know how to do the job. I hope that Rev. Kimber remembers that. The days of using jobs as political clout, the days of DeStefano are over.”
The crowd whooped in loud applause. Someone shouted out, “Take that!”
(Kimber is African-American; Candelaria and Colon, Hispanic.)
More speakers continued to pile on. Even Varick Memorial AME Zion Church’s Rev. Kelcy Steele, who is African-American, sent in a letter. “Racism is not okay, full stop,” Rev. Abraham Hernandez, vice president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, read on his behalf.
Board members Ed Joyner and Darnell Goldson consult with security chief Thaddeus Reddish (center) about handling unruly meeting.
The one person who stood up for Kimber was Rodney Williams, a ward co-chair in Newhallville who owns a contracting business in Dixwell.
“To me, I just feel like this is going to create more friction in our community,” he said. “This fight back and forth, I don’t think you all know what you just did. This is going to make it worse, because [Kimber] isn’t somebody to back down and you all know that.” He added, “Let me tell you something, he did a lot of great things for a lot of black people.”
One or two people clapped.
Later, Maritza Baez, whose son graduated from Cortlandt V.R. Creed Health & Sports Science High School, said there is no reason to be “afraid of this man.”
Williams stood up to protest.
Darnell Goldson, the board’s president, called out their names, trying to defuse the situation. As their voices raised, Goldson pulled the plug and ordered a five-minute recess. During the break, Goldson asked security what he could do.
When public comment resumed, Baez apologized for her temper and Goldson apologized letting the discussion veer off course from kids’ education into personal attacks.
You Know Where To Find Me
Kimber: Was what I said really that bad?
Rev. Kimber wasn’t there to hear most of that.
More than a half-hour into the meeting, at 6:08 p.m., he burst through the cafeteria’s back doors, breathing heavily like he’d just finished a run. Even though he was late, Kimber had somehow managed to get his name on the sign-up sheet Jackson-McArthur had pulled when the meeting started.
During his three minutes, he pointed out that NHPS Advocates, a watchdog group of parents and teachers with white members as well as Latinos, had also questioned why the district needed three bilingual supervisors. He admitted he’d said the black community hadn’t complained about reshuffling principals, but he said he was asking a genuine question about the district’s spending.
Kimber said he felt attacked unfairly.
“No one has called me, no one has asked me anything, but they’ve come out like Pharisees in the night,” he said. “I have in my family grandkids that are Hispanic that I see every weekend. Nothing that I said was racist. I’ve sat at the table with you all on many occasions. If it was that bad, everybody knows where to find me, right there in Newhallville, where I fight for the rights of people every day.”
Someone screamed out, “Apologize!”
By then, most of the room had cleared out, with the alders at hearings back on Church Street. After close to two hours, public comment finished, and the board moved on to the rest of the agenda.
Numbers, Not Power
While many of the speeches aimed at Kimber, they did highlight a larger change in New Haven’s demographics. The percentage of New Haven’s public school students who identify as Hispanic or Latino has dramatically increased in recent years, making them the single largest demographic group in 2015.
As many black families leave for nearby suburbs — an exodus that’s resulted in nearly 2,000 fewer African-American students in New Haven than a decade ago — the arrival of brown families has made up that difference and more.
Today, there are almost 2,600 more Hispanic or Latino children in the city’s public schools than a decade ago. (Over the same time period, the number of whites increased by 470, and the number of Asians, the fastest growing demographic, shot up by 160.) If the racial demographics continue at current rates, Hispanic and Latino students will make up an outright majority by 2022.
Given those recent shifts, many Hispanic and Latino families feel like they’re not adequately represented among the city’s top decision-makers. That’s been especially noticeable in the school system, where there’s no comprehensive plan to reach students who are learning English.
As with many recent openings for top government positions (like New Haven’s police chief and Connecticut’s lieutenant governor), those tensions flared up around New Haven’s schools last year, during the chaotic search for a new superintendent.
To pick a replacement for former Superintendent Garth Harries, the outgoing school board members, mostly picked by DeStefano, initially consolidated around Orlando Ramos, a Spanish speaker of Puerto Rican descent who’d been a top administrator in Milwaukee Public Schools.
But after the unexpected death of one board member, their voting bloc was outnumbered by Mayor Toni Harp’s appointees. Ramos didn’t make it to the last round, even after two of the six semifinalists dropped out.
With the search narrowed down to three black finalists, the board’s factions split between the three who wanted Pamela Brown, the former superintendent in Buffalo, N.Y., who speaks Spanish, and the four who wanted Carol Birks, then the chief of staff in Hartford Public Schools, who doesn’t speak Spanish.
Just before the vote where Birks won out, several Latinos said they felt disenfranchised by an inability to communicate with administrators — an ongoing complaint for more than a decade. That night, one parent from Columbus Family Academy gave his remarks entirely in Spanish, then challenged the board members: “How does it feel for this board not to understand?”
Translation has since been added at Board of Education meetings, and Birks has hired a tutor to help her learn Spanish.
Are English Language Learners Learning?
Rep. Juan Candelaria: Equity for all means supports for those most in need.
Activism by Latino leaders has focused most intently on how to teach English to those who grow up in households where Spanish is the primary language. Within the city’s schools, there’s no unified approach, and measures of academic achievement have dragged.
Across New Haven’s elementary schools, English learners score dramatically worse on standardized tests than the district’s other students. Only 11.2 percent of the city’s English-language learners are scoring proficient in reading, and worse, only 8.8 percent are scoring proficient in math.
The effects of the achievement gap persist through high school, where they’re more likely to drop out. Two years ago, 70.9 percent of New Haven’s English-language learners graduated within four years, 10.5 points lower than the district’s other students.
At several schools, like Barnard Environmental Magnet School, Fair Haven School, Hill Central Music Academy, John S. Martinez Sea & Sky STEM School, and Quinnipiac Real World Math STEM School, significant numbers of English learners are starting to catch up.
But the district hasn’t yet articulated a plan to replicate those successes elsewhere. In fact, across New Haven’s schools, there’s currently no standard method for teaching English learners.
Depending on staffing and curriculum, schools vary widely in how much of their native language kids continue to learn in the early grades. Only three schools offer dual-language immersion programs, considered the gold standard, while some schools just have tutors that help out in English-only classes.
Last spring, Birks said she wants to “make sure that we are honoring students’ native languages,” but she said she’s still reviewing model programs in other states to figure out the district’s core curriculum.
Candelaria, who co-chaired a task force on improving instruction for English language learners, said the limited rollout of bilingual programs so far has defeated the point of New Haven’s portfolio of themed magnet schools. If only a handful can actually support students learning English, there’s no real choice for parents in the lottery.
“We know that bilingual services are not even across the district. We know that English leaners are pushed into mainstream classes,” he said. “What is the equity in that?”
I have a question for educators, administrators, coaches, etc in the New Haven school system; what solutions are there for communicating adequately with children and young adults who don't speak much English or any at all?
Any practical answers are appreciated (learn Spanish, have translators available, better "immersion" programs). It is a very real and troubling issue.