Christopher Peak Photo
Birks at kick-off: Welcome to a new school year!
Rallying her team two days before a new school year starts, Superintendent Carol Birks vowed Tuesday to have all 3rd-graders reading proficiently, all 10th-graders on track to graduate, and every other student meeting their growth targets.
The superintendent’s plan to get there: develop a plan by the end of the school year, specifically a strategic plan that’s “bold” and “comprehensive.”
Birks presented that plan to plan at Convocation 2019, the kick-off to her second school year as superintendent, held on Tuesday morning at Hillhouse High School’s Floyd Little Athletic Center.
“New Haven is the #1 school district in the state!” Birks said, asking for applause.
“We have to sound like this. We’ve got the press here; we’ve got it streaming on Vimeo and Facebook,” she said, asking the crowd to cheer even louder. “New Haven is the best school district in the state!
“Now we sound like we believe that.”
An Upbeat Launch
Attendees stand up and cheer at Tuesday’s convocation.
Nijija-Ife Waters: Thank you for coming back.
Compared to last year’s event, this year’s school-opening convocation was pared back. Teachers complained last year that they’d lost too much prep time, which they needed to arrange classrooms and meet colleagues. So Tuesday they stayed in their schools and watched the convocation on a live video feed.
But the speeches were just as upbeat, repeatedly echoing the district’s overarching philosophy —“Kids First!” — to put politics aside and let teachers do their jobs.
Over the course of two hours, an array of speakers including Mayor Toni Harp, Board of Education President Darnell Goldson, and City-Wide Parent Team President Nijija-Ife Waters pumped up school staff about the year ahead.
Justin Threet and his teacher Rose Murphy, at center.
“This year, some of our students will read their first words. Some will fall in love with a book for the first time. Some will play their first notes on an instrument they’ll pursue for the rest of their lives. Some will be another year closer to becoming fully bilingual,” said Rose Murphy, the district’s Teacher of the Year, who leads English classes at Hill Regional Career High School. “Some will experience the joy of playing on a team, of bringing home an ‘A,’ of pushing themselves to understand something new.”
Harriett Alfred and Danielle Storey riff on Barbara Streisand.
In between, High School in the Community’s band played a jazz rendition of Will Smith’s “Wild Wild West.” A family of five siblings sang the spiritual “Ride the Chariot” a cappella. A Cooperative Arts & Humanities student, Bradyn Pettway, shimmied and leaped across the floor to an instrumental version of “Stand By Me.” And two music teachers, Danielle Storey and Harriett Alfred, sang the “Funny Girl” show tune “People” with the lyrics rewritten for teachers.
Justin Threet, a senior at Career, read a poem asking his teachers to “be fair” and his fellow students to “step it up.”
Mayor Toni Harp and Superintendent Birks, on stage.
When it came her time to speak, Birks celebrated the successes over the last school year. She said the schools are lowering their chronic absenteeism rates while raising Smarter Balanced test scores and graduation rates.
She said that the district has expanded opportunities through academies for literacy, numeracy and social-emotional learning; an English Learner Fellows program for teachers pursuing a certification; and a lunch series for clerical staff in Central Office.
She said the district is also piloting a play-based curriculum for the early grades that experts say is more developmentally appropriate and network improvement communities for principals that can help schools learn from each other.
District officials clap along with the music.
What’s up next? Birks led a call and response with the audience with the answers projected on a screen.
“One?”
“New Haven!”
“One goal?”
“Student achievement!”
“The bottom line is student achievement,” Birks echoed. “Our children are looking to us to be role models, to be examples, to do what’s best for them, to be on our best behavior, to stand up and be counted, to be accountable, to ensure that they are successful. They only get one shot at this, and they are looking to us.”
She said she wants to see every students meet all their growth targets in math and reading, boost their attendance and make it to graduation.
That means, in elementary school, students should be developing social-emotional skills; in middle school, they should be working toward an individualized success plan and receiving wraparound services; and in high school, they should be exploring multiple pathways to prepare for life after graduation, whether training for a job or taking college courses.
“Developing Coherence”
New Haven’s goal is to protect the “instructional core.”
To get there, she said the district needs to do more planning.
Birks put up a multi-colored chart to explain the district’s goals for “developing coherence.”
At the center, she said, is the “instructional core,” which is surrounded by a “theory of change,” a middle layer of “strategy” and an outer layer of “culture,” “structure,” “systems,” “resources,” and “stakeholders,” all being pressed in by the “environment.”
She went on to say the district needs to improve its strategy for “continuous improvement” by getting better at analyzing data, teaching critical thinking, and implementing a rigorous and culturally relevant curriculum based on an audit whose results are still being finalized.
And: The district needs to revisit its “continuous improvement plan” and finalize a “strategic plan” that will align the budget to clear accountability measures; figure out how to assess math and reading skills and share the results with families; and develop a “multi-year plan” that will individualize learning for gifted and high-needs students and introduce more digital platforms for a “21st-century classroom.”
Finally, Birks said, the district needs to revisit New Haven’s portfolio model, the controversial strategy that’s based on the management style of treating schools like a diversified portfolio of stocks, doubling down on those making gains and replacing those showing losses.
“As a district, we say we’re a portfolio district. We’ve adopted a few elements. But as a team, we’re going to co-construct and co-create what that really means through our strategic planning process,” she said. “We can’t want people to have autonomy when it’s convenient. If we’re going to say ‘autonomy,’ we need to define it. If we want to hold principals and teachers and everyone accountable, we have to define what they’re accountable for and what is what we call ‘loose’ and ‘tight.’”
Birks ended by passing out postcards of lighthouses to every employee in the room, as a sign that they are beacons to their students.
“I want to thank you for your leadership, your drive, your passion and your love that you show our students every single day,” she said.
If the instructional core is at the center, then fund it adequately. Drop the consultants and hire more librarians, counselors, and paras. Fully fund Riverside. Stop with the corporate language and use plain language. Stop politicking and lead. Get your financial house in order.