New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Schools approve 1st teacher sabbatical in many years
NEW HAVEN — It’s been so long since the New Haven Public School system awarded a teacher a sabbatical leave, school board members were uncertain of the process.
Still, after extensive questioning, Carolyn Streets, a seventh-grade language arts teacher at Engineering & Science University Magnet School, was granted permission to spend six months to study how literacy is taught in Finland.
While there, the city school district will continue to pay a portion of her salary as well as pay the substitute teacher who will be in charge of Streets’ classes back home. In total, the tab will come to an estimated $84,000, according to Lisa Mack, the district’s human resources director.
Getting to the price tag, and process for approving the sabbatical request, came during the school board’s online meeting Monday.
Superintendent of Schools Iline Tracey told the board that, unlike a leave of absence, a sabbatical requires board approval because there is cost involved.
“We believe it is a worthy cause to support her in this,” Tracey said.
The Fulbright Distinguished Awards in Teaching award Streets will go on is one of two Fulbrights she received. The other was to serve as a curriculum specialist at a developing school in India.
Tracey said being awarded a Fulbright is not a small thing.
The approval process is written into the teacher’s contract. No more than one percent of the bargaining unit can be granted a sabbatical leave at a time. Applicants must be with the district at least six years, stay with the district at least one year after returning and provide a written report of the experience upon their return.
The request is reviewed by a committee of union members and administrators. The committee recommendation to grant the sabbatical must be unanimous for it to go to the superintendent and then board.
“I do not recall one in my 15 years as NHFT president,” said David Cicarella, president of the teacher’s union. “Long overdue, as we have had several worthy of consideration and subsequent approval over the years.
The vote to approve the sabbatical was 6-0 with one abstention.
Board member Darnell Goldson said while he fully supported the sabbatical, he questioned the idea that the board would approve it without considering the cost.
“We are always crying broke,” Goldson said. “We haven’t managed to find money to pay our paraprofessionals (a living wage) yet but we are … paying a teacher to go to Finland.”
Goldson added that though the district “may be swimming in money right now” with the infusion of federal COVID relief funds, “we won’t be in a couple of years.”
Board member Dr. Tamiko JacksonMcArthur also questioned the lack of information provided to the board. She was told the lack of specificity was because the process is used so rarely.
Board members Edward Joyner, Matthew Wilcox and Larry Conaway all said they fully supported the request.
“I’ve known her since she was a kid,” Joyner said. “She is a phenomenal teacher who does not watch the clock.”
“This is not an internship or scholarship but is a rigorous international exchange and professional development program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs,” Streets said in an email after the board vote.
Streets is one of three teachers selected from the Connecticut cohort and the only one from a large, urban public school district.
In her letter to the board, Streets said she chose Finland because its educational system is a world leader in literacy. She intends to examine the relationship between students’ reading achievement and how academic language is taught. She also will research methods Finnish teachers of English use while teaching academic vocabulary.
Streets called it a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“My overall goal is to examine (and) develop programs/resources for best practices that conceptually align with student growth model frameworks and confirm the fundamental goal of education that all students can succeed,” Streets said.
She said she will return to New Haven Public Schools with a renewed sense of energy, sense of self-accomplishment and indispensable research which will be available to her school and the district.
Streets has been with the district for 20 years. In 2018, she was the first New Haven Public Schools teacher to win the Yale School of Management Lynn Hall Teacher Action Research Prize. Her research proved with statistical confidence that her way of teaching had a significant effect on raising student literacy skills.