Panel grills ed board VP on lack of live meetings

NEW HAVEN — The days of a free pass to school board members up for reappointment are over — replaced, in BOE Vice President Matt Wilcox’s case, by a barrage of questions about why the board doesn’t meet in person or at least hold hybrid meetings, and what it can do to be more responsive and give more input to parents.

Members of the Board of Alders’ Aldermanic Affairs Committee, at an inperson meeting that also was livestreamed, grilled Wilcox, director of Quinnipiac University’s Edward and Barbara Netter Library, extensively, keeping him on the firing line for just over 30 minutes.

Ultimately, the committee voted to recommend that the full Board of Alders — which also holds livestreamed, in-person meetings — approve Wilcox for a second three-year term.

The backdrop for many members’ questions was the local school system’s poor reading scores and rate of chronic absenteeism.

Last year, 58.1 percent of the city’s 19,420 students were deemed chronically absent, meaning they missed 10 percent or more of the school year. It was the highest percentage listed statewide in 2021-22.

Committee members peppered Wilcox with pointed questions.

“Why are you denying parent representation to the board?” asked committee Chairwoman Alder Rosa Ferraro Santana, D-13, who represents the Fair Haven Heights section.

Wilcox, who lives in Westville, responded that “we do allow up to 1-1/2 hours of public comment at every meeting” and that had has “had a lot of representation” at meetings via Zoom.

He explained that many people wish the board met in person, but many also are glad it meets remotely, and “a lot of board members have health issues or family members who have health issues” and might not be able to attend meetings if they weren’t remote.

“Why can’t you meet in person?” Santana pressed.

“We could meet in person,” Wilcox responded. “I understand that that’s feasible to do.” But he said his understanding is that “some board members” have ill family members “where it would be detrimental for them to be there in person.”

“The next people who come up” for reappointment “I can tell you that if they” don’t have good attendance, “they will not be reappointed,” Santana said.

Hill Alder Kampton Singh, D-5, told Wilcox that “hybrid gives people a better opportunity” to represent themselves. “They should have that opportunity.”

Downtown and Yalearea Alder Alex Guzhnay, D-1, pointed out that when Wilcox first was appointed three years ago, he talked about increasing transparency and encouraging greater participation.

Right now, the board is involved in a search for a new superintendent, he said. “Hopefully, the board has listed and learned something” since its last few superintendent searches, Guzhnay said.

He also asked, “How can the board take that stuff further, beyond Zoom meetings? ... I’d like to see some progress on that.”

Singh wanted to know whether community input the board says it will solicit during the search for a replacement for retiring Superintendent of Schools Illine Tracey “means having parents on the search committee?”

Wilcox responded that “in the end, according to the City Charter, the board is the committee that will have to choose.”

But “nobody I know on the board wants to repeat” the process that it went through the last time, when it chose a successor to former Superintendent Carol Birks after deciding to buy out eight months of about 17 months remaining on her contract for between $150,000 and $200,000.

“It didn’t work for us,” Wilcox said.

Democratic mayoral challengers Tom Goldenberg and Shafiq Abdussabur both testified in the public hearing that preceded the vote.

Goldenberg, in a press release issued before the meeting, called on the Aldermanic Affairs Committee to delay or deny reappointments of any Board of Education members, including Wilcox, until the BOE meets three conditions.

The board should present data on in-school drivers of low reading scores and the city’s last-place finish among all Connecticut cities and towns on chronic absenteeism, make a commitment to an open superintendent selection process that includes community members and teachers on the search committee, and show a willingness to host Board of Education meetings in person so “the community’s faith in the Board’s transparency and accountability can be restored,” he said.

“This committee now needs to use its power and voice to demand necessary change from the Board of Education,” Goldenberg said.

Abdussabur, a former Beaver Hills alder, said the New Haven Public Schools system has to do a better job of teaching city students. He wondered aloud, “Could Matt Wilcox have changed that all by himself ? Could the board have changed that all by itself ?”

But he disagreed with Goldenberg in that he favored Wilcox’s reappointment, saying, “We can’t afford to take resources away from the board at this time.” Abdussabur concurred with Goldenberg, however, that the BOE should hold in-person or hybrid meetings rather than just online Zoom meetings.