New Haven schools need to clean house

While quality educational opportunities in New Haven continue on a steep decline, the emperor, oh sorry, I mean Mayor Justin Elicker, the Board of Education and the Board of Alders continue to play their fiddles like everything is OK. It is time to clean house and add new leadership.

There are many markers pointing to an educational state of emergency. It is worth taking a moment to repeat the various challenges that I last wrote about. Learning is at an all-time low, we have recorded the lowest achievement scores in the history of our school system. Putting it plainly, our kids are not learning the ABCs of education — reading, writing and arithmetic. Teachers are leaving the system in droves. Student order has all but disappeared in many of our schools. The federal and state money we received during the pandemic will soon be drying up, leading us towards a deficit cliff.

Now — if it is even possible — things have gotten worse. We recently have received even more damning reports about our school system. The teacher drain has not slowed; it is reported that more than 180 teacher vacancies exist, even after the Board of Education negotiated a historic contract with the teacher’s union which raises salaries by 15 percent over 3 years. And we cannot even find enough substitutes to cover these vacancies, leaving the leadership to now recruit recent high school graduates to teach in our system.

Student suspension rates are at an all-time high. One school even reported nearly 65 percent of its students were suspended over the first marking period. Worse yet, those suspensions are happening while we have extraordinarily high student absenteeism. Over 60 percent of our schools are recording student chronic absentee rates of more than one in three students regularly absent. Kids are not showing up or leaving early because they see how much of a waste of time it is to do so.

While the state and federal money is slowly drying up, leading the leadership of the school system to report a projected $4.5 million deficit, they and the BOE are still spending like drunken sailors. At their last meeting, they approved an amendment to a contract with a Hartford law firm to provide legal services. The original contract was for $80,000 for the year. The contract ballooned to over half a million dollars, without any warning. One board member, Darnell Goldson, asked for the contract approval to be held back for two weeks so that the board could receive additional information about the increase. Instead, the full board approved the increase over the dissent from Goldson and student member Dave John Cruz-Bustamante.

The chair of the Finance Committee and vice president of the board, Matthew Wilcox, led the charge to approve the increase. That is the same Wilcox who is now up for reappointment to the BOE. The same person who has voted not to add a hybrid component to the BOE meetings to allow more people to attend. The same person who has voted not to expand the school superintendent search team past the seven school board members (four appointed by the mayor and the mayor himself ) and to keep the search process secret. The same person who has consistently voted to keep the BOE shenanigans secret, including why a contract increased by nearly 650 percent. At the hearing mayoral candidate Tom Goldenberg suggested to the alders that they not approve reappointing Wilcox until the specific concerns related to absenteeism, inperson or hybrid meetings, and stakeholder and parents’ inclusion in the superintendent search are met.

I agree with Goldenberg. But I would add more requirements to this or any other approvals. Many have stated that other than Elicker there are not any parents of New Haven students on the board. In fact, Elicker actually booted two parents, one being the only Black woman, Dr. Tamiko Jackson MacArthur, and replaced her with an Elicker sycophant. Since then, the voices of opposition and reason have been reduced to one lonely voice, Goldson, who cannot even get a second to a motion. Though I am not completely convinced that a parent on the board will make a difference, with the state of affairs as they are now, the “experts” do not seem to be making a difference. Wilcox is genuinely a nice guy, but he seems to fall on the wrong side of the important issues.

It is time for the alders, and the voting public, to take education seriously since Elicker and his appointed BOE members do not seem to want to do so. I say drop Wilcox and appoint a Black woman parent. Better yet, clean house entirely. Let a new superintendent start with a new Board Education. What can it hurt?