Aliyya Swaby Photo
Harries, Clark, Joyner at the committee meeting.
Board of Education members plan to recommend the district nix a plan to delay bus pick-up times but pursue a different new budgeting idea, to request tuition from suburban districts with students attending local magnet schools.
Those were among many proposals debated at a five-hour budget school board planning session, the penultimate before the board has to vote on a final budget this coming Monday.
Darnell Goldson and Michael Nast, heads of the school board’s Operations and Finance Committee, which held the meeting, led other board members, district officials, school leaders and many curious members of the public through a thorough discussion of the district budget proposal summary, which lists various potential cuts, sources of revenue and investments for the upcoming fiscal year.
Chief Financial Officer Victor De La Paz had proposed 11 ideas for saving money in order from “less painful” to “most painful.” He also proposed four ideas for investing those savings, including redesigning alternative schools and continuing the Saturday Academy for reading and math.
Goldson informally polled members on their opinions about which items to recommend the full board approve next Monday and which to disregard. Five members were present at the meeting: Goldson, Nast, Ed Joyner, Carlos Torre and Daisy Gonzalez.
No Later Buses
De La Paz, Harries.
New Haven schools are divided into three tiers for bus transportation, with Tier I schools starting the earliest and Tier III starting the latest. De La Paz proposed a controversial money-saving measure to push Tier III schools’ start times 20 minutes later, to begin at 9:35 a.m., in order to reuse buses from Tier I. It would save about $1.2 million.
Tier III school Mauro/Sheridan parents signed a petition asking district officials not to change the school start time. “A 9:35 start time means that parents will have trouble balancing getting their children to school and working jobs. In a world where most families have two working parents, or have single parents, a later start time will mean that there will be a need for before-school programming,” the petition reads.
Monday, at the board committee meeting, De La Paz and district Chief Operating Officer Will Clark proposed a revised version of the time change that would slide Tier I and Tier II schools’ start times 10 minutes earlier, to 7:20 a.m. and 8:25 a.m. respectively. And it would slide Tier III school start times 10 minutes later to 9:25 a.m.
The change would have a “smaller increment of impact” and a larger percentage of schools impacted, Harries said.
Board member Daisy Gonzalez, who phone in to the meeting Monday, said she still is not on board with the change: “I think it’s going to affect to many families.”
Some districts are changing start times to give high school students more time to sleep in the morning and accommodate elementary school students’ earlier wake-up times, Nast said. “We don’t have time to do that.”
Celentano Principal Keisha Hannans said earlier start times at Tier I and II schools could increase lateness and absences among those students.
Board members agreed they did not have enough information to recommend the rest of the board approve the plan next Monday.
Get That Tuition
Board members warmed up to the idea of charging suburban districts for sending their K‑12 students to New Haven public schools. The district would request tuition at a rate of $750 per student next year, then double to $1,500 per student the year after and triple to $2,250 after three years. The tuition would bring in about $1.5 million next fiscal year, De La Paz said. It would save a total of about $1.5 million and requires the approval of the education commissioner.
The district gets per-pupil funds from the state at about $7,000 for suburban students and $3,000 for local students who enroll in magnet schools by Oct. 1.
It pays about $4,500 per pupil in tuition to send students to public magnet school ACES Educational Center for the Arts, and about $4,800 to send students to Wintergreen Interdistrict Magnet School in Hamden, De La Paz said.
The New Haven Public Schools do not pay or receive money from other districts for the Open Choice program, outside of paying districts giving special education services to New Haven students, said Typhanie Jackson, district student services director.
Board member Michael Nast expressed concern at losing good relationships with Hamden and West Haven, the districts sending the most students to New Haven magnet schools. “They’ll need to come up with a lot of money,” he said.
“That mirrors our issue,” Goldson said. “Hamden can take their kids back and then have to pay to educate them.”
As reported by Mark Zaretsky in the New Haven Register, West Haven Superintendent Neil Cavallaro said his district could not afford to educate the 1,000 West Haven students who attend New Haven magnet schools.
Hamden Superintendent Jody Goeler said in the article that his district would have to cut resources for its schools if it were forced to pay $420,000 in tuition to New Haven.
State statute disallows districts from preventing students from attending magnet schools in other districts, said state Department of Education spokesperson Abbe Smith in the Register article.
In the worst-case scenario, districts would refuse to pay the tuition, De La Paz said Monday at the finance committee meeting. “The only recourse for us is to dis-enroll the student.”
During the school year? Goldson asked. Harries shook his head no.
“That would be your choice,” De La Paz said. He advised sending districts the number of students accepted into New Haven magnet schools in the lottery process this spring and talking with them further.
“If we bring the districts to the table and say, ‘How much should we charge you?’ the answer would be zero,” De La Paz said. The $2,250 ask is “less than half of what we’re paying when we pay tuition to ACES.”
Nast said he worries about losing the $36 million the district receives from the state through the magnet program if suburban enrollment numbers dip.
Goldson and Torre said that they want to collaborate with other districts also hurting for money with state budget cuts looming. They should try to “figure out how to do it where it hurts the least,” Goldson said.
All five members at the committee said they would move forward with the proposal, given the addendum encouraging collaboration with other districts.
Off The List
Members also proposed a few items not on the list, including cutting two principals from Hillhouse High School, which has been a major site of controversy within the district over the past several months. Many of the school’s teachers and students have spoken out against its structure, a divided system of four (soon to be three) academies, each with its own principal.
At a Board of Alders hearing in March, board members Goldson and Joyner called for the school to have just one principal, not three. They argue that the school needs one leader in charge. Advocates of the academy system argue that it gives students at a large school more attention, and that each academy needs a principal as a leader. In response to the criticism, one of the three principals, Zakiyyah Baker, was made the “coordinating” principal.
Goldson and Joyner are sticking to that demand as they plan the budget for the upcoming year. The move, Goldson said, could cut at least two administrator salaries from the school.
New Haven is also paying 75 percent of the salary of a district official through the Broad Residency, a leadership development program that matches participants to full-time positions in urban education for two years. Siddhartha Chowdri is finishing his second year school finance resident through the program.
“Central office is short-staffed in many ways,” Harries said, acknowledging that many people would not agree with that statement. Chowdri currently makes about $90,000, three-quarters of which New Haven district funds.
De La Paz came to education policy through the Broad residency.
Goldson also asked members to consider not investing next year in the Achievement First residency program for school leadership, which allows teachers another pathway to an administrator position. That could save the district about $130,000.