As Principal Peggy Moore clashed with a school board member over progress at New Haven’s largest high school, an outspoken student’s mom stepped up to claim “retaliation” at the principal’s hand.
The debate took place at Tuesday’s Board of Education meeting at 54 Meadow St. Click on the play arrow for a sample of the evening’s fireworks.
After public outcry over her dismantling of the student council this fall and shutting down an outspoken student’s politics club at Wilbur Cross High School, Moore made an agreement with the superintendent to come before the school board and present her case for how the school is improving. She just began her second year running the school. Controversies during her tenure have raised the question of whether democracy and free speech are tolerated amid an ambitious school reform drive in New Haven — and to what extent independent feedback is welcomed from students, parents, and outside observers.
Moore’s remarks Tuesday night met a skeptical response from one board member, Alex Johnston, who cited a large “disconnect” between the picture presented by the administration and the one painted by other people who have complained about the school. He called Moore’s version of reality at Cross “unlikely.” Moore dismissed criticisms of the school as “gossip” from people who never walk the halls.
After Moore’s presentation, Benita Lee stepped forward to share what she described as the next in a series of incidents where her son was punished for speaking up at school.
Lee took the mic in a public input session of the board. She’s the mother of Isaiah Lee, a Cross senior who has been the most outspoken critic of the school’s administration. Isaiah Lee saw his political action club disbanded after he led a march to City Hall demanding more textbooks and less money on administrators. After Lee won the student council election as president, Moore nullified the results, then disbanded the entire student council over the summer without students’ knowledge.
Benita Lee went public for the first time Tuesday about her son’s treatment at the school. She said she doesn’t have a problem with the new structure of the student council, but she took issue with the “motivation” for why the original group was dismantled.
“It basically was to squash freedom of speech,” Lee charged. Administrators didn’t like what certain kids were saying, and “they didn’t want certain students in charge, bottom line.”
Lee brought up another incident, which she called “retaliation.” She said her son was among a group of students collecting signatures of protest against the school administration. After he was spotted approaching parents with a petition, he suffered the consequence, Lee said.
Melissa Bailey Photo
Lee (pictured) said her son has led a Best Buddies club for over a year, connecting handicapped students to non-handicapped peers. The cause is close to home because Isaiah has a handicapped sibling. He was scheduled to hold an event at the school two Fridays ago. On Thursday at 3 p.m., on the day before the event, he learned his event would be canceled because he “didn’t follow protocol,” Lee said.
She said because her son spoke out, “now all of a sudden, his program’s canceled.”
“That’s like retaliation. I feel like it’s almost like bullying.”
Lee called on the school to let students exercise the right to free speech. Student and adults can collaborate, she said, but “we can’t work together if it’s ‘my way or the highway.’”
After the meeting, Moore ignored a reporter’s repeated requests for comment, avoided eye contact and ducked into an elevator. Superintendent Reggie Mayo declined to respond to Lee’s remarks.
In her presentation before the board, Moore indicated that any dissatisfaction in how the school is being run stems from an unwillingness to change on the part of other people at Cross.
“Change is difficult,” she said.
The school has been marked a Tier III school as part of the city’s school reform effort. That’s the lowest rank, indicative of a failing school.
Moore Thursday dismissed that rank, which she said is based on Connecticut Academic Performance Tests, not on all the good things allegedly going on inside the building.
Moore and her seven assistant principals (pictured) shared a few reasons they believe the school is doing well.
For example, she said, attendance is up from 82 percent last year to 92 percent.
The number of out-of-school suspensions fell from 29 at this point last year to 13. That’s partly because the school, like Hillhouse High, is shifting to using more in-school suspensions, and redirecting kids to a “refocus room” instead of sending them home.
Thanks in part to a new credit retrieval program that lets kids catch up with missed coursework by taking online classes, Cross graduated 392 students last year — a record number, according to Moore.
After restructuring the schedule over the summer, the school is now offering 925 hours of instruction instead of 903. And a new student advisory period, one of the requirements of a School Improvement Grant issued by the federal government one year ago, aims to build stronger relationships between students and adults.
Moore has focused on expanding the number of students taking Advanced Placement courses. The goal is to have each student take at least one AP class. So far, the number of kids who’ve taken an AP class has grown from 139 in 2007 to 174 this year.
Moore also defended her choice to revamp the student council. Click on the play arrow to watch her and Lee’s remarks on the subject.
Moore also announced she has begun a “principal’s roundtable” on Saturday mornings, where all parents are welcome to show up at the school.
“[It] has been said, parents are not welcome at Wilbur Cross. That’s far from the truth,” Moore said.
“Cross is a building in transformation,” Moore concluded. “We want you to know that Cross is changing. We are a good school on the road to being the best.”
Copies of the presentation were not made available to the public.
Johnston: “Unlikely” Story
Board member Alex Johnston raised concerns about the presentation.
“There is clearly a big disconnect between how you perceive what’s going on at Wilbur Cross and how some members of that community and people at large in New Haven perceive it,” he said.
“Maybe folks are wrong who are criticizing what is going on. Maybe they don’t understand what’s going on. That seems unlikely to me, given the range of folks who contacted me and others with concerns.”
“Are there lessons that you would draw about your own leadership, or about how the school is conducting its business?” Johnston asked.
“If progress is actually taking place, why is it that so many people are unhappy?”
Principal Moore dismissed the concerns as “gossip.” She claimed that none of the complainants have actually been to the school.
“You tell me how many of those people have been in my school,” she said. “None of them have. It’s gossip.”
Click on the play arrow at the top of the story to watch their exchange.
Johnston said he’s willing to believe Cross is making progress, but he said the format of the presentation failed to make clear how Cross is improving along the metrics outlined by the city’s reform drive.
High schools are being judged on whether kids are on track to graduate, as well as school climate and growth on the CAPT. Using this system, Cross was ranked last year in the bottom category, with less than 50 percent of students on track to graduate in four years.
“When I hear you chafe against being a Tier III school, it gets me a little riled up,” Johnston told Moore. “That’s the framework we agreed on,” with input from teachers and administrators. (Moore is president of the administrators’ union.)
Johnston reissued a call for schools to stick to metrics by which the district is judging schools, rather than narratives with anecdotes highlighting one program or another. He asked that schools come to the board with a “common format” that would make clear how they’re doing on the metrics by which the district is measuring success.
Mayor John DeStefano sought to defuse the confrontation.
“I feel that we’re having this presentation because of a couple of letters” of complaint, comments posted online, and news articles, the mayor said.
Instead of focusing on Cross, he urged the board to take a step back and take another look at where all the city’s high schools stand on the metrics the district decided to judge them by. Then, he said, Cross should return to the board and continue the conversation.
Carlos Torre, the president of the board, didn’t take a stance on whether Cross is indeed performing, but he said the school needs to address a perception that things are not going well. “Perception is often stronger than reality,” he said.
“If Wilbur Cross has a problem with perception, then Reggie Mayo has a problem with perception, and we as a board have a problem with perception.”
Negative perception can “bring down” a good program, Torre noted.
After a heady, public discussion before a crowd, Superintendent Mayo (pictured) offered his staff encouragement. He commended Moore and her staff for doing “a great job” at the school, and for its plans on how to tackle areas of weakness.
“I’ve seen a major change at Wilbur Cross this year,” Mayo said. “I hope we don’t send a message that we’re being critical.” The message, instead, is, “what we can do to support.”
Rev. Boise Kimber (pictured) also stepped in to support Moore. “I don’t believe there is enough people expressing dissatisfaction” with the school, he said. He said he was skeptical about “this disconnect — who is the problem coming from?” He said in 25 years, he has never seen a principal “called down” to defend herself before the school board. He suggested the conversation better take place in private.
As the board closed its proceedings, Johnston thanked Moore for her appearance, and offered these parting words: “Excellence is the sum of the difficult conversations we have.”