Erik Good teared up at the end of his speech to the graduating class of 2015 — which he delivered days after the district suddenly removed him and two other administrators from their positions at High School in the Community.
“The arc of the moral universe is long and it bends towards justice,” he said, quoting Martin Luther King Jr. to the senior class. “Everyone here knows who’s been through one of these ceremonies before that sometimes you’re going to fall. Sometimes there’s going to be conflict. Sometimes there’s gonna be problems … Move forward well.”
Good clarified the theme of his speech in an interview after the ceremony at Wooster Square Park this past Thursday evening.
“The feeling was there in the speech. Nobody wants conflict,” he said, but disruption can often help “to make things better. I’m not arrogant enough to believe everything falls apart because I’m not there.”
After three years of a state-funded experiment overseen by the school district and run by the teachers union, HSC is losing its three top leaders—“Building Leader” (aka principal) Good, and Assistant Building Leaders (aka assistant principals) Cameo Thorne and Paulette Jackson. And it may lose its historic system of having teachers make major decisions by consensus.
Superintendent Garth Harries and New Haven Federation of Teachers (NHFT) President Dave Cicarella decided to open the positions to teachers throughout the city, instead of continuing the school’s decades-long tradition of hiring from within the school. Since the school’s founding in 1970, HSC’s teachers have chosen their leaders through consensus. Cicarella and Harries argue that leaders should be chosen from a larger pool of candidates, teachers from throughout the system.
Cicarella said he would like to see HSC continue to be teacher-run. Harries said that is not guaranteed; nor is the union’s management of HSC.
Good criticized the decision being made to remove the building’s leaders without consensus among teachers.
“I think this decision, while foreshadowed in some ways, came out of nowhere,” and not after a conversation, he said. “Group decisions are the best way to go.”
A tone of unease underlay the mood at Thursday’s graduation, with the graduating seniors knowing they could return for a visit and find their school completely changed.
Has this school undergone major changes before? Chris Kafoglis, school culture leader, asked from the podium at the beginning of the ceremony. The crowd shouted back: Yes!
“Is it going to change again?” he asked. “Yeah!” the crowd responded, with one student voice ringing out, “Sadly!”
Three years ago, HSC obtained a state “Commissioner’s Network” grant — $1.5 million a year for three years — to experiment with new models as a “turnaround school.” The union was put in charge and the school adopted “mastery learning,” meaning students advanced to a new grade when they completed the necessary work for their level, not at a specific point at the end of the academic year.
Over the years, data showed that graduation rates and college enrollment were going down and absences were going up. The year after the turnaround, none of 44 freshman made it to sophomore year.
This year, 33 HSC students crossed the podium and received their diplomas from their teachers and administrators. “We had six or seven kids in this graduating class we were not sure about six weeks ago. But they graduated, including two who we thought there was absolutely no way it was going to happen,” Good said. He stressed that teachers continued to hold students to the elevated standards, instead of lowering the bar to their level.
This year’s valedictorian, Alif Al Biruni, credited HSC’s unique structure with allowing him to set his own goals academically and socially. He excelled in mastery-based learning and worked on “learning to communicate more effectively with people,” after a childhood marked by basic muteness and a speaking disability.
His mother (pictured above left), who declined to give her name, said she would miss the access her son had to his “very dedicated” teachers, who showed up for weekend breakfast help sessions. “Different principals sometimes have different cultures, or policies or atmospheres,” she said. Her son gets bored easily, so mastery-based learning works well for him.
She said she hopes the district will consider hiring from within for the three empty positions, so the students left will continue to benefit.
Teachers and staff expressed similar worries that the structural changes would lead to a deterioration of the school’s community-based culture.
Part-time Spanish teacher Jill Savitt (pictured above right) — who has been at HSC for more than 30 years — said she was “concerned that people will come into leadership positions without having any experience in the school … It feels like an attempt to change the culture.”
Magnet coordinator Cari Strand said it is a “loss to not have that opportunity” to vote for the school’s leaders, “because I think it held us accountable to each other in a way that people are not part of the system cannot understand.”
But she said the “school commitment to mastery-based learning goes beyond any one of us,” and that she is not worried it will change after the administrators’ departure. Despite the decreases in graduation rates and college enrollment, the turnaround made students more willing to “take risks” and take advantage of new opportunities, instead of doing the minimum.
“Students understand what skills they are working on and how it fits into the curriculum,” instead of focusing on grades, Strand said.
Good, too, graduated this year, receiving principal certification from the University of Connecticut. He said he doesn’t know where he will be next year. Cicarella said the removed administrators will be able to take positions at other schools in the district.
But Good said he learned the most from HSC’s “sense of community” and from the “willingness of students, teachers and parents to work together” to achieve. “I will miss that more than anything.”
Previous Independent stories on High School in the Community’s experiment:
• Heads Roll At HSC
• Zero Out Of 44 Students Complete Freshman Year
• Solanlly’s Tale Sways UConn
• “I Sat Down & I Grew Up”
• Jury Sentences Jayla To Her Own Punishment
• Teachers Clash With Union Prez Over Turnaround
• 91 – 39 Blowout Comes With A Lesson For Victors
• New Haven Rallies For Solanlly & Chastity
• Social Promotion Vow Put To The Test
• HSC Heads To Capitol For New Diplomas
• She Awoke To A New Life — & A New Mission
• High School Of The Future Debuts, Briefly
• Gay-Rights Teach-In Goes Off-Script
• Nikita Makes It Home
• 15 Seniors Head To College Early
• No More “B And A Smile”
• Students Protest: “Give Us Homework!”
• Meadow Street Clamps Down On Turnaround
• School Votes For Hats; District Brass Balks
• Students Invoke Free Speech In Great Hat Debate
• Guv: End Social Promotion
• History Class Hits The Streets
• “Misfit Josh” & Alex Get A 2nd Chance
• Guess Who’s Assigning The Homework Now
• On Day 1, HSC Students Enter A New World
• Frank Reports Detail Experiment’s Ups & Downs
• School Ditches Factory “Assembly Line”
• State “Invites” HSC To Commissioner’s Network
• Teachers Union Will Run New “Turnaround”