Earlier this week, the New Haven Board of Education announced three finalists in its search for a new Superintendent, one of the most consequential roles in local government.
The Board has a long and unfortunate history of hiring at all levels based on the trading of favors between adults, rather than objective standards of professional experience and performance delivering outcomes for kids. The children and families of our beloved city have paid a steep price for this insider trading.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 21, 2023 3:15 pm
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Panelists (clockwise from top left) Darnell Goldson, Dietria Wells, Leroy Williams, Jamilah Prince Stewart, Larry Conaway, and Jose Champagne, at Monday night's forum.
Educators, advocates and parents ditched the “blame game” to brainstorm about how to help New Haven students do better in school during a time of various national challenges.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 21, 2023 11:02 am
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NHPS proposed 2023-24 general funds budget.
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The city’s public school district tentatively plans to ask City Hall for $207 million next fiscal year — marking a 6 percent increase above the current year’s schools budget, and coming in at more than $3 million above what the mayor has proposed sending the Board of Education’s way.
One current top New Haven school administrator, one who fled the Birks administration and a school system leader from the Midwest are the final candidates to serve as New Haven’s next superintendent.
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Nora Grace-Flood |
Mar 20, 2023 3:03 pm
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Haender Ventura with his new track spikes, which he'll try out at practice after completing his in-school job running the printing press.
The news about this summer’s city offerings for kids was hot off the presses Monday at the Wilbur Cross High School print shop.
Joining public officials at a press conference held there, Cross Senior Haender Ventura spoke of how he was able to buy a new pair of $200 Nike spikes since finding employment through the city’s “Youth@Work” program.
This summer he plans to double his hours on the job so he can pay college tuition and put his shoes to work themselves, by joining the University of New Haven’s track team while he pursues a career in sports therapy.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 17, 2023 9:11 am
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Katelyn Giusti: "Thank you for your thinking."
“Secure your thinking caps tightly,” Barnard teacher Katelyn Giusti advised her classroom full of kindergartners — as they prepared to dive into a chimpanzee-focused reading assignment and test out a new school district approach to literacy.
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Brian Slattery |
Mar 16, 2023 8:45 am
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Warren Leftridge, Finn Crumlish, Amelia Tamborra-Walton.
Seymour, who works in a flower shop, has found an unusual plant. He stumbled across it during a total eclipse and has brought it to the store, where it’s attracting customers. His boss, Mr. Mushnik is pleased. But Seymour has discovered a terrible secret: the plant only grows by being fed human blood, and is ever hungry for more. Plus, it seems to be able to talk. What is Seymour going to do? And how will all of this affect the relationship he hopes to have with his co-worker, Audrey?
Monday's in-person watch party for online school board meeting.
Several dozen city teachers, parents, and public-school advocates were able to hear each other clap and cheer — live, in person, in the same room, together — during an in-person watch party for a Board of Education that has been meeting online only for the past three years.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 13, 2023 11:26 am
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Brennan-Rogers fifth-graders with Black history museum owner Jeffrey Fletcher.
Tuskegee Airmen uniforms, Greensboro sit-in chairs, and historic newspaper clippings provided Brennan-Rogers fifth graders with an up-close look at Black history at a museum dedicated to African Americans past and present.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 9, 2023 11:35 am
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SAGA's Shane Emery, Drake Ortiz, Colton, Jacob Smith, and Pete Solomon.
Amid the sometimes “rocky waves” of work and class and a tough time at home, Drake Ortiz has found a refuge in Sound School’s Sexuality and Gender Alliance (SAGA) — where they and their high-school peers can be themselves and talk about everything from their favorite movies to queer-friendly field trips to how best to prevent bullying of younger students.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 9, 2023 9:04 am
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Career office clerk Shirley Love joins school choir in "Lift Every Voice and Sing," performed at Black History assembly and celebration.
Hill Regional Career High School’s auditorium rang like a rolling sea as students lifted their voices to sing the Black National Anthem alongside school staffer Shirley Love, whose voice left the school full of the hope.
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Laura Glesby |
Mar 8, 2023 5:00 pm
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Marilyn DeJesus and John Antoni protest for higher pay, lower childcare costs.
Marilyn DeJesus was making $12 an hour as an early childhood educator — and paying $1,700 a month for childcare as a single parent.
Having since left that job to teach toddlers at a center with better compensation, DeJesus joined hundreds of other early educators on the Green to call for higher wages and lower childcare costs.
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Nora Grace-Flood |
Mar 8, 2023 11:32 am
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More $ sought for more recycling (in the blue toters).
Regionalized composting, recycling bin chips, and refuse savvy students could all lie in New Haven’s future — if the city gets requested dollars and support needed to amp up sustainable waste management education and practices.
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Laura Glesby |
Mar 8, 2023 10:48 am
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Kayliani, 10, and Mila, 11, with the Fall Preventer.
“We had a problem with kids falling off chairs,” explained Davis Academy fifth grader Mila. School chairs easily tip over when kids rock or lean over too much, which not only disrupts class, but can cause injuries.
So Mila and her co-inventor Kayliani came up with a solution: the Fall Preventer, a suction-powered, stick-on mat to keep chairs from toppling.
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Thomas Breen |
Mar 8, 2023 9:56 am
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Fair Haven/East Rock Alder Claudia Herrera (center) with NHPS Asst. Supt. Keisha Redd-Hannans (right) on multilingual classroom visit.
Three alders got a firsthand look at the classroom needs and experiences of students who enter school speaking a language other than English, as they joined district leaders on a three-stop tour to talk with multilingual learners and their teachers.
Woodbridge’s Board of Education voted to close its doors to new kindergarten students from New Haven next school year — sparking a debate about special education funding, racial and economic integration, and an urban-suburban divide that seems to be growing by the day.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 3, 2023 8:51 am
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At Conte West this school year.
Home visits, award ceremonies, and morning announcements to Conte West scholars that “every day counts” and “it’s cool to be in school” helped the Wooster Square magnet school decrease its chronic absenteeism rate by 13 percent since the start of the school year.
Six years after the local Board of Education turned him down, Rev. Boise Kimber took his quest for permission to create an all-boys charter school to the state — and succeeded.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 2, 2023 9:47 am
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At Celentano School's final Black History Month celebration of the year.
Eighth-grader Akiellea Gooden honored her Jamaican roots on stage in front of her Celentano School classmates by sharing a quotation from a Black political icon and historical Caribbean compatriot, Marcus Garvey: “A people without knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”
School fights and lockdowns. Teacher flight. Staff shortages. Fights for funding. Calls for more elected school board members — and a school board willing to meet in public in person. A search for a new superintendent at a crucial juncture for public education.
Fourteen months into her presidency of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, Leslie Blatteau has found herself in the middle of these and other pressing public controversies. As a public school parent, as a New Haven teacher with 16 years in the classroom, and now as a labor leader, she has thought long and hard about these issues.
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Maya McFadden |
Mar 1, 2023 9:05 am
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BOMUS second graders in cup-stacking competition.
Special education teacher Rebecca Smith shows off hula hooping skills.
Hula hooping, dance parties, coloring, and team cup-stacking competitions helped the students and staff of the Barack H. Obama Magnet University School (BOMUS) decompress mid-school year.
Thirty-one applicants from across the country have thrown their hats in the ring to be the next superintendent of the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district.
NHPS's Ekaterina Barkhatova, Rosalyn Díaz-Ortiz, Michael Soares, Kristin Bengtson Mendoza, Keisha Redd-Hannans, and Pedro Mendia-Landa, at City Hall.
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New Haven public school leaders pitched alders on doubling the district’s number of ESOL teachers and adding 18 more multilingual coaches — at a combined annual cost of $4.14 million — while mapping out classroom staffing needs at a time when more and more students enter city schools speaking a language other than English.
