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Maya McFadden |
Mar 20, 2025 8:26 pm
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Rosa: "Why does my school feel more like a battlefield than a place to learn?"
HARTFORD — When Sound School ninth grader Journey Rosa thinks of an average school day, they ask themself, “Why do I watch my teachers ration supplies like war rations, spending their own salaries to make sure we have the bare minimum?”
HSC junior Jonaily Colon: "Adding more funding, as proposed in this bill, will help us be able to focus on what matters in school: Learning."
Cross senior John Carlos Serana Musser: Why do we have leaky roofs and no teachers in our classrooms when the state has a record budget surplus?
HARTFORD–Ever since his first year at Hillhouse High School, Badu Smart knew he wanted to take honors biology. He worked hard to secure a spot in what he hoped would be a more rigorous science course — only to find out that the class had been canceled for lack of a teacher.
Smart, who is now a senior at Hillhouse, shared that story with state lawmakers Wednesday as he traveled to Hartford with 80 fellow New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) classmates to speak up about teacher shortages, building disrepair, and other challenges faced by a city school district in need of more state funding.
The city's newest tenants union members, on Goffe St. in February.
HARTFORD– A proposal to expand eviction protections for rent-paying tenants took a big step forward as state legislators voted to advance a “just cause” bill out of committee.
Rolling up a mattress before bulldozers come in to demolish a Lamberton Street homeless encampment.
File photos
Garrett, Elicker: Neighbors, but not friends (at least in regards to H.B. 7033).
HARTFORD — New Haven and Hamden might be neighbors on a map, but at a Thursday hearing at the state Capitol, the two municipalities were far apart as their Democratic mayors presented dueling testimonies about a state bill on homelessness.
Hamden’s Lauren Garrett threw her support behind the proposal, which would bolster a homeless person’s ability to sleep on public land without fear of penalty.
New Haven’s Justin Elicker, meanwhile, came down hard on the bill, which he warned would allow for permanent encampments.
Committee Chair Lemar: "The appropriate time to regulate an industry is at its onset."
HARTFORD — “When is it too late?”
So asked state AFL-CIO President Ed Hawthorne Wednesday during a public hearing on the explosion of artificial intelligence (AI) systems out in the wild and the path to reigning them in in Connecticut.
There’s a lot of good that AI can do, he said, but not without a steady hand to guide it. Letting the technology proliferate unchecked poses risks –– mass firings, discriminatory hiring, and data harvesting, to name a few –– that the state’s “most vulnerable” just can’t afford.
Elphaba, Sen. Kissel: This bill is wicked. So to speak.
Hartford — Should Connecticut movie theaters have to publish accurate start times for films and previews — or else face $1,000 false-advertising fines?
New Haven State Sen. Martin Looney says yes. Cinema owners say no. And an Enfield lawmaker was embarrassed that such a question would even be asked.
Prez Srajer: "The tenant movement is here to stay."
Nathaniel Rosenberg file photo
"Just cause" co-sponsor Laurie Sweet (center), in January.
Hartford – Connecticut Tenants Union President and New Havener Hannah Srajer was in the middle of laying into the “unchecked greed” of corporate landlords who use no-fault evictions to hike rents when the co-chair of the state legislature’s Housing Committee said her three minutes were up. She asked Srajer to summarize the rest of her testimony.
“The tenant movement is here to stay,” Srajer concluded. “We’re not raising new problems. We’re just making them more visible. Let’s get this done.”
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Nathaniel Rosenberg |
Feb 17, 2025 9:15 am
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Eco-friendly affordable housing on Dixwell: More, please.
With the Connecticut General Assembly’s legislative session in full swing, New Haven’s eight state lawmakers are pushing 184 different bills that touch on everything from growing housing near transit to digging deep on thermal energy to requiring movie theaters to disclose what time the films, and not just the trailers, actually start.
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Mark Pazniokas | CT Mirror |
Feb 14, 2025 10:31 am
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Adam Carmon (left), one of five wrongfully incarcerated New Haveners on tap to receive $M, per state Judiciary Committee votes on Friday.
Adam Carmon served 28 years in prison as the man convicted of killing a 7‑month-old girl and paralyzing her grandmother, a verdict a judge belatedly concluded was a miscarriage of justice produced by prosecutorial and police misconduct in New Haven.
“I cannot return to you the 28 years of life,” Superior Court Judge Jon Alander told Carmon on June 13, 2023, as he dismissed the case and interrupted an 85-year prison sentence. “I can give you the certainty that this long nightmare is finally over.”
On Friday, the legislature’s Judiciary Committee will be asked to ratify compensation of $7.9 million for Carmon, a sum calculated by the state claims commissioner employing a formula enshrined in state law: multiply the years served by 200 percent of the median family income in Connecticut.
Typhanie Jackson: "There are some places where we have had some gaps."
High burnout rates, low pay, and insufficient state funding have led to an untenable shortage of special education staff in New Haven public schools.
School employees and parents conveyed that message to Education Committee alders — calling attention to lapsed services for some of the city’s highest-needs students.
Blatteau: "If we can't be safe in our buildings, what else matters here?"
(Updated) The president of the city’s teachers union has filed a state workplace safety complaint against the public school district for persistent problems with mold, leaks, air quality, and other conditions concerns at New Haven’s two largest high schools.
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Zachary Groz |
Jan 27, 2025 3:11 pm
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200 execs at 100 College, for "legislative breakfast."
Bracing for a federal funding drought and higher state costs for Medicare and Medicaid, Gov. Ned Lamont urged pharma executives to work with Hartford on cutting the cost of prescription drugs Monday morning at a gathering held by the life sciences lobbying group BioCT.
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Nathaniel Rosenberg |
Jan 23, 2025 5:31 pm
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CTTU Vice President Luke Melonakos-Harrison at the mic, fighting for "for housing stability, for dignity and respect."
(Hartford) New Haven’s tenants union leaders are back at the state Capitol for the second straight year to push for limits on landlords’ ability to evict tenants — and they’re hoping this session goes better than the last.
Leslie Blatteau at WNHH FM: “If our students have stable housing, our job is going to be less hard in the classroom.”
Leslie Blatteau noticed that 70 percent of New Haven’s teachers live in the suburbs — and saw an opportunity to boost state-level support for New Haven’s schools.
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Thomas Breen |
Jan 16, 2025 1:16 pm
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Thursday's presser at DISTRICT.
Bracing for Trump II tariffs and protectionism, the Lamont administration has launched a $25 million effort to try to build out “strategic supply chains” closer to home — in an effort to get ahead of potentially higher prices for imported goods.
(Hartford) Mayor Justin Elicker and Supt. Madeline Negrón made the trip to the state’s capital Monday — to stand alongside mayors and superintendents from Bridgeport, Stamford, Waterbury, and Hartford and deliver a collective call for state government to up its public education funding by $545 million.
Top state Republican Proto at New Haven City Hall: "I’m not sure how loosening the guardrails reduces $6-a-dozen eggs or $4.50 milk."
Republicans are ready to argue during the upcoming state legislative session for preserving Connecticut’s “fiscal guardrails” and cutting energy costs.
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Nathaniel Rosenberg |
Jan 8, 2025 4:06 pm
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General Law Chair Lemar: “Have you seen those towing articles?”
(Hartford) Connecticut’s towing industry better watch out. There’s a new sheriff in town — and he’s got his sights set on scrapping storage fees, eliminating “patrol towing,” requiring companies to take credit cards, and otherwise protecting consumers.
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Nathaniel Rosenberg |
Jan 8, 2025 2:59 pm
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Jesenia Rodriguez and Frank Douglass: Too many rides, not enough pay.
The riders: five stars. The gig: not so much.
(Hartford) Dwight Alder Frank Douglass and a dozen fellow rideshare drivers from across Connecticut got behind the wheel Wednesday morning — to drive up to the state Capitol and push for higher pay and greater protections from what they say are exploitative practices by Uber and Lyft.
After more than six months of compiling data on speeding, red light running, and local “roadway geometry,” the Elicker administration has submitted a 365-page report to the state’s transportation department — and hopes to install automated traffic-safety cameras by next spring.
