90 New Educators Hired

A procedural mistake nearly scuttled the Board of Education’s plans to add close to 90 new staff members before students return from summer break next week.

At its regularly scheduled meeting on Aug. 14, the board intended to approve the superintendent’s personnel report, a regular agenda item listing all the district’s faculty changes usually passed without discussion. Crucially the report included the hiring of 75 new teachers, seven administrators, five coaches and a pre-school assistant; the internal shuffling of one principal, three assistant principals, and 61 teachers; and four other promotions. Those hires filled nearly all of this year’s vacancies.

The board also intended to approve the Finance and Operations Committee report, another regular item that packages together all the district’s contracts and grants. This time, it included an $18,500 grant from the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, a $70,000 Head Start payment and 19 contracts for teachers’ professional development, speech-language pathology, sign-language interpreting and school nurses.

A district employee, however, forgot to post notice of those and other items ahead of the Monday night meeting, rendering any votes that night illegal under Connecticut’s open meetings law, which requires agendas to be available 24 hours before a meeting.

The Ed Board hastily reconvened in a special meeting this Tuesday evening, hours before teachers were set to move into classrooms and start prepping for the school year the following morning. (Even this meeting barely had 24 hours’ advance posted notice in the city clerk’s office.)

But another technical difficulty almost stopped them again.

Short one member after Daisy Gonzalez’s death, the board almost couldn’t reach the five-member quorum to take action. The three board members present — Ed Joyner, Carlos Torre and Frank Redente — frantically called and texted their colleagues, asking them to call in to a conference line. After about 20 minutes, Darnell Goldson and Che Dawson both dialed in.

Mayor Toni Harp was absent.

Six minutes later, the board approved the personnel and finance reports, and the school year was able to proceed.