Amistad Students, Teachers Demand Change

That all happened at what is usually an uncontroversial event: a meeting of a ​“joint committee” that oversees the Dixwell Avenue charter high school, which is operated by the New Haven-based organization Achievement First.

Amistad has been immersed in soul-searching after the Independent last week published a video of its principal shoving a student and another video by a recent staff member complaining of endemic racism. Amid that news, the principal stepped down last week.

Amistad’s joint high school committee, which includes board members from the three feeder schools of Amistad Academy, Elm City College Preparatory and Bridgeport Academy, originally planned to meet in the network’s Fair Haven offices on Wednesday evening.

But they took the meeting next door to Elm City Prep’s gymnasium. By nightfall, ticked-off students, parents and educators filled the bleachers — a rare sight for a committee that hasn’t heard a single public comment since November 2014.

Even though they were given only 120 seconds each, no one had a ​“two-minute problem,” as Zack Murphy, a senior at Amistad, put it.

For nearly two hours, the speakers brought up familiar complaints: a demerit system that punishes the most trivial rule-breaking, top-down leadership that hems in teachers, and an admissions-obsessed drive that sidelines students who aren’t aiming for top-tier colleges.

In the past, those concerns went unaddressed, even after a mass student walkout in 2016, the speakers said. This time, they said, must be different.

“It hurts me deeply when I hear students talking about a prison culture that’s been cultivated in your schools, where you’re treating them like inmates but there’s no accountability for leaders,” said Addys Castillo, the mother of an Amistad freshman, the Citywide Youth Coalition’s executive director and a former correctional officer. ​“The people that need to be fired are the people that [Principal Morgan] Barth reported to. If that’s not getting done, then what’s the point of this meeting?”

The recent outcry started last week after Steven Cotton, a behavioral specialist and one of the few black males at the overwhelming black-student-body school, quit in protest and posted a viral Facebook Live video about his complaints.

The Independent then published an article about how Morgan Barth, the leader at Amistad, had been allowed to stay on the job after shoving two students at two different schools, while encouraging a disciplinary system that led many to pull their kids out.

Hours later, Barth publicly announced that he’d resigned. He’s being replaced on an interim basis by Emery Sykes, the high school’s dean of college services and school culture and an African-American woman. She has worked at Amistad for 12 years, and she has broad support from the staff.

Now Achievement First is looking into whether higher-ups should be punished too, as many speakers on Wednesday night called for.

Last week, ​“my son called me and said, ​‘Mom, the best thing happened today!’ I said, ​‘Well, what happened?’ He said, ​‘My principal got fired.’ Now, that right there speaks volumes. It actually gave me chills,” said Jessica Nicholas, a mother of two. ​“I get calls for him slouching, he gets detention for apparently not focusing, he gets demerits for being late for class during the first two weeks of school. This whole system is a school-to-prison pipeline.”

Amistad’s directors, who said they hadn’t been informed about the October shoving incident until just last week, voted unanimously at the end of Wednesday’s meeting to hire an outside law firm.

Investigators will review the personnel decision to keep Barth for months on after the incident. The firm will put together findings about that decision and recommend policy changes for future personnel decisions, a resolution passed by the committee stated.

Achievement First will contact law firms and present a selection to the chairs of the high school committee and the three boards by Feb. 8. The firm will be expected to complete its report by Apr. 8

Dacia Toll, Achievement First’s president and co-CEO, said she supported bringing in external investigators to hold the administration accountable, all the way up the ranks.

“We’re hiring an independent firm to learn more about how we got to this place as an organization and to hold ourselves, meaning senior leaders, accountable for how this situation was handled, and for any additional consequences and recommended policy changes,” Toll said in a statement.

Speaker after speaker said that Barth’s actions reflected bigger problems throughout Achievement First.

Just within Amistad High School, more than 65 staff signed onto a statement saying that ​“this one incident is representative of the systematic racial inequalities that are observable throughout the network.” The school employees said they’ve been discussing the discipline system, thinking about how to create ​“a new and healthier framework for our school culture.”

“Our days have been long, thoughtful and productive,” the statement read, ​“and they are worth it because we care deeply about our scholars and the future of our school.”

The staff said that it needs the charter network to do its part too.

In particular, they expressed ​“disgust and disappointment at the lack of transparency” around the October shoving, which most of them hadn’t known about. They said they’d been left out of discussions about Barth’s departure and the search for a new principal. They said, within 30 days, they need to be included in the search.

They said the network needs to use this moment ​“to examine the entirety of our model with an antiracist focus.”

Students added on to this point, too, by saying that teachers need to consider their kids’ well-being, not just their test scores. ​“You don’t know what happened the night before or if they had breakfast in the morning,” said Iesha Walker, a recent Amistad graduate. ​“Know who you’re working for. These are kids of color. You can’t just yell and shout and scream. They get that at home and on the streets already. You have to come and you have to love.”

The staff also said investigators should cast their focus ​“as wide as possible,” beyond ​“just the errors related to this one incident” to look at ​“the systems and organizational culture that made this incident possible.” They said the report should be made public.

“I have so many different feelings about what has occurred, ranging from complete outrage that senior leaders knew this happened and did nothing about it to intense pride that I work with a staff who’s rallying and thinking deeply about what is best for kids at our school,” said Peter Butler, a social worker and dean for the last 15 years. ​“Please ask more questions. Demand transparency from our leaders. Too many in our organization have been abused and dehumanized by Achievement First’s senior leadership and principals. Please listen to us more.”

The pressure on Achievement First isn’t likely to let up soon. Teachers said they’ll return in 30 days with ​“a more formal proposal” for what they feel the school needs.

Parents said they aren’t done either.

At one point in the meeting, Andrea Barnes, the mother of a second-grader who she said had ​“creativity stifled out of her,” turned around and faced the crowded bleachers. She apologized to those in the room, saying she blamed herself for letting these problems get out of hand.

“I’m going to apologize to you, as a parent,” Barnes said. ​“After this day, I will be more involved.”