Christopher Peak Photo
Carol Birks and Jamell Cotto: Get ready for another budget deficit.
New Haven might not be done shuttering schools.
Superintendent Carol Birks said that she plans to form a committee that will review the district’s physical plant and recommend which schools to keep open next year.
Birks, who has spent her first few months trying to get the budget in order, presented the idea to the Finance & Operations Committee at a meeting this week at Gateway Center. She said the committee would facilitate more community input, if the district faced another deficit from the state and city’s flat-funding of their education contributions.
“We are listing this on the agenda because everything is on the table to mitigate this current budget crisis we are facing,” said Jamell Cotto, who chaired the meeting.
Facing a $19.4 million budget deficit this year, Birks made the quick decision within two months of starting the job to close Cortlandt V.R. Creed High School, an inter-district magnet located in temporary quarters in North Haven, and consolidate three alternative programs into one “opportunity high school.”
The shuttering of three buildings happened after the open-choice lottery had already closed, leaving parents to fret that their children would get lost in the reshuffling. In the end, the district was able to expand seats to place nearly all of the students at their preferred alternatives, but not without anxiety about the year ahead.
This time, “we can get ahead of our choice process so that families are aware and we can be sure that we are respectful in the way that we decide,” Birks said.
Birks added that no specific schools have been targeted, but a citywide conversation needs to happen, even if it takes several months and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.
“We are going to, this fall, convene a team of stakeholders to look at our schools,” she said. “It’s an extensive process. It usually takes 18 months in order to consider whether a school is going to be closed or not, looking at demographic studies and birth trends and engaging as many stakeholders as possible so that people are aware of our decision-making process.
“I’m going to be very transparent, generally districts spend a lot of money — around $500,000 — to do this work, and I know because I’ve worked in a district who did this twice,” she went on. “We want to make sure that we have the right technical support — I’m not saying we’re going to spend half a million because we don’t have it — but we’re going to see if we can engage some of our university partners and such.”
During Reggie Mayo’s long tenure as superintendent, New Haven went on a building spree. Cashing in on state funds, the district rebuilt nearly every single school.
The district is currently planning to spend $45 million to erect a new home for the Strong School on Southern Connecticut State University’s campus, where it will be renamed the Barack H. Obama University Magnet School.