Student Voices Heard In Citywide Council Vote

Roughly 40 high-schoolers from across New Haven gathered on Sherman Parkway to cast their votes in support of having a greater say in school district decision making, higher-quality facilities, a more socially relevant curriculum, and increased investment in student well-being and restorative justice.

That cohort of New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) student-leaders took those votes — and backed those demands — Friday morning during the most recently monthly meeting of the Citywide Student Council. 

The meeting brought together public school students from across the city to the Hillhouse High School-adjacent athletic complex at the Floyd Little Athletic Center.

The April meeting was led by Board of Education student representatives Dave Cruz-Bustamante, who is a junior at Wilbur Cross, and Ma’Shai Roman, who is a senior at Hillhouse.

The student congress met in the Floyd Little Athletic Center atrium and began their April meeting at around 10:15 a.m.

Hill Regional Career High School administrator Jonathan Q. Berryman and teachers union Education Justice Organizer Megan Fountain supported the Friday meeting along with several teachers and NHPS Assistant Superintendent Paul Whyte, while Citywide Youth Coalition Director of Political Education Ta’LannaMonique ​“T‑Mo” Lawson-Dickerson helped host the meeting along with Cruz-Bustamante.

For the first half hour of Friday’s meetup, Lawson-Dickerson ran an activity with the group of 40 students to identify the difference between ​“problems” and ​“issues.”

They identified an issue as a specific concern that can hold a specific person or entity accountable to address the matter, and a problem as a large and broad concern that is widespread and can’t be addressed by only one entity.

After Lawson-Dickerson read a statement declaring such an issue, the students divided into four small groups and discussed whether the statement was a problem or an issue then raced to the center of the room to be the first to give Lawson-Dickerson their answer.

After the introductory activity the students moved into workshopping a list of four demands crafted at a previous December meeting where students filled out a school district vision worksheet. Over 100 students submitted responses. Click here to read through all the student responses. 

“This is a direct result of your work,” Cruz-Bustamante said. ​“This list of demands will require you to actualize and tap into your own power.” 

In their responses students requested things like more acknowledgment, funding, teachers, time outside, events to meet administrators, SEL days, life skill classes, and giving teachers more freedom with the curriculum. 

“This is up to you to implement. If you want your school to get better, if you’re sick and tired of our school roofs caving in, if you’re sick and tired of lessons that don’t make sense to our lives, if you’re sick and tired of school fights without anybody doing anything about them except suspensions, it’s up to you to do it, no one else. No one else is going to swoop in to do it,” Cruz-Bustamante said. 

The group started with a list of four directives. In small groups each student worked together with their peers from different schools around the city to share their personal experiences related to the demands, workshop language, and power-map each directive. 

Click here to read the full language of each directive. 

The first demand called for ​“participatory democracy [to] be a guaranteed right for all students” — meaning on a quarterly basis students and teachers are allowed to lead initiatives and discussions regarding school policies and the resulting work be granted ​“legitimate authority in creating and maintaining school policy, advised by the administration and within the boundaries of state and federal law.” 

The first demand also called for a more robust process to be put into place for students to exercise their rights in deciding where district and school funds go and providing feedback for curriculum revisions and that all middle and high schools have a student government that is adequately funded and resourced and teacher facilitators are compensated. 

The second demand called for all student bathrooms, health facilities, and turn-around rooms to be clean, well-maintained, quality facilities that are accessible to all. It also asked that reports be provided at assemblies about facilities management, an audit of current facility processes take place for things like the work orders systems to analyze efficiency and develop improvement plans, and a timeline be established for providing at least three gender-neutral bathrooms in every school. 

The third demand called for a curriculum that is ​“relevant to student’s lives, equip students with the tools to realize their power, and promote a deep sense of social-emotional literacy” through improvements like mandated health classes that include subject matter on ​“queer and heterosexual sex-ed, nutrition and holistic wellness based on science, mental-health skills and psychological first aid, harm-reduction and addiction without the emphasis on moralistic abstinence, and relationship skills and community-actualization wellness.”

The third demand also requested that at least one designated ​“turn-around” room be established in every school for students that would act as a student life center. 

The fourth demand called for the school district to value and center the community, ​“the lives and well-being of students and their humanity, and where students are held accountable in a way that repairs harm.” 

The final demand also asked that at least $800,000 be invested into new trainings developed by community partners, students, teachers, and advocates that focus on training teachers and students in restorative and transformative justice. It called for building strong relationships with local organizations that focus on de-escalation in schools outside of school resource officers, like CTVIP, CWYC, and Ice the Beef, and to implement a non-punitive approach district-wide that would center community care and ​“the needs of our students to ensure we are not sending students into the school-to-prison pipeline.” 

Before workshopping began on Friday, T‑Mo offered guidance around how to come up with possible solutions for each demand, targeting their audience, how to make winnable arguments, and long-lasting improvements to the school district. 

“You have to understand that when we’re doing this long term work and this cool justice work and fighting for ourselves and standing up for ourselves, it is long, it is hard, it is draining,” T‑Mo said. ​“And so having some small wins helps to build momentum and people power and keeps us engaged. So that’s important.”

They also advised that the students begin to put together a list of local partners and movements that could support their work. 

Hillhouse student Kate Kim, Career students Naylanee Alejandro and Chyna Lopes, and Cooperative Arts students Laila Kelly-Walker and Michael Steinman gathered in one group to talk about creating solutions for the first demand.

While the group discussed the first demand, which focuses on allowing students to exercise their rights in school-based decision making processes and having active student councils at all schools to give students leadership opportunities, the group agreed that their currently existing student government groups are not always inclusive of all grade levels. 

“Seniors have a lot of influence and more opportunities to meet,” said Lopes. 

Alejandro said she feels her student council only allows juniors and seniors to make decisions. Kelly-Walker added that her school’s student government group often clashes with other student involvement groups when it comes to event planning and decision making. 

“When you’re not a junior or senior, people push you aside or don’t notice you,” said Alejandro. 

Some said their student movement groups are not as active as they should be and have only met once during this school year. 

The group suggested that all student involvement groups assign members to attend a monthly meeting made up of all student groups in each school. 

Metropolitan Business Academy sophomore Makayla Kidd agreed. She said that at her school, student government is treated as popularity contest and freshmen and sophomore students are usually not able win a race for any leadership roles despite being more dedicated to the role. 

After 40 minutes of group discussions, students shared their proposed solutions and workshopped directives. 

For directives two and three, students identified the Board of Education as their target to address facility concerns and broadening the school district’s curriculum. 

For directive four, students called for a redirecting of funds in the district to invest in more trained school social workers to establish healing-centered discipline approaches. 

After the conversations students took a pizza break and then voted unanimously on approving the list of four demands with the additions made through discussion.

All students from Co-op, Career, Sound, Metropolitan, Hillhouse, and Cross voted yes on the four directives. 

After the unanimous vote students chanted together: ​“When we fight, we win!” 

During the meeting ​‚Whyte also announced that the Board of Education will have its first official student representative race in four years, with three qualifying student candidates. 

Additionally students heard from the Connecticut Association of Schools Director of Student Activities Cherese Miller, Executive Director of the Connecticut Association of Student Councils (CASC) Christopher Tomlin and CASC legislative affairs coordinator Charlie Hughs briefly to learn more about statewide leadership opportunities.

Hughs and Tomlin invited students to join the executive board of CASC and several subcommittees, and attend CASC’s annual convention and its annual mock legislative session to put forward legislation proposals at the state capitol. 

Miller added that the opportunities allow New Haven students voices to be heard at a state level and give students the chance to connect with students from other school districts. 

Before students were dismissed for the day, some final announcements were made for future events like the upcoming Board of Ed student representative debate happening before the May 19 election, Unidad Latina en Acción May Day rally and march on the Green on May 1 starting at 12 p.m., an education justice town hall at Family Academy of Multi-Lingual Exploration (FAME) April 26 at 5:15 p.m„ and a May 17 free busing event to the Hartford capitol to rally for public education.

For next steps, Cruz-Bustamante, who co-founded the Socialist Scholars Party, said the group will gather to debrief, further clarify the list of demands, establish a student-led mechanism to oversee the work, and narrow down one concrete step for each directive based on Friday’s discussion. 

The list of directives will then be presented to the Board of Education and the specific school leaders accountable for each issue. 

In a Tuesday phone interview Cruz-Bustamante said they plan to present to the Board of Education next month with an action step plan while continuing to create alliances with community partners, educators, and students. 

“Every time there’s a citywide student council meeting, I feel a sense of hope,” Cruz-Bustamante said. 

In partnership with the Socialist Scholars Party the directives and citywide student council group aim to engage students to take action politically and ​“create mass movements outside of bureaucracy.” 

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