Student Rep Seeks Space For Revolution

Last year, Dave Cruz-Bustamante would occasionally spend four out of six school-day hours sitting in a classroom with no teacher present. 

This summer, the rising Wilbur Cross senior has rediscovered their love for learning at a five-week Yale University academic program — even as they’ve become more aware than ever of New Haven’s town-gown divide. 

And next year, during their final year as a student representative on the Board of Education, they’re hoping to amplify student voices, rekindle their peers’ engagement with learning, and maybe spark a revolution along the way.

During a recent interview with the Independent, student activist Cruz-Bustamante, 17, who will be entering their final year of high school at Wilbur Cross, reflected on the state of education for New Haven youth and shared their hopes and plans for addressing students’ rising concerns by creating wholesale change in public education and society. 

Cruz-Bustamante holds one of the two student representative seats on the Board of Education. At the start of July, Cruz-Bustamante announced they’d be taking a leave from the board in order to pursue a summer academic opportunity. 

Cruz-Bustamante is also a founding member of the student group known as the Socialist Scholars Party and is a socialist literacy teacher at CT Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Going into their second and final year on the Board of Education, Cruz-Bustamante so far has been a voice for empowering and informing NHPS’ student body. They’ve also relayed student perspectives to the board by having a finger on the pulse of what local high schoolers think, want, and need, through organized citywide student council meetings and student-led school walkouts. 

This summer Cruz-Bustamante was awarded a scholarship which provided him with the free-of-cost opportunity to become a Yale University student. The scholarship covered enrollment for two accelerated Yale courses, housing in the Berkeley College dorms, and daily meals in the school’s dining hall for a five-week summer program. 

From July 3 to Aug 3, they have been taking the courses ​“Education and Empire” and ​“Race, Gender, and Class Inequities in the US,” which Cruz-Bustamante selected because of their interest in education and activism. 

"What's The Point?"

Last school year, while Cruz-Bustamante was a junior at Cross, they said they fell out of love with learning because of systemic problems with the public school system. 

They described dealing with challenges like food insecurity in their family, and said they heard from several fellow students dealing with the same and many other issues.

During their first year on the Board of Education, Cruz-Bustamante said they’ve met students dealing with too little to eat, homelessness, domestic problems with family members, and the lack of a support system at home. Cruz-Bustamante concluded that these issues add up to students growing to feel ​“apathy, disengagement, resentment” toward the education system, both consciously and unconsciously. Along with the feeling that the district’s curriculum is not culturally relevant and teaching students to want to be lifelong learners.

Cruz-Bustamante said during their high school journey they’ve also faced the challenge of navigating the unpredictable process of getting treatment for their diagnosed depression and anxiety.

They added that about twice a week they were tasked with doing busy work or nothing in their classes due to the lack of a permanent sub or certified teacher. They recalled learning from teachers about the shortage and it stemming from issues of teacher dissatisfaction.

Most often Cruz-Bustamante used the teacher-less downtime to catch up on political organizing, hang out with friends, and create the Socialist Scholars Party constitution. 

They described the student population, including themselves, as having a ​“What’s the point?” feeling about school in recent years because of the lack of systemic change, particularly post-Covid. 

The delayed adaptation of schooling is causing students to become disengaged, depressed, and with a ​“deep internal stagnation of doom feeling” Cruz-Bustamante said.

“The system and violence is collapsing around us,” they added. 

Cruz-Bustamante spent the summer reviving their love for learning after a lack of it their junior year. This was primarily due to the post-secondary courses application of academic material to current societal issues.

Cruz-Bustamante said they feel a ​“spirit of rebellion” within students all over the country who are discontent with the capitalist education system, they said.

Both youth and adults are dealing with growing climate change concerns and ​“deep-seeded colonial capitalism,” Cruz-Bustamante said, making it obvious that ​“the way we’re living isn’t working.”

“This rebellion is so much more physic and material in that it’s just a complete rejection of how we view the world now,” they added.

They said they are dreading going back school for their senior year because the current educational structure is not investing enough in student supports and culturally-relevant curriculums. 

They added that the pandemic exasperated these many crises, leaving students feeling abandoned.

“We’re blooming against the dying field of earth,” they said. ​“New Haven and Yale has designed this rich and intellectual life for Yalies, but for the rest of us it’s a matter of life and death.”

Regulating Students? Or Sparking Creativity?

This summer, Cruz-Bustamante who is a New Haven native and lives in Fair Haven, got an introduction to the ivory tower known as Yale University. They described learning about and seeing firsthand the educational investment divide between systems like NHPS and Yale. 

For the past five weeks, Cruz-Bustamante has attended three-hour courses at Yale four times a week.

The classes helped them to regain their love for learning, feel curious again, and explore their intellectual abilities. They thanked their professors for this. 

Despite the intensity of the courses, Cruz-Bustamante said they are again engaged in learning because of the class focuses on pedagogy, politics, Marxism, and cultural analysis. 

It is in classes like ​“Education and Empire” that Cruz-Bustamante is learning vocabulary for describing the history of ​“how schooling is used as tool of social engineering and to put students in different economic classes,” they said. 

In the class they’ve also been introduced to books like ​“Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School,” which Cruz-Bustamante said reminded them of New Haven. 

“Education is treated as a simple and mechanical enterprise,” to regulate students rather than to spark creativity and passionate in learners Cruz-Bustamante said.

They continued that the structures of schooling are to mainly enhance capitalism. ​“I can’t focus on a career, job, trade or skill that will only serve to future legitimize and strengthen systems that rule us and that are pushing us to the brink of death,” Cruz-Bustamante said. 

While in the Yale program, Cruz-Bustamante said they’ve been given the chance to explore new corners of New Haven and have access to buildings that are often restricted only to the Yale community. 

They’ve found favorite hangout spots like Yale’s Bass Library, Architecture School, and the Humanities Quadrangle.

They described also feeling ​“survivorship guilt” while in the program because of the many resources available to students at Yale that are not accessible to other New Haveners.

Next Steps

They plan to spend their senior year deciding on post-secondary education plans at options like The City College of New York, Columbia College, and Brooklyn College.

In addition to preparing postsecondary plans, Cruz-Bustamante said they plans to focus their efforts on educational resources that will continue to nurture their love for learning by taking dual enrollment college courses.

“NHPS is not serving me. All there is is bureaucratic abandonment,” they said. 

“When we’re in class with no teacher, with water leaking in the windows and ceilings caving in, why would you put in effort when the systems around you don’t put into you?” they added. 

The current educational system is designed for marketability, Cruz-Bustamante said, and is therefore not a ​“structurally, socially, culturally liberating experience. It’s a mechanical one. It’s to prepare you for work and for capitalistic cause.”

As Cruz-Bustamante prepares for the start of their senior year, they listed three priorities to focus on during their last year on Board of Education.

First, they plan to focus on training new Board student rep John Carlos Serana Musser.

Second, they will continue working to build out and strengthen the Socialist Scholars Party with the goal of making it a collective to relay ​“institutional student voice.”

And third, they plan to work with Serana Musser and citywide student councils to meet with the new superintendent to discuss plans to implement a list of student-made ​“Hope and Victory Directives.”