“Working On It” No Longer Works

After hearing for decades that Hamden schools are trying to diversify, Hamden High School parents and students sent the Board of Education a clear message: Faculty and curricula are still too white, and that has to change soon.

The students and parents delivered that message in person at last week’s Board of Education meeting.

The board’s response: Let’s keep talking.

The students’ and parents’ response to the response: We’ve been talking a long time.

Neil Grasty, a Hamden High junior, said he has never had a black teacher in a district that is almost 30 percent black — not at Bear Path, not at the middle school, and not at the high school. He serves as president of the Greater New Haven NAACP Youth Council.

He was one of the students who sat quietly through the meeting until it was time for public comments, at which point he stood and addressed the board.

“What is Hamden Public Schools’ current plan to recruit minority teachers? And also, how long has it been in effect and what are some of the outcomes of it?” he asked.

Personnel Director Gary Highsmith answered with a list of initiatives. One of the main problems, he said, is that not enough people of color become teachers. He mentioned one program that the district hopes to start next year that would get Hamden High students to become interested in teaching ​“and [put] them in the actual pipeline.”

“A program like that bears fruit in about five years maybe,” said Highsmith, ​“so we would have to be patient for that.”

Board Chair Chris Daur thanked Highsmith, then turned to Grasty. That program, Daur said, ​“is something we’re holding promise for students like yourself to become interested in educations so that hopefully we can see you as a faculty member in the five years or so that it would take you to go through school.”

The parents and students in the room said they were not there to wait another five years before anything changed.

Perhaps Neil will be eligible in five or six years, said Shana Jackson, mother of a Hamden High senior, ​“but there is urgency now.”

The district knew this was an issue ten years ago, she said. ​“When a child has a fever, you know it’s being caused by something. There’s a fever in Hamden and you need to get to the root of it.” It’s not something to be ​“washed away or whited out,” she added.

“‘Well, we’re working on it.’ That’s really not good enough anymore,” said Roxana Walker-Canton, mother of two Hamden students.

“Just Because I’m Black”

In January, community members gathered for a panel on teacher and curricular diversity in the district. After the meeting, a few teachers wrote comments on the Independent’s article, stating that, contrary to what one panel member said about white teachers, many Hamden teachers are very culturally sensitive. Hamden Education Association President Diane Marinaro then sent a letter to Council Rep. Lauren Garrett, who had organized the event.

“It is unfortunate that some panel members expressed their preconceived notions and made unfounded judgements about the teachers and curriculum in the Hamden community, without first-hand knowledge,” she wrote in the letter.

In a separate interview, students from the Hamden High Black and Hispanic Student Union (BHSU) agreed that they’ve had many good teachers in the district. They said they also have also experienced micro-aggressions from teachers, read a curriculum that they say rarely reflects their backgrounds, and in many cases, have never had a black teacher.

BHSU Vice President Kelsea Little came to Hamden High in 10th grade from Achievement First Amistad Academy in New Haven. At Amistad, she said, she was surrounded by black and Hispanic students. Her teachers, though mostly white, knew how to teach and connect with students who came from different backgrounds than they did, she said.

Coming to Hamden, she said, was a shock. She is frequently one of the only black students in her level nine (the highest level) and AP classes. Teachers often act surprised when she does good work, but not when her white peers do.

She said that a teacher recently accused her of cheating when she did well on a test. The teacher, she said, didn’t mention that suspicion at the time of the test. But once she got her score back, which at 96 was the highest in the class, the teacher suggested she had cheated. On a previous quiz, when a white student got the highest score — a 90 — the teacher just congratulated him.

“Those are my experiences, and it’s just because I’m black,” she said.

Little argued that the way students are tracked into class levels creates segregation within the school, because the upper-level classes end up being predominantly white, while the lower levels are composed more heavily of students of color. If students who are placed into lower-level classes want to challenge themselves and take an AP class, she said, they should be able to.

Montsho Canton, a sophomore, is also in mostly level 9 and AP classes, but it took a mother who fought to get into higher level classes in elementary and middle school. Now, she said ​“you can count on one hand” the number of other black students she has in her classes.

Students placed in the lower levels doubt themselves because they’ve never been given the chance to take a level 9 class, she said. That creates a cycle where they start to think they’re not as good as their peers.

Even when students of color are in level 9 and AP classes, it can be tough. Little said she rarely speaks in class. ​“I don’t feel comfortable. The teachers don’t make it comfortable.”

BHSU President Abdul Osmanu, a senior, said some teachers call him ​“one of the good ones.” He said he has also witnessed teachers make insensitive comments about black girls’ hair, not fully understanding the implications of what they were saying. 

BHSU members said the high school has very few black teachers, but has many more black support staff, such as lunch aides, security guards, and nurses. The faculty advisor to BHSU, Lamond Battle, for example, is the lead security guard.

Just having black support staff does not suffice, said BHSU member Mehki Riley, He said he needs to make connections with teachers as well.

According to the Connecticut State Department of Education, the district had 27 black or African American educators in the 2017 – 2018 school year, which was 4.6 percent of the total. It had 18 Hispanic or Latino teachers, 12 Asian teachers, and 528 white teachers.

At Tuesday’s Hamden BOE meeting, Highsmith said recently emailed 500 people whothe state BOE had said were unemployed teachers of color. Just 10 percent responded. Almost all either had a job or had moved out of state.

The district is also working out an agreement with Southern Connecticut State University that will allow juniors and seniors at Hamden High to take education classes at Southern to see if they want to become teachers. Highsmith said he’s also hoping to start an ​“in-house teacher fellowship program” next year in which the district could hire people with college degrees, or those close to finishing, to serve as substitutes and get experience before becoming certified. The people the district would hire in that program, he said, ​“would be a diverse group of people.”

Little said she has had three black teachers in her school career, none of them in Hamden.

“I would love to see more black teachers at Hamden High,” she said, ​“but what I would love to see more is white teachers who can resonate with all students.”

She had high praise for Principal Nadine Gannon, who she said is ​“very dedicated to making change” and is able to ​“resonate” with students. But she’s the principal, she said; she’s not teaching the classes. Many of the teachers, she said, don’t have Gannon’s ability to connect with students.

She recalled an instance in which a teacher once told her class that ​“slavery wasn’t that bad.”

Morgan Jackson, who spoke at the BOE meeting Tuesday and is the daughter of Shana Jackson, was also in the class. She said she had a good relationship with that teacher, but that she felt in that case she needed to call him out. She and Little asked where he had heard that slavery was not as bad as people say it was. It turned out he had read it in books written by white authors.

Jackson said the class was mostly white, and the comment just perpetuated ignorance.

“If you’re being ignorant,” said Little, ​“imagine what you’re feeding all of us.”

Jackson recalled another instance in which she had a teacher who sometimes made insensitive comments. She said that when she explained to him why she was offended, he said that she was exaggerating and that her generation overreacts to comments.

It was ​“not his place to make students feel like their issues were not as big as they felt they were,” she said.

The district has recently introduced a number of professional development programs to train teachers on how to serve a diverse student body. Trainings in the 2018 – 2019 school year include a mindfulness training for middle school teachers and a cultural competency training for all high school faculty.

Professional development training days, however, are not always enough, said Ridge Hill Teacher Kathleen Kiely, who spoke at Tuesday’s BOE meeting. She suggested that the district offer an incentive for teachers to take an African American studies class at a local university that they could count towards a graduate degree.

Half-Year Lit

Junior Kynah Patton sat around a table with her peers at the BHSU meeting and reflected on her time at Hamden High. ​“Why is African American lit a half year class?” she asked. ​“Why is it an elective?”

Mehki Riley echoed Patton’s question: ​“Why is it an elective?”

Unlike African American Lit, American Literature is a year-long class required for all students. Depending on the teacher, it often includes little African American literature.

You wouldn’t call American lit ​“white” American lit, said Riley, even though it’s mostly about white authors.

Teachers and administrators in the district have started initiatives in recent years to include more authors and characters of color in the curriculum. Teachers at Ridge Hill made a fundraiser to buy books by diverse authors about a diverse array of experiences for their students. At Tuesday’s meeting, the BOE accepted a donation from the Hamden Rotary Club of 800 books with diverse characters and authors for Hamden’s third-grade classes. Hamden Middle School’s Kaye Colello has worked hard to diversify the curriculum and celebrate the middle school’s diversity, as has Hamden High’s Elizabeth Marini. 

BHSU members said they have not yet felt the effects of those initiatives. They said their history and English classes rarely touch on the experiences of minorities or present their perspectives in depth.

Patton said that ​“in my three years of being here, in none of my history classes have we touched on black history.” She said that her classes had only presented a cursory treatment of slavery. One teacher, she said, had talked about the Harlem Renaissance, but other than that, she couldn’t recall any more black history in her classes.

Even during Black History Month, she said, her teachers had not talked about black history in class.

Osmanu said that most of what he has learned about black history has been from his own research and reading. He said that this year he ​“was fortunate enough” to have a teacher show his class a video of Malcolm X speaking. Opportunities to learn about black historical figures, he said, often require a teacher choosing to include them in their curricula.

In February, BHSU hosted an assembly to celebrate Black History Month. Unlike other assemblies, such as a recent one on vaping, the BHM assembly was not mandatory. Students said that in some cases, teachers didn’t even let their students go.

“I didn’t go my freshman year because I was going to get written up for a class cut,” said Riley.

Black history and literature are not the only topics missing from the curriculum, students said.

Mariam Khan, who serves as a student representative on the BOE, said after Tuesday’s meeting that ​“the only story you hear about people like me is about 9/11.” She is Muslim. She said she had never read any Hispanic or Asian American literature in school.

“When you have a place where the curriculum is predominately white [and] people in positions of power are predominately white,” she said, ​“you feel that you don’t belong.”

Selective Discipline

A white student once used the N‑word around Morgan Jackson, thinking they were friendly and that Jackson would take it in good humor. Jackson said she asked the student to stop. The student did not, so she reported it. Administrators, she said, did nothing. She eventually had to go all the way to the principal before any action was taken.

The students who spoke with the Independent all said they hear the N‑word frequently at school.

“It is thrown around all the time,” said Khan. Sometimes black students say it, sometimes non-black students of color say it, and sometimes white students do. Senior Tayewon Queen said he had heard a lot of white male athletes use it, thinking they have a pass because they’re friends with black fellow athletes.

They all agreed that teachers often do not discipline students for throwing the word around, though there are exceptions. On the other hand, teachers are quick to discipline those who use the S‑word, the F‑word, and the B‑word, they said

Jackson said she thinks teachers are often uncomfortable calling out students for using the N‑word.

“But they’re the adults in the situation, so imagine how the student feels when they’re put in that situation,” she said.

Osmanu said that videos showing white students using the N‑word have circulated and that, in his view, the administration didn’t do enough.

He also said that teachers tend to call out black students more for the same behaviors that white students do without getting in trouble. He said he sees teachers call security on black students more often than on white ones.

Canton agreed. She said she often sees teachers reprimand black students for being loud in the hallways, but they won’t say anything to a white student who does the same thing. There is ​“constant policing [of] the black kids,” she said.

Tough Conversations

Just before the end of Tuesday’s BOE meeting, Daur thanked the students and parents who had spoken. ​“The statements that were made today opened up some eyes,” he said. ​“We will struggle with this and we will make mistakes, but we will try.” He finished by encouraging those who had spoken to continue coming to meetings in order to carry on the conversation.

Discussions like the one on Tuesday can be difficult.

“People are so afraid of being called racist that we don’t even get to these conversations,” Khan said in the meeting, echoing a comment from another speaker. 

Conversations about race in schools can be tough because, depending on the setting, people sometimes do not feel comfortable speaking up. Kiely said that she thought the January panel could have benefitted from having teachers of color, but that she could imagine it would be difficult for teachers to talk about their experiences publicly in front of their supervisors.

Students said that conversations about race and inter-racial understanding also need to happen more within the high school.

“We have kids that are sometimes coming in with literally no experience of going to school with African American kids,” said Osmanu. He said he recalled getting to the middle school and hearing from students who went to Bear Path that there had been only two black kids in their grade.

Little said she thought there should be more opportunities for students of different races to work together and come to understand each other. ​“Because we’re so diverse,” she said, ​“it’s essential that we have these opportunities to get to know each other.” She said it took the recent incident with a Hamden BOE employee in East Haven for the school to start facilitating conversations about race.

Many of the students at the BOE meeting have been working to have those conversations. Khan founded a student group called Global Youth Activists at the high school that hosts events and discussions about diversity. Osmanu, Little, and the rest of BHSU organized the Black History Month assembly. Grasty and others have attended meetings with administrators to discuss race in Hamden’s schools.

As students and parents made clear Tuesday evening, it’s time for change. ​“I think there’s a lot of proactivity in the student body that we have to see matched,” said Khan.