Divided Ed Board Selects Birks

By a 4 – 3 vote, New Haven’s Board of Education selected Carol Birks as its choice to become the next superintendent of schools — at the end of a raucous meeting that signaled that she would begin the job with the challenge of winning over a sizable sector of skeptics.

The vote took place at a tense special meeting held at Beecher School, where it was standing room only. Four cops were assigned to keep the peace, but that didn’t stop one board member from challenging another to a duel and students from threatening to walk out of class next week in protest.

The meeting lasted two and a half hours. The first two hours consisted of parents, students and other members of the public blasting the expected choice of Birks over the two other finalists for the position, Pamela Brown and Gary Highsmith.

Only two speakers explicitly endorsed Birks for the position, while 30 came out against her. (Click here for a story detailing the three finalists’ backgrounds and applications.) Opponents said they didn’t want to see Birks get the job because of alleged connections to charter schools, support for student-based budgeting and emphasis on standardized testing data.

Mayor Toni Harp and fellow board members Jamell Cotto, Darnell Goldson and Frank Redente voted for Birks. Redente, who had been under intense public pressure to change his vote, did not show up in person to the meeting; he phoned his vote in.

Board members Carlos Torre, Ed Joyner, and Che Dawson voted against Birks.

“Shame on you! Shame on you!” members of the crowd chanted when Goldson cast his vote for Birks, as he yelled it back at them. ​“Shame on you!”

Birks hasn’t accepted the position yet, and she’s been seeking advice about whether she should. If she does want the job, she’ll still need to undergo a background check and negotiate a contract, subject to the board’s approval.

Qualifications for the Job

Mayor Harp spelled out her reasons for supporting Birks in an open letter to the community posted Monday afternoon on Facebook.

“In my view, she emerged as the candidate best prepared to be effective in the position beginning on day one; she’ll bring to the district exceptional leadership qualities,” Harp wrote.

“I am drawn to Dr. Birks’ familiarity with New Haven Public Schools: she coached principals in the district, she endorses its commitment to restorative practices in disciplinary matters, and she shares my goal for students to achieve across-the-board at grade level, to maximize their chances to succeed. More than other candidates, Dr. Birks demonstrates a clear grasp of complex public education budgeting and the unique, yet interrelated funding responsibilities of the local, state, and federal governments. As public sector funding continues to shrink, and because of the crucial role financing plays in bridging the state’s achievement gap, every possible funding opportunity must be identified and pursued.

“Finally, my endorsement of Dr. Birks is the result of lengthy, in-depth interviews with the finalists, during which I got to know each of them. My choice was determined with the best interests of New Haven Public Schools in mind, solely so it can provide the best possible opportunity for all the students and families it serves.”

During an interview on WNHH radio’s ​“Mayor Monday” show earlier in the day, Harp said that the other candidates had spoken at least as much as Birks about focusing on student test data.

Birks, who was not present for Monday night’s vote, currently works as chief of staff for Hartford Public Schools. She has responsibility for overseeing administrative services, like labor relations for the 4,000-member staff; assisting with the $417 million budget; and leading a $100 million project to co-locate three academies in a renovated building. The job pays a $170,000 salary. Previously, as Hartford’s assistant superintendent for four years, Birks developed a training academy to support the growth of principals and administrators.

At the meeting, several educators argued Birks embodied the privatization of public schools, citing her experience at for-profit education consulting firms (Supes Academy, Global Partnership Schools) and her position on the board of directors for a charter school network (Achievement First Hartford Academy). As in New Haven, Achievement First in Hartford has a board slot reserved for a member of the Board of Education.

Teachers from the New Haven Educators Collective objected to the plans they heard Birks describe at last week’s community forum. Natalya Braginsky argued that expanding the administrative team at Meadow Street would come at the expense of nurses, guidance counselors and social workers in schools, while opening new charters, like Elm City Imagine or Cofield Academy, would divest funds from traditional public schools, where they’re most needed.

Nurys De La Cruz, a teaching assistant at Columbus School who spent 28 years in New Haven schools, called Birks ​“a corporate person.” She said Birks lacked classroom experience. (Birks taught language arts in Bridgeport from 1996 – 1999; Brown taught bilingual classes in Los Angeles and Las Vegas from 1978 – 1984 and 1986 – 1987.)

“Three years of experience teaching? I have more experience!” De La Cruz said.

The two speakers who explicitly supported Birks were clergymen: Rev. Roger Wilkins and Rev. Kelcy Steele. Steele, pastor of Varick Memorial AME Zion, sits on the board of local charter school Booker T. Washington Academy. ​“I believe that no one cares about our children more than this board,” Rev. Roger Wilkins said.

Voices Ignored

It took the school board a year to pick a new superintendent after it pushed out the previous superintendent, Garth Harries, last fall. Retired former Superintendent Reggie Mayo has been filling in on an interim basis since then.

As the search neared its end, community members rose up to say they felt their input didn’t matter — contrary to board members’ statements that they cared about holding more forums to hear what folks had to say.

That disappointment was presented most poignantly when Marc Gonzalez, the son of the late board president Daisy Gonzalez, criticized the process during the public-comment session. His mom’s role was to advocate for parents, he said, and he argued that that board now ignored those voices by selecting Birks rather than Brown.

Thousands of parents and students expressed a clear preference for Brown in petitions and public meetings over the past week. In an Independent ​“True Vote” poll, 67.5 percent of the over 1,200 respondents preferred Brown or Highsmith; just 13.7 percent favored Birks. An online petition against Birks also garnered 950 signatures, some from out of town; on printed sheets, those names filled the back walls at Beecher on Monday.

“This is not a matter of questioning qualifications or the potential ability of any of the candidates, but rather is about how this board asked for community and student involvement and is not listening to what they have to say,” said Gonzalez, a junior at Hill Regional Career High School. “[Daisy] would never let education become political.”

Harp and Goldson stared ahead and scribbled on papers as Gonzalez spoke; Joyner, who had tears in his eyes, covered his face.

One of the city’s most disenfranchised groups, Gonzalez said, is New Haven’s Spanish-speaking community. In 2015, Latinos became the largest demographic group in city public schools (making up 43 percent of the student body), yet their voices are often absent from the discussion — in part, because previous superintendents haven’t been bilingual, he said.

Luis Santiago, father of two students at Columbus Family Academy, said that it bothers him that parents like him who speak only Spanish were left out of the search process and had no way of getting involved. Speaking in Spanish, five of the seven board members didn’t know what he was saying. Then, in broken English, Santiago added, ​“How does it feel for this board not to understand?”

Students Walk Off

The school board’s two student members, Jacob Spell and Makayla Dawkins, who don’t get to cast votes but who did sit in on the board’s interviews with the three finalists, publicly supported Brown.

They presented petitions Monday night with over 800 signatures collected in a single day from high school students at Hillhouse, Career and Co-Op, all opposing Birks.

Both reps called out their colleagues on the board as hypocrites who were letting politics get in the way, prompting audience members to take to their feet.

“Are we just getting lip service and being shushed by our elders, saying our opinions matter when it really does not?” Dawkins asked. ​“Let’s act our age. We need someone who’s the most qualified. Keep the politics out of our education.”

“I’m willing to listen to adults, learn from adults, and I respect all adults on this board. But I’m not afraid of adults,” Spell said. ​“I can sleep at night, knowing that I’m fighting for what the students want, so I hope each and every board members can sleep at night too, knowing they aren’t doing the right thing.”

Multiple parents also took issue with city Youth Services Director Jason Bartlett’s recent comments to the Independent (in this article), in which he said that the two student representatives could have been ​“swayed by other adults in the room.”

“If anybody is probably the most authentic, it’s children. ​‘Real knows real,’ in the words of Gary Highsmith,” said Kirsten Hopes-McFadden, an eighth-grade social studies teacher at ESUMS. ​“The people that are going to be persuaded and bought for a bag of potato chips are the adults. Children are going to do what’s right. They have not been jaded by all the political corruption.”

She added, ​“Please take leadership from the children.”

Njija-Ife Waters, one of the two parents who served on the search committee and covered her mouth with duct tape in protest during the meeting, said the school board’s actions would come back to bite it.

“You rolled your eyes at me; you smirked at me; you did all those things to me, as one of those parent representatives pushing you to make the right decision,” she said. ​“Now picture this: All of your teachers walking out the school, all of your students walking out the school. We’re going to walk out, and you tell me what you’re going to do next.”

Dawkins said students are planning walk-outs at high schools across the district on Monday, Nov. 27.

Duel Challenged

After two hours of pleas for them to change their minds, the board members narrowly cast their vote for Birks.

Goldson said that the board couldn’t rely on crowd sizes in its decision-making, arguing that a public crowd came to Harries’s defense before the board fired him. (At that meeting, a year ago, Harp’s defenders included school administrators, charter school advocates, the Rev. Boisie Kimber, businessmen like the head of the Chamber of Commerce, and teachers union reps.) That statement earned Goldson boos of disagreement.

Joyner cut Goldson off before he could get any further, saying that discussion should relate only to debate about picking Birks.

“Stop interrupting me!” Goldson said, after Joyner interjected a second time.

The room broke into full chaos, as the audience drowned Goldson out by chanting, ​“Shame on you!” As he picked up again, Goldson shot back at Birks’s detractors for ​“publicly lynching this lady.”

“It was shameful what people did,” he said. ​“You have disrespected this African-American woman, and I will not sit by silently while you continue to do it.”

The two student representatives walked out, and Joyner moved to call the vote.

Right after the 4 – 3 result, Torre asked for the floor.

”Tonight this was a turning point in New Haven public schools,” he declared. ​“The future of our students’ education is now in the hands not of those who dedicated their lives and careers to education, but in the hands of those who dedicated their lives and careers to politics.”

“This was a done deal,” Joyner added.

Joyner that he didn’t agree with the board rejecting a previous candidate in the process whom he supported, Orlando Ramos, a Hispanic regional superintendent in Milwaukee, because he’d gone bankrupt. The, he brought up decade-old dirt on other board members, claiming that Goldson and Cotto had had personal financial problems similar to Ramos’s. Cotto has twice filed for bankruptcy, according to court records.

Goldson threatened to file a lawsuit; Joyner lunged toward him and challenged him to a duel at Bowen Field, Hillhouse’s football field. Security broke up the board members, and the meeting was adjourned.

Angry parents swarmed around Cotto, saying he’d sold out the community he vowed to represent.

“I think we did the right thing,” he said, as Columbus parent Fatima Rojas called him a ​“disgrace.”

Cotto headed for the exit, but stopped to explain his first major decision on the board to a reporter.

“She’s the best,” he said of Birks. Why? He opened a folder to a handwritten list of talking points, which he read, saying Birks would focus on the ​“needs of the whole child,” partner with all people, institute ​“best practices in education,” and ​“change belief systems.”

Cotto added that he’d heard from a sizable constituency who wanted Birks to get the job. He said that he couldn’t produce any emails or text messages as proof, but he added, ​“We have plenty of letters.”

Bartlett, the mayor’s liaison on the school board, said Birks had her work cut out for her to ​“get converts.” But he said he believes that the community will get behind her as the new superintendent once she has a chance to ​“explain what her vision is and how to create change.”

“I have every confidence that she can and will do that,” he said.

Bartlett added that Birks will institute a ​“new era” for New Haven’s schools. He said he believes Birks will initially focus on strengthening the district’s programs for English-language learners and engaging parents — two weak spots magnified by the search process. Opening new charter schools, he added, would not be at the top of her agenda.

“I don’t think there’s any appetite for any charters in New Haven,” he said. ​“We heard that loud and clear.”

Click on the above Facebook Live video to watch the meeting.

Previous coverage of the superintendent search:

• Wanted: Schools Chief To Rebuild Trust
• Infighting Puts Super Search On Hold
• Super Search Gives Nutmeggers 2nd Look
• ​“Tonight Has Been An Embarrassment”
• 2 Superintendent Candidates Withdraw
• Read Their Resumes
• Supe Candidates Split On Charters
• Student Rep: School Board Should Reconsider
• Opposition Mounts To Birks
• Highsmith: No Deal For #2