Ed Board Member Resigns. Twice

At last week’s school board meeting, President Darnell Goldson said that his fellow board member Frank Redente was out sick.

That’s partly true, Redente said a few days later. He hadn’t been seen for months, he explained, because he was ​“sick” of being on the Board of Education.

For the last three months, there has been a miscommunication about Redente’s status on the board. Redente said he’d resigned in early September; City Hall said it thought he’d immediately changed his mind.

Redente skipped the last seven school board meetings in a row. He hasn’t shown up in person since a July 31 board retreat, though he called in by phone on Aug. 21 and Sept. 12. Goldson also rang him up on Nov. 26 for an hourlong executive session on Chief Operating Officer Will Clark’s departure.

The confusion finally came to an end on Thursday, when Redente sent in a second letter making clear that his resignation is official, effective immediately.

Mayor Toni Harp accepted it. She will now begin the process of picking a replacement who will serve out the rest of Redente’s term, which wasn’t supposed to end until December 2020.

Redente’s resignation letter was three sentences long. In it, he thanked the mayor for the chance to serve and said he has no hard feelings.

“It has been an honor to serve the students, parents and educators of our City as a Board of Education Member. However, for personal reasons, please accept my resignation from the Board of Education effective immediately,” he wrote on Dec. 13. ​“Once again, thank you for the opportunity to serve, I believe the Board of Education is making great strides on behalf of the students in our district.”

A longtime employee at Farnam Neighborhood House, Redente joined the board in January 2017. He brought a dedication to helping at-risk youth make it to graduation and beyond, said Jason Bartlett, the mayor’s liaison to the school board and the youth services director.

“Frank has always been known as everybody’s dad, grandpa and uncle throughout the city. He tried to reengage kids so they didn’t get off on the wrong path,” Bartlett said. ​“As a board member, I think he brought that same sense of wanting to help get kids through school and overcome obstacles, making sure they had choices in their education and resources and support. He was a real champion when it came to speaking for our at-risk youth.”

Super Regrets

On the board, Redente served as chair of the Finance & Operations Committee. He went after the facilities team for leaving the lights on after kids went home and for not fixing up obvious disrepair.

“One of the things that Frank did bring to light was the management of facilities and awarding of contracts,” Bartlett said. ​“He was very sharp and focused in his role on the Finance Committee, making sure that taxpayers are not overcharged in change orders and calling into question how bids are awarded. The oversight on those things was very helpful to the rest of the board members and to the process.”

In his most decisive action, Redente halted the superintendent search process, causing two top candidates to drop out of the running.

Redente later, in a 4 – 3 vote, favored Carol Birks to become the next superintendent. He said that, at the time, his first choice was Gary Highsmith, but there weren’t enough votes to make him superintendent. He said his second choice was Pamela Brown, but he voted for Birks because other board members pressured him to the point where he said he was so stressed he came down with pneumonia.

In retrospect, he said, he regrets that choice.

“That was my biggest mistake,” he said. ​“I should have held myself strong.”

He faulted her leadership style, which he said has led to an exodus of senior employees, including Chief Operating Officer Will Clark and Assistant Superintendent for Instructional Leadership Gil Traverso.

Over the summer, Redente said, he thought for a long time about whether to continue serving on the board. He said he initially thought that the role would be ​“all about the kids,” and he looked forward to going to the Monday night meetings.

But he said he soon realized that it was all about politics.

He said there were so many ​“secret meetings” that he didn’t feel right about. He said that other board members were always whipping his vote, either by giving him orders right before a meeting started or calling him ​“upstairs” after a meeting ended.

“You’ve gotta take the politics out of it. There’s too much behind-the-scenes stuff,” Redente said. ​“I feel better now that I’m not under that pressure. I made up my own mind. No one told me about it. I was just off with the whole thing, the way they were running the board.”

He said he’s ​“embarrassed” by his tenure on the Board of Ed. ​“I can’t shop in New Haven,” he said, because too many people come up to him to gossip about the board’s in-fighting or ask about his recent absences. ​“I don’t think I got anything done,” he said.

Bye … I’m Back … Bye Again …

Redente first dropped off a letter of resignation at City Hall on Sept. 5. He said he hand-delivered it to Andrea Scott, the mayor’s executive assistant. He said Mayor Harp was right there but said nothing, though she later took him out to dinner.

Within 12 hours, Redente asked Pattie Lawlor, the former deputy chief of staff, to put it ​“on hold.” He said that he called back by the middle of October or early in November to tell city officials to ​“let it go through.”

“I never got any letters from anybody else, any phone calls from anybody else,” he said. ​“I assumed that they accepted it.”

In response to a public-records request from the Independent, the mayor’s office said it no longer had a copy of the original letter, which led Redente to believe that they ​“must have ripped the other letter up.”

Bartlett said part of the confusion arose over when Redente’s resignation would take effect. He said the September letter was ​“unexpected,” and he asked Redente to consider staying on until his replacement could be seated.

“It does take a long time [for an appointment] to get through the Board of Alders, up to three months to get someone seated,” he said. ​“I had a conversation with Frank, and I asked him and others asked him to think about it: Did he want to resign effective immediately or did he want to resign with an effective date 30 days or 60 days out? On reflection, he thought about it and withdrew his resignation. But at this point, he’s unable to participate in the way he’d like.”

Redente said that Mayor Harp should choose one of the ​“outspoken parents” who are there at every meeting to fill his empty spot on the Board of Education, as long as they know what they’re talking about and can build consensus. He suggested Robert Gibson, a retired teacher from James Hillhouse High School, might make a good pick.

“There’s so many good people in that audience that know what they’re talking about,” Redente said. ​“Why don’t they give them a chance? They can’t. They want control. They want control of it all.”