Nora Grace-Flood Photo
Highsmith prepares to greet Ridge Hill students for new year.
Hamden’s new superintendent and assistant superintendents popped into schools town-wide on the first day of class with a promise to keep showing up in person — and to help the district pivot to a “new normal” boasting both community and curricula coherence following years of pandemic-impacted education.
At 8:15 a.m. Tuesday, Highsmith could be found saying his second set of “hellos” to elementary students rushing into Ridge Hill School on Carew Road, following an hour of “good morning“s spoken to tired teens making their way to Hamden High School.
Next would be Hamden Middle School, then either Church Street or Helen Street neighborhood elementary schools in Southern Hamden, and finally a 20-minute trip “up north” to some of the town’s most rural schools.
“I’ll have to fill up my tank to make the whole route,” he joked.
At Ridge Hill, Highsmith found something to speak about with each child climbing the stairs to their first day of class.
As two young girls sporting long braids approached him, Highsmith inquired, “Think I could get my hair that long?”
“Your hair’s short,” one retorted. Flipping their hair, they continued towards the school doors.
“Kids tell the truth,” Highsmith said with a shrug.
In between first impressions were long-coming reunions. Tyrell Ford and Sabrina Grant, partners who were dropping their 6‑year-old daughter Kacey, off for her first day of first grade, got a special surprise when they saw their old principal from Hamden High waiting at the elementary school entrance.
Kacey Ford, Sabrina Grant, Gary Highsmith, Tyrell Ford.
The parents said they were pleased to see a favorite school presence promoted to superintendent — and Highsmith was touched to see two familiar faces all grown-up.
The exchange was made possible by low Covid-19 case numbers and last spring’s rescission of the school mask mandate.
“It’s the new normal,” Grant said. “I’m happy we don’t have to wear masks anymore.” She and Highsmith could recognize one another’s faces, she said, and her daughter can begin to excel in picking up social skills and “politeness,” expanding on the groundwork laid down last year in kindergarten.
Rachida Fathi takes a photo of daughter Selma.
Just as the two parents enjoyed observing their daughter blossom through her schooling, they shared similar sentiments regarding Highsmith’s promotion.
“It’s a blessing to see him grow,” Ford said of his former principal. “The sky is the limit.”
Highsmith, in turn, said the same of his old pupils, who first met in a Hamden High trigonometry class before ultimately beginning a family together.
Highsmith remembered having conversations with students like Ford and Grant about “girlfriend or boyfriend drama, not getting along with their parents, or looking for a part-time job.”
He's ready for school, but is school ready for him?
After more than 20 years in the district, he regularly runs into past students around Hamden shops, parks, and even schools, where they are dropping off their own children: “Now we’re having adult conversations. You have to help them understand what their future may hold for them and what their responsibility will be over time.”
Catalyzing community conversations, Highsmith said, is how he plans to settle into the new role. He has pledged to set up a station outside of the Hamden Stop & Shop on Dixwell during September to meet families where they are and reap input regarding how the school district can become better.
And instead of monthly virtual leadership development meetings, Highsmith said, he is planning to convene all of the district’s principals in one building each month to make sure that school leaders are shadowing and observing each other’s classrooms and building cohesive instructional practices on a regular basis.
Ridge Hill students find their classrooms.
“We’re going to focus back on teaching and learning,” he promised. Following a years-long “grace period” through the pandemic, Highsmith said, he is looking to boost academic expectations for all students.
The first move Highsmith made to accomplish that goal was reorganizing administrative responsibilities, hiring two new assistant superintendents to jointly focus on curriculum development and assessment across the district’s schools. (Previously, Highsmith served as the district’s assistant superintendent of human resources, while Chris Melillo, who recently left Hamden to become Newtown’s next superintendent, was solely in charge of curriculum supervision.)
As Highsmith traveled from school to school on Tuesday, in tow were his two new assistant supers: Erin Bailey and Linda Tran Morbidelli.
Bailey previously served as principal of both Dunbar Hill and Bear Path elementary schools as well as the district’s director of English. Morbidelli last served as the district’s director of mathematics.
“We’re a team of three,” Morbidelli said. “Our main goal is to be visible… We’re getting out into the buildings to make sure people have an opportunity to speak with us.”
Erin Bailey, Linda Tran Morbidelli, Gary Highsmith.
In addition to boosting curriculum and instructional cohesion through maximized staff supervision, teacher feedback and inter-departmental communication, Highsmith said that he is still looking to expand mental health support as the district attempts to return students to a pre-pandemic set of academic standards.
Through an evolved contract with local community care center Clifford Beers, students struggling with mental health and emotional regulation will now have the opportunity to access free “care coordinators” who will provide mental health support directly to youth at their families’ homes outside of school hours.
Though students no longer have to wear masks at school or physically distance from one another, Highsmith said that arrival of a new normal does not mean students are not still “suffering the residual impact” of a global pandemic, loss of learning, and familial strife.
“Increasing expectations doesn’t mean you pull back on the grace,” he stated.
While Highsmith is looking to facilitate a district-wide recovery from a difficult few years, it’s not just students who are suffering from pandemic fallout.
Some of the most significant challenges facing the district, Highsmith said, will be staff shortages and bus driver tardiness.
Highsmith said the district is currently down by around seven certified staff following a series of late resignations. Part of that, Highsmith said, is staff arguing for “higher quality of life” following experiences working from home during Covid-19 — he said multiple teachers told him they were leaving the district to pursue jobs that did not require a daily commute.
Fortunately, those current staffing gaps are nothing compared to the shortages experienced last year, during which schools consistently had to shut down due to a lack of qualified teachers and substitutes available to keep classrooms open and running.
Problems like a shrinking number of bus drivers, Highsmith said, are also exacerbated by a dwindling Board of Education budget. Highsmith stated that another one of his goals for the coming year is to make sure that the school district is not flat-funded for a third time in recent memory by the town’s Legislative Council.
How does he plan to do it? Like all of his other aims, through proactive conversation.
“We will be inviting council members into the classroom… in hopes that our next budget we get reflects peoples’ understanding of the work that we do,” he said.
Nora Grace-Flood’s reporting is supported in part by a grant from Report for America.