Hillhouse To NHPS: We Need More Help Now

All is not well at the city’s second largest public school, according to a group of Hillhouse High School educators and parents who raised the alarm to the Board of Education about overburdened staff, too many teacher vacancies, inadequate support for students, and inconsistent communication from school and district leadership.

Eight Hillhouse staffers and parents raised those concerns at Monday’s latest biweekly school board meeting. Board members Matt Wilcox, John Carlos Serana Musser, Mayor Justin Elicker, Yesenia Rivera, and Orlando Yarborough attended the meeting in person at Barack Obama School at 69 Farnham Ave, while board members Ed Joyner and Abie Benitez Zoomed into the hybrid meeting online.

The educators and parents who spoke up on Monday wore t‑shirts and hoodies reading ​“Hillhouse is radical” and ​“House family” as they addressed the school board.

In total nearly 100 people filled the school’s gym for the meeting to demonstrate their support of Hillhouse staff speaking up and advocating for a better learning atmosphere for students, and a better workplace for educators. 

During the meeting’s public comment portion, Hillhouse staff shared about having untenable student caseloads due to teacher vacancies, inequitable resourcing for the school, and about feeling as though the school has been operating on its own without investment or aid from the district. 

“I have never felt so diminished and neglected than I do now,” Hillhouse educator Raven Mitchell told the school board. ​“Enough is enough,” she continued. Too many Hillhouse staff like herself feel overlooked in a school they love. ​“We have a hard working and dedicated staff whose concerns for student, staff safety regulations and policy and foundational support have been overlooked time and time again.”

Staffers like Mitchell said on Monday that these issues are in part due to consistent administrative turnover in recent years, as the school has gone through principal after principal, and is currently led by Interim Principal Peggy Moore. They also said these problems have to do with the district’s neglect of the school’s needs by not including the school community in policy making and decision making for years at Hillhouse. 

When asked for comment by the Independent, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) Superintendent Madeline Negrón did not respond directly to the specific concerns raised by Hillhouse staff and parents at Monday’s meeting. Instead, she wrote: ​“I appreciate the active engagement of the Hillhouse High School community in advocating for the strongest possible school environment. Throughout my visits and walkthroughs at Hillhouse, I have recognized there are issues affecting the success of our students and staff that have not yet been resolved. I am committed to working collaboratively with the community to address the school’s needs, to leverage its current strengths, and to bring about the changes necessary to support its students and staff.” 

She continued: ​“I am confident that, together, we will develop a plan to move Hillhouse forward. I have already targeted equitable resources for this purpose. I believe that we will soon be in a position to make lasting improvements to support our students and staff.”

Negrón also updated the school board and public during Monday’s meeting that the Hillhouse School Planning and Management Team (SPMT) participated in a principal search process and have recommended three finalists to her for final interviews. 

"Lack Of Basic Resources & Support"

Mitchell, a Hillhouse educator, testified about being a NHPS student, student worker, paraprofessional and now educator and parent.

She and others cautioned the Board of Education that the district is at risk of losing new staff because there is so little support and a lack of resources available to staff at Hillhouse.

She added that students are suffering from issues such as teacher vacancies, poor infrastructure, unsafe conditions, and ​“below par” classes as a result of limited materials. 

“Our parents protest that when they seek answers beyond what our building can provide, they are met with the same closed doors and unanswered emails that we find,” Mitchell said. 

Hillhouse is in need of better communication, transparency, and accountability at every level, Mitchell declared. 

Due to consistently unmet needs, Mitchell told school leaders ​“we are exhausted and no longer performing at our best and our students suffer.”

“I do not know how many more times I have to look at my classroom of students and tell them ​‘I do not know’ when they ask why things are the way they are at Hillhouse but not at their friends’ schools, which I must add are still in the New Haven Public School system.”

Mitchell said she struggles to not tell her students that ​“we teach and preach about equality and cannot even provide the equity that they are due and most definitely deserve.” 

Mitchell and other staff requested to be heard, that parents and staff are included in decision making, and receive communication about the school’s annual budget. ​“We should not be at the tail end of decisions made on our behalf without our consultation, as we are professionals and deserve to be treated as such.” 

The educators also emphasized that they were speaking up Monday not only because it was long overdue, but because they want better for their school and students. 

Second-year Hillhouse history teacher John Saksa said during his first year of teaching it was ​“the teachers and students that gave me the greatest reasons to stay” and offered him more support than the administrative team.

“Currently new teacher retention is at an all time low on account of the lack of basic resources and support,” Saksa said. 

During his first year Saksa said he was heavily reliant on the kindness and emotional labor of other educators. 

“The greatest strength of Hillhouse is the community of teachers that are within it,” Saksa added. 

From his colleagues he’s learned to better his craft, navigate the school, and build relationships with students.

Students also lack basic resources like technology, he said. Hillhouse students were without laptops during the school year’s first marking period, including in computer classes. He added that the special education department is overburdened with a lack of paraprofessionals and class sizes that are double the recommended numbers for effective instruction. 

He requested educators get more autonomy over decision-making at the school. 

“As conditions currently stand, they’re often debilitating to teachers new and old and serve to actively undermine our staff’s capacity to enable students and the community to flourish as they deserve,” Saksa said. 

Sara Armstrong, the parent of a Hillhouse senior, also urged leaders to give Hillhouse students and staff the same care and attention they give other schools in the district.

Armstrong said these issues have persisted for years and are not just a result of the school’s high leadership turnover. But, she added, frequently departing leadership adds to the school’s instability. 

Armstrong pointed out that the district returned unspent school improvement grant (SIG) funds to the state last school year due to mismanagement and no communication of the funds being awarded to staff. 

NHPS spokesperson Justin Harmon confirmed for the Independent that last year’s Hillhouse principal did not inform staff of spending plans for $300,000 of SIG funds. 

He added that an estimated $50,000 to $70,000 of those funds had to be returned to the state while $191,965 were approved to be carried over into this school year’s budget. 

Armstrong raised concerns on Monday that the school’s juniors and seniors did not receive laptops until Dec. 5, which may have impacted their ability to work on college applications and engage with Google Classroom. 

“If seniors across the district had school-issued tech and Hillhouse seniors did not, how can this be justified? It’s egregious.” 

Armstrong continued: ​“If something would not fly at [Wilbur] Cross, at ESUMS, it is not OK at Hillhouse. If there are things that go on at Hillhouse that are not good enough or acceptable for your child, your grandchild, your niece, your nephew, it is not good enough for any child.”

Hillhouse school counselor Haruki Cubeta-Yonamine testified that she too cares for Hillhouse and supported Monday’s advocacy.

She urged for increased support to Hillhouse’s multilingual learners after serving as the school’s multilingual school counselor for the past three years. The student population is outgrowing the supports available. 

During her first year at Hillhouse in 2020 – 21, the school year ended with 216 multilingual learners. That number has since increased to 266 multilingual learners, she said. This population now makes up 23 percent of the Hillhouse student body and represents 17 languages and 23 countries. 

In the past month, Cubeta-Yonamine said, the school has received 34 new multilingual students. 

She reported that Hillhouse’s student population is made up of 46 percent Hispanic/Latinx students, 47 percent Black/African American, 4 percent Asian, and 5 percent White. 

“New Haven is a sanctuary city, and we need to ensure that we have a sanctuary school,” she said. 

She requested professional development regarding cultural competency, resources to support newcomers in and outside the classroom, and innovative community outreach to provide students with opportunities to learn useful skills as they transition to a new home. 

She added that over the years, Hillhouse has increased its partnerships with community resources like Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services, hired bilingual tutors, and created an ESL class for newcomers. ​“But we have a long way to go. I remain hopeful and optimistic that we are moving in the right direction, but we cannot continue to do this work in isolation.” 

Hillhouse math teacher Karalyn Meineke has been teaching at the school for five years. She called for equitable staffing and resources at the high school. 

“The math department has been understaffed for the past two years,” she said. 

She requested more innovative plans to keep the current teachers in place and said short-term solutions just won’t cut it. For example, she said, the school dissolved several classes due to staff vacancies, which only caused more strain on current educators. She is currently at capacity with 125 students in her classes, with most of those students being ninth graders.

New Haven Federation of Teachers President Leslie Blatteau emphasized to the school board that Monday’s turnout is one to celebrate as civic engagement, and ​“is a sign of a healthy democracy.” 

“When people show up, it means we care,” she added. 

She emphasized the need for healing and capacity building in the school district. 

She pointed out an ESSER-funded $175,000 agreement on Monday’s agenda for the board to approve the hiring of five full-time trained literacy tutors at Wexler Grant after the district decided last year to downsize teaching staff at Wexler. 

“The issue is not prioritizing the needs of Wexler Grant students,” she said. ​“The issue is that we’re going to spend close to $200,000 to work with students this year, and then next year, how will our overall system have improved? How will we have demonstrated capacity building to ensure our teachers and paras have professional support to also be trained in Orton Gillingham and meet the needs of our struggling readers, not just this year but in the years to come?” 

She described the proposed agreement as outsourcing the work of the district’s dedicated educators and a missed opportunity to invest in current educators to build their capacity. 

“Progress isn’t always linear. Sometimes to go forward we have to pause, we got to circle up, we got to listen to the people most impacted by the problem,” she said.

She urged the district to prioritize providing Hillhouse with compassion, collective wisdom, resources, and support to heal. 

Other members of the public, including educators and parents, testified about student behavioral issues at Hillhouse going unaddressed and a lack of facility repairs and upkeep. 

The Board no longer has a process that gives the public the chance to hear Board members’ responses to testimony shared during the meeting. 

However, during Board Secretary Edward Joyner’s teaching and learning committee report Monday, he said, ​“When Hillhouse was run well, it was because the families, the students, and the leaders and teachers in that school were all united around a safe and orderly learning environment. I have full confidence in Dr. Negrón’s ability to reset the conditions in all of our schools that need that.” 

“What I would say to the community is that this problem is bigger than just the board and teachers. It is bigger because we’re embedded in an environment that has never provided adequate resources for school systems that teach poor children.”