Hillhouse Tour Rustles Up Critiques

Hillhouse teachers told alders who toured their school Monday that they want an academy structure with fewer divisions, allowing them more autonomy over grading and offering students a wider range of class options.

The Board of Alders Education Committee visited the troubled high school for a few hours to hear firsthand from students, teachers and principals their thoughts on the school’s recent changes — before the committee holds a public hearing on the subject at City Hall on March 16.

Committee members left the tour with the sense that the academy structure is a good idea implemented without adequate resources or communication from district leaders and administrators to staff and students. The school is broken into four such ​“academies,” or schools within the school with special themes.

Days before this school year started, the district announced its decision to add the fourth mini-“academy” within Hillhouse and rearrange the administrators. The school’s four academies are: Law Public Safety and Health (LPSH); Innovation, Design, Entrepreneurship and Action (IDEA); the new Social Media and Arts (SMART) for freshmen starting this year; and a College Career Readiness (CCR) for seniors. That fourth academy is being phased out by next year.

The Board of Education met last week to discuss how to define the parameters of the alders’ tour. Board members Darnell Goldson and Edward Joyner, both of whom have ties to Hillhouse (Goldson attended as a student; Joyner worked there), joined alders on the tour, along with district Superintendent Garth Harries, ed board Chief of Staff Lola Garcia-Blocker, and Gemma Joseph Lumpkin, chief of youth, family and community engagement.

The school day ended at 12:15 p.m. Monday since teachers had professional learning sessions, meaning the tour was short. Some alders visited classes before the official tour started at 11:30. The schedule included a half hour of classroom visits, a half hour discussion with students, a half hour with teachers, and a final talk with the principals.

Familiar Ground

Three alders on the visit — Board President Tyisha Walker, West Rock Alder Carlton Staggers and Westville Alder Darryl Brackeen, Jr. — are Hillhouse alumni. Staggers has had four children graduate from the school.

He and Brackeen stopped to talk to staff they recognized in the hallways. Brackeen said being back in the building brought up a ​“flood of memories.” He recalled taking French in a part of the school that used to be the language wing.

Staggers noted that the location of the ​“caf” had changed since his student days.

“Any relation to Corey?” AP US History teacher Alex Sinclair asked Staggers as they stopped in his classroom.

“That’s my son,” Staggers said.

“That’s my boy!” Sinclair said.

The alders watched students prepare for an upcoming debate on why U.S. leaders decided to end prohibition in two small groups.

When Brackeen and Wooster Square Alder Greenberg, the Education Committee’s chair, stopped in the ​“computer applications” class, the teacher told them that the Internet was going slowly that day and had been all week.

“You will have to go onto Microsoft Office,” she announced to the students.

“How Are We Supposed To Learn?

In the cafeteria, students selected by the student council met with alders and district leaders to answer questions about the direction of the school.

LPSH junior Coby Ukadike said he appreciateds the diversity and strength of Hillhouse’s afterschool and in-school programs, including the culinary program,

But those programs are spread out among the academies and students are not necessarily aware of all the opportunities that exist, he said. Students often cannot take classes because not enough teachers exist to offer them in each academy — and they cannot take classes in other academies.

“I think we need more resources,” he said. That includes staff such as an extra guidance counselor to advise students of their options for college and career opportunities. That also includes books and computers that are not ripped or broken, as well as working Internet.

“Please let me go upstairs to show you how the computers run,” he said. ​“Sometimes the computers don’t even turn on. How are we supposed to learn?”

“Your Internet access is pretty weak too?” Goldson asked.

“Is it weak? It doesn’t work!” Ukadike said. ​“I would love for you to take a look at our books.”

Ukadike said he likes his academy and has discovered many opportunities through it. An academy structure with more resources would be more successful, he said.

One student in the SMART Academy — the brand-new academy for freshmen this year — said she does not have access to as many extracurriculars or electives as students in the other academies. When she first came to Hillhouse, she was not aware that she would be separated into an academy with just 70 students in a school with more than 900 students, she said.

LPSH junior Devonte Fletcher said he loves being in LPSH, but he worries that he will not know most of the people in his graduating class. ​“We should build relationships in high school,” he said. ​“So when we’re adults and [fellow student] George needs something I have, I can give it to him.”

He is the drum major of the marching band, which ​“has taken New Haven by storm,” he said. But the school has only one bus, meaning the band and dance team cannot travel with the sports teams to away games.

“Let us make New Haven an attraction,” he said. ​“I wouldn’t transfer. I’m proud to call myself House Fam.”

How can the city make the academies succeed while also bringing a sense of community back to the school? Alder President Walker asked. She said she met Fletcher’s mother at Hillhouse although they were in different years — since there were no divisions in the school.

Hillhouse has had small learning academies in the past, said Joyner, who served as a teacher and assistant principal of the school. ​“But they didn’t have divisions between those academies,” he said. ​“Students had access to all the teachers.”

Harries said he has already promised to fund more buses for the school.

Teacher Buy-In

In the next meeting, teachers brought up a variety of kinks in the current system: flawed class scheduling, an ineffective mastery-based learning model.

Alder Staggers encouraged them to ​“come to the light” and share the reality of teaching at Hillhouse. ​“We’re trying to help solve” the problems that exist, he said.

Science teacher Michele Moore started with a positive: Freshman seminar classes help bring the ​“real world into the classroom” while getting students prepared for college. Then she raised a concern: Students are wandering the hallways and stairwells when they are not supposed to be there, with no supervision. ​“They could be doing anything out there,” she said.

Social studies teacher Vincenzo Sullo began with a strength of the school’s new structure: a 38-minute period called academic support, or study hall, where students are allowed to independently tackle their school work and get support from staff in the building. ​“We need to tighten it up a little bit,” he said.

Sinclair said that academic support is normally a ​“waste of time,” but that he pushed to have all his AP US History students in his academic support period, to get them extra support before the AP exam. ​“I made it good,” he said. ​“Now my academic support class is an actual class.”

Sullo agreed with Sinclair that the new schedule takes away time from AP classes, which used to meet daily, and now meet every other day. He teaches AP Psychology and sees his students half the amount of time than when Hillhouse was on a ​“four by four” schedule, with AP classes getting students two credits and double the time.

Just because students are getting the requisite number of classroom hours doesn’t mean the time is valued equally, Sinclair said.

The academies are not the issue, said Jack Paulishen, CCR social studies teacher. ​“There’s not a lot of communication between academies.”

Though Hillhouse has partially adopted the district’s focus on mastery-based learning, which emphasizes mastering content over grades, the system is not effective in practice, teachers said Monday.

Teachers are not allowed to give students Ds or Fs, before the final quarter. Instead, they have to give students an ​“NR,” which means the student is ​“not ready” or not on track to pass the class, Sullo said.

Different academies use different grading systems, with some giving ratings from 1 through 4, and others using the traditional number grade.

Students receiving ​“NR” grades are supposed to re-do assessments for skills they did not master and work to learn the material. But many don’t. ​“I don’t think kids are taking advantage of that,” said Lisa Rodriguez, who leads Hillhouse JROTC. ​“It’s not giving them a sense of urgency to fix it.”

The ​“NR” grades make it hard for coaches to know whether student-athletes are doing well enough to play in games, said physical education teacher Denisha Williams, who graduated from Hillhouse in 2000.

Hillhouse teachers are encouraged to do mastery-based grading, not mastery-based learning, Sullo said, where it should be the other way around.

CCR uses the traditional grading system, not mastery-based learning, Paulishen said.

Sullo said he was told by district officials that teachers would have more autonomy, but they have none. ​“I said, ​‘Central office never makes it happen,’” he said. ​“Every time the mayor comes or the governor comes, all of sudden people are running around with screwdrivers.”

Paulishen said the school needs a plan that has more teacher buy-in. He suggested a new system where students have majors instead of being assigned to academies, and can take a wide variety of classes, instead of being limited.

Each academy has a teacher responsible for a core class, Moore pointed out. Hillhouse now has three chemistry teachers where it used to have two teaching a similar number of students — tying up teachers who could be offering electives or other classes, she said.

She thanked alders for coming to the school and holding the hearing. When Mayor Toni Harp visited the school, ​“whatever happened in that meeting didn’t speak for me,” she said.

Brackeen said he appreciated the teachers’ candid responses.

“I believe the sense of House Fam is still around, but we do need to connect the dots,” he said. ​“I have a vested interest in this school. The honesty we’ve gotten today is very important.”

Planning A Hearing

Wrapping up the day with the school’s three principals at the end of the tour, Board of Education members debated how alders should structure their March 16 hearing. Joyner suggested alders narrow the scope of the hearing to a few issues, including the schedule, curriculum offerings, counseling opportunities and grading. ​“Let’s make it a student-based hearing,” he said.

Goldson, a former alder, said that alders cannot control what issues people may want to comment on and that school board members should meet with teachers and students to develop a plan for improving the situation at Hillhouse.

Harries asked whether the hearing would open with comments from administrators.

“We have to decide” as a committee, Alder Greenberg said.

Principal Zakiyyah Baker, who coordinates across all academies, said she was ​“nervous about there being a hearing for Hillhouse without having a conversation around other schools.” Students ​“deserve to feel adults are on their side,” she said.

“I wouldn’t worry about other schools,” Joyner said. ​“Let us worry about that.”

Hillhouse junior Coral Ortiz, a non-voting Board of Ed member, asked Greenberg to keep in mind that alders have a lot of power in affecting the way the school is perceived ​“if you make a stance.” Students’ belief in the school is ​“diminishing,” she said.

“We will take these things under advisement,” Greenberg said.

Baker said 95 percent of freshmen continued to sophomore year from last year, up from 76 percent the year before. ​“Those things are overshadowed by the fact that we do support students that have some of the most challenges, in this building,” she said.

“That’s a great statement, but that’s not what teachers are saying,” Goldson said. Teachers said they did not have enough resources or support to do a good job, he said. ​“We’re not attacking Hillhouse.”

“I feel attacked,” Baker said.

Teachers were not ​“attacking you guys personally,” Goldson said to the principals. ​“They said, ​‘There are things we want to see changed.’”

“We’re your friends, not your enemies,” Joyner said. ​“I know the history of the building and the people in it.” He compared the three-principal leadership team to ​“three rudders on a ship,” which doesn’t allow for smooth motion.

The Board of Alders hearing March 16 begins at 6 p.m. in City Hall.

Mayor Toni Harp, who conducted her own fact-finding visit to Hillhouse, said on WNHH’s ​“Mayor Monday” program Monday that she’s familiar with the complaints the alders heard. She said she believes the school has been ironing out those problems. She said she supports the concept of the academies, which give students more attention and guidance by breaking up a large school into smaller parts.