Thomas Breen photo
Elicker at East Rock Brewery campaign stop on Thursday.
Over slices from Modern and locally brewed lagers, Justin Elicker promised a roomful of public school teachers that he’ll bring a homegrown corrective plan to the school system if elected mayor.
He vowed to cut spending on outside consultants, create a jobs pipeline for local teachers of color, emphasize social-emotional learning over rampant testing, and look into both the good and the bad of charter schools without turning the entire public system over to them.
Public school teachers turn out to hear Elicker’s pitch.
Elicker made that pitch on Thursday afternoon to a group of two dozen past and current public school teachers during an education, beer, and pizza campaign stop at the East Rock Brewery on Nicoll Street.
The former East Rock/Cedar Hill alder and former New Haven Land Trust executive director, who is challenging incumbent Toni Harp for the Democratic nomination for mayor this year, told the teachers in the room that the mayor is ultimately responsible for how well or how poorly the school system runs.
Not only does the mayor sit on the Board of Education, he said, but the mayor appoints four of the board’s other six voting members. The two elected student representatives on the board are not allowed to vote.
“The mayor has a lot of power over this system,” he said.
Under Harp’s leadership, he argued, the Board of Education (BOE) has been marred by infighting among members, open discord with the superintendent, school closures and financial distress, and a rush to the exits by some of the most experienced teachers and administrators.
Harp, who has cited higher graduation rates and targeted intervention with troubled students as key successes of her administration to date, criticized Elicker for laying into the school system.
“Justin has never been a friend of education,” she told the Independent. “I may be the only mayor who year after year has increased education funding. Why? Because our teachers and kids need resources to teach and learn. We have made great strides closing the achievement gap and in graduation rate improvement. Our results are far better than other cities in Connecticut. Justin risks becoming part of the problem by being negative and adding to the dysfunction he so strongly criticizes.”
Elicker with Co-Op teacher Chris Kafoglis.
Thursday’s campaign stop was organized by Co-Op math teacher and Elicker supporter Chris Kafoglis.
“I believe he has the right disposition to be mayor,” Kafoglis said about Elicker. “He’s incredibly hardworking and incredibly committed to democratic values,” as evidenced by his participation in the city’s public financing program, the Democracy Fund, which limits campaign contributions to no more than $370 a piece.
“We’re in crisis mode in New Haven education” right now, Kafoglis said. “What would help is a sense that student voices and teacher voices and parent voices are heard, and being responded to.”
Elicker promised to do that.
If elected mayor, he said, he would encourage meaningful parent involvement with the school board so that parents don’t have to rely on Facebook Live videos posted by parent education activists in order to know what is being said and decided upon at BOE meetings.
He promised to appoint BOE members who have relevant experience in early childhood education, vocational training, curriculum development, and fiscal management.
Elicker.
He said he would work to stop funneling school funds towards out-of-town consultants, and look instead to teachers already working within the system for advice on how to improve educational outcomes for students.
“We’re sending all this money outside of New Haven,” he said, “and we’re not supporting our own people.”
He said the current school system relies too much on testing, not enough on social-emotional learning and activity-based instruction.
“We have a major problem with what the teachers look like and what the students look like,” Elicker said, noting that a vast majority of public school students are African American and Hispanic, while a disproportionate number of teachers are white.
He said he would set up a jobs pipeline for hiring local black and brown teachers. He said he would especially like to see financial incentives provided to paraprofessionals who want to become certified teachers, so that that group of predominantly black and brown native New Haveners who already know the school system well have a chance to become full-fledged teachers.
That would be money well spent, he said, as opposed to whatever subsidy the school system currently provides for Teach for America teachers who often come from out of town, stay for a year or two, and then leave.
And, he said, he would look to charter schools to see what they do well and what they don’t, but he would not encourage the creation of new charter schools in the current school system.
Co-Op teacher Susan Mitchell and Wexler Grant teacher Ashley Stockton.
Ashley Stockton, a fifth-grade teacher at Wexler-Grant School, asked Elicker whether the school system partner more closely with Albertus Magnus College, Southern Connecticut State University, and Gateway Community College as a way of getting local college graduates teacher in and committed to city schools.
Absolutely, Elicker replied. And “we need to be much more proactive” about setting up those partnerships.
He said he taught several semesters at SCSU for students who were preparing to enter the school’s teacher certification program. One of the requirements for the class, he said, was that students be placed for a semester in a public school classroom.
The bureaucracy of the BOE and the NHPS invariably made communication a nightmare and the student placements unduly laborious, he said. “We have not been effectively welcoming partnerships.”
Metropolitan Business Academy teachers Leslie Blatteau and Nataliya Braginsky.
Leslie Blatteau, a social studies teacher at Metropolitan Business Academy, asked Elicker to expand on positive and negative takeaways from local charter schools. In particular, she asked, what for his take on recent experiences at Achievement First’s Amistad High School, where a principal resigned after pushing a student and teachers have spoken out about a racist and overly hierarchical school culture.
Elicker said that Achievement First has done a good job on its math and reading instruction, but that focusing so exclusively on those two areas in such a highly regimented, overly disciplinary environment “can be a detriment to the whole child.”
Blatteau pushed back. “Their curriculum is tightly connected to the culture, which is top down and hierarchical,” she said. “I don’t think we can separate the curriculum from the culture.”
Nataliya Braginsky, a fellow social students teacher at Metropolitan Business Academy, said that one doesn’t have to look to charter schools to find innovative, effective, and equitable pedagogy. Public school teachers engage in those types of teaching every day.
She cited Metropolitan Business Academy’s social justice symposiums and “moderation studies”-style of teaching as providing models for how to assess a student’s grasp of a subject over the course of an entire semester’s worth of research papers and group projects, rather than off of one test. (Read more about that here.)
Blatteau also asked Elicker about a hot-button, statewide educational issue: What does he think of billionaire Ray Dalio’s promise to give $100 million to Connecticut public schools?
Elicker demurred, saying he would need to know more about what kinds of strings are attached to those funds. He would be reluctant to turn away such a large amount of money, he said, but the money would not be worth it if the conditions of its donation run counter to the mission of the school system.
“I would take Ray Dalio’s money,” he said, “if the strings attached are ones we are OK with.”