Latinos Push On 2 Fronts For Equity

Underrepresented from the school board to the superintendent’s cabinet to the classroom, Latinos are demanding a more visible place within the city’s school system, as they already make up nearly half the student body.

That cry was heard at both ends of the city on Monday night, as protestors waved signs at a nomination hearing and the school board’s only Latina member walked out of a meeting in tears.

Across the school district, there’s a mismatch between the demographics of the teaching faculty and student body. But Latinx students are least likely to have a teacher who looks like them.

According to the numbers reported to the state, New Haven’s students are 46 percent Latinx (along with 37 percent Black and 13 percent white), yet its educators are only 9 percent Latinx (along with 15 percent Black and 73 percent white).

That’s important because research indicates that a diverse teaching force is especially important for students of color. One study, for instance, said that black students growing up in poverty are more likely to finish high school and consider college if they have just one black teacher in elementary school.

A growing concern about that reality led to the two dramas occurring simultaneously Monday night, at a Board of Education meeting and at a City Hall meeting of a Board of Alders committee.

Appointee Showdown

Two dozen protesters turned out at City Hall to oppose the nomination of Larry Conaway to the Board of Education — not because they had anything bad to say about the experienced local educator, but rather because Conaway is not Latino, while 46 percent of the city’s school children are.

Parents, pastors, and former New Haven educators all associated with a group called the New Haven Latino Council voiced those concerns Monday night at the Aldermanic Affairs Committee hearing on the second floor of City Hall as well as at a pre-hearing press conference that took place on the building’s front steps.

Led by Rev. Abraham Hernandez, the executive director of the state chapter of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, the New Haven Latino Council protesters who spoke both outside and inside City Hall emphasized that they have no personal or professional beefs with Conaway, the recently retired former Riverside Academy principal who spent over three decades working in half a dozen city public schools.

Rather, they argued, Conaway is not fit to serve on the school board because he is not Latino and does not speak Spanish. If the alders approve Mayor Toni Harp’s nomination of Conaway to replace Joseph Rodriguez, who recently resigned from his position, the protesters said, then they will simply be exacerbating a cultural, linguistic, and demographic disconnect between nearly half of the public schools’ student population and a seven-member Board of Education that has only one Latina member.

“Can we have equity without representation?” Hernandez asked during the pre-hearing protest. Based on the two-sided demographic fact sheet and myriad complaints with Conaway’s nomination raised over the course of Monday’s press conference and hearing, that answer, according to at least this contingent of the city’s Latino population, is no.

Ultimately, the committee alders did not vote at all on Conaway’s nomination — but purely for procedural reasons. The full Board of Alders has to vote on the nomination at its its next meeting on Nov. 7 or else the nomination will go through by default. The committee’s non-vote will allow the full board to discharge Conaway’s nomination from committee and take it up for a vote at that next meeting.

Click here and here to download the New Haven Latino Council’s demographic fact sheets in both English and Spanish. Daniel Pizzaro, a spokesperson for the New Haven Latino Council, said that the demographic data cited in the fact sheet was provided by the New Haven Public Schools.

According to the group, only 15 percent of its principals, 12 percent of its assistant principals, and 8 percent of its teachers are Latino. There is only one Latina Board of Education member, Yesenia Rivera, in comparison to four African-American board members and one white board member. Conaway is African-American. (The two non-voting student representatives, elected by their classmates, are Latino and Black.)

“Education Has Been My Life”

Conaway’s nomination hearing kicked off in an auspicious way for the former Riverside principal — with Aldermanic Affairs Committee Chair and Hill Alder Evelyn Rodriguez reading through the long list of jobs Conaway has held in the New Haven Public Schools system since 1987. That resume includes his time as a social worker at the Urban Youth Center, as the principal at the alternative schools New Light and Riverside, and, in between, as an administrator at Hyde, Hill Central, Lincoln Bassett, and Wilbur Cross.

“This is very good in terms of the cohesiveness of what we could include on the Board of Education,” Rodriguez said in admiration.

Born and raised in Georgia, Conaway said he’s been a resident of New Haven for the past 45 years. He came here to study at Southern Connecticut State University, and never left.

He’s been married for 31 years and has four children, three of whom went through the New Haven Public Schools system. His second child is a teacher at Davis Street School right now, he said.

“My goal is to continue what I’ve been doing for the past 35 years working with all families, all students, all diversity,” he said. ​“Education has been my life for the past 35 years, and this is way I’d like to volunteer my time.”

Committee Vice-Chair and Quinnipiac Meadows Alder Gerald Antunes asked Conaway what type of person he would consider as the best fit to replace outgoing Superintendent Carol Birks as the head of the public school system.

“I would look into a candidate who took into consideration all stakeholders,” he said. But, he added, ​“I’m looking for a person that really has students first.” Attending to the needs of teachers, parents, and community are all critical for a successful public school system, he said, but the needs of the students must come first.

What would you focus on if confirmed to serve on the BOE? Antunes asked. What unique skills or perspective would your on-the-ground experience as a local educator and school administrator bring to the BOE?

“Honesty, trust, and transparency,” he said.

“I don’t have any magic bullet,” he said, ​“but I would bring my experience, my 35 years of experience, to the table.”

Nodding to the two dozen protesters silently holding signs reading ​“Equity / Igualdad” and ​“We Want Equal Representation” towards the back of the Aldermanic Chambers, Fair Haven Alder Jose Crespo asked how Conaway would help Latino students in particular and beef up educational services for that growing population of the public student body.

Conaway said he agrees with the sentiment behind the protesters’ calls and signs.

“I think that there should be representation,” he said. ​“I think that’s something that has to be dealt with. I would support that full-heartedly.” When considering whom the school system should hire, as an administrator or an educator or any other kind of public school employee, he said, he will keep cultural and national and linguistic diversity as a ​“major priority.”

“People Who Can Reflect Our Community”

Several members of the public who testified Monday night spoke in favor of Conaway’s appointment, including Riverside parent advocate Joanne Wilcox (“He’s persistent as hell. He’s absolutely reasonable. And he, above all else, stays calm”) and current Riverside principal Derek Stephenson (“I haven’t met a man more committed to children and families”). A majority of the dozen public testimonies came in opposition.

Rodriguez, in her role as chair, tried again and again to direct the commenters’ testimony towards Conaway as an individual appointee and not towards cultural and linguistic representation issues in the school system more broadly. But nearly every opponent to Conaway’s nomination sought to ground their testimony in context.

“We need someone with knowledge and experience working with Latino students,” said Hernandez (pictured, at the pre-hearing protest). The board needs someone who understands what it’s like to go through an English Language Learner (ELL) program, he said. Someone who is culturally knowledgeable of where a plurality of students are coming from.

“This isn’t about Larry,” said Gil Traverso (pictured), a former assistant superintendent who left during Birks’ tenure. ​“But this is about effectively impacting the largest student population in the New Haven Public Schools. And this is about social justice.” Conaway is not Latino, he said. He is not bilingual. And the mayoral appointee has provided no evidence that he would be able to ​“bridge the gap between Latino parents and the school system.”

Former Board of Education member Carlos Torre (pictured, at the pre-hearing protest) said that many studies show that students thrive when they can identify with teachers and board members and supervisors and principals and other school administrators. ​“But if they are not representative of these students,” he said, ​“then students are hampered.”

“In my 22 years” on the Board of Education, he said, ​“we’ve never had a question about equity. We do now.”

Jessie Rivera (pictured) said that the city’s Latino student population does not have time to wait for a new board member who does not represent a plurality of the school system’s students and who does not have an immediate, specific plan for how to better engage the city’s Latino community.

“He’s lived and he’s experienced his community,” she said. ​“We need people who can reflect our community.”

While reticent to say anything negative about Conaway himself, Fair Haven Alders Ernie Santiago and Crespo alternated crossing to the other side of the committee’s table to take the mic and voice their own opposition to the mayor’s latest appointment.

“This is not just a question about qualification, but also about equity,” Crespo said. ​“The person is indeed qualified, but we would like see the person not just qualified, but someone who can connect.”

Santiago agreed. The mayor may have the power to appoint Board of Education members, he said. ​“But we have the power to oppose and block any appointment.”

During the pre-hearing protest on the steps of City Hall, Hernandez and Torre said that the New Haven Latino Council had submitted a list of candidates they would like to see on the Board of Education, including Nitza Diaz, a consultant at the State Education Resource Center who co-chaired Birks’s transition team. They said those names were never seriously considered by the mayor, who appointed Conaway instead.

“If you don’t have people there who understand the issues related to Latinos,” Torre said at the protest, ​“those issues are not going to be represented well.”

Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch Monday’s pre-hearing protest on the front steps of City Hall.

Recruiter Showdown

Yesenia Rivera — the only Hispanic member left on the school board after Joey Rodriguez’s resignation — made a similar stand about the lack of Spanish speakers in the district’s main enrollment office.

During Monday night’s regular Board of Education meeting at King-Robinson School, Rivera paused a vote on the superintendent’s personnel report, usually a routine matter that makes all the appointments, transfers, resignations and retirements from the past two weeks official. She asked the board to take a look at the bottom of third page, the 22nd of the 53 names in the blue-sheeted packet.

That new hire — currently a marketing assistant at WOW! Creative Design Group, the firm that redesigned the city’s website and produced the school district’s calendars — needed the board’s approval to join a team of recruiters for the district’s magnet schools.

That new hire isn’t a fluent Spanish speaker, even though her predecessor was, Rivera pointed out. That means that the district’s six-person enrollment office will have only two Spanish speakers: one other recruiter and one grants manager.

Rivera said that staffing was ​“insufficient” for the number of Spanish-speaking families with kids in New Haven’s school system. After a heated back-and-forth, she made one last pitch to her fellow board members to hold off.

“We need to make more of an effort in hiring staff that resemble the population of our students. When we talk about other groups, we make sure that happens,” Rivera said. ​“When you have a Spanish-speaking parent come to Central Office and they can’t find anyone to speak to them, that’s a problem.

“That’s a systemic problem,” she continued. ​“The only personnel where Spanish-speaking people are represented is in the cafeterias and cleaning staff. We don’t think that’s a problem? It is in my mind. Our Spanish students what they see is not what they should be seeing. It was an issue when it was an African-American, and we made sure there was parity. Let’s do the same for our Spanish-speaking students.”

Rivera stepped out of King Robinson’s auditorium, choking back tears. Another board member who’d sparred with her, Ed Joyner, also left out the other side.

Before it got to that point, Lisa Mack, the district’s human resources director, said that the job was initially offered to an internal candidate who is bilingual, but that employee turned it down. Mack said that the job was then offered to the ​“most qualified” external candidate.

“While we are working on trying to diversify the talent within the New Haven Public School district, this was the most qualified candidate in the pool,” she said. ​“I have to say, we look to the most qualified first. We cannot hire someone for ethnicity reasons, without having the most qualified skill set for that position.”

But what did it mean to be the ​“most qualified”? Could that be assessed objectively? Especially when researchers have routinely documented racial discrimination in hiring?

“That seems the answer I get from every position all around the school district — Central Office [administrators], principals, assistant principals, teachers — at every level,” Rivera said. ​“So I can’t believe that there are not more Spanish-speaking qualified candidates that are coming to the table.”

Darnell Goldson, the board’s president, backed Rivera up, saying he also felt ​“uncomfortable” with justifying any hires as ​“the most qualified.”

“Often times, that’s in the eye of the beholder, and the community that’s trying to break in are not going to be the beholders,” he said. ​“I can’t tell you how many times I fought for African-American hires and was told, ​‘Well, we picked the most qualified person, and it just happened that it wasn’t the African-American.’ I know a lot of qualified people that didn’t get jobs.”

One study from 15 years ago (that hasn’t been replicated since) showed applicants with identical résumés were more likely to get callbacks based on how ​“white” or ​“black” their name sounded, as ​“Emily” and ​“Greg” or ​“Lakisha” and ​“Jamal.” And another study showed employers were more likely to consider white felons than black non-offenders for a job.

Saying that point was ​“well taken,” Mack still asked the board not to hold up on hiring this recruiter. She said that the district could try to find additional money to hire another Spanish-speaking employee in the enrollment office.

“What I would rather happen is that we request to open another position,” Mack said.

“We’re already a broke district. To say, ​‘Okay, we’re going to hire this person, but let’s just throw in a token person who speaks Spanish,’ that doesn’t make sense,” Rivera interrupted. ​“We need to look a little harder, when we’re looking at candidates.”

Other board members said they recognize the lack of diversity throughout the district too, but they said singling out individuals who’d already made it through the process wasn’t the right way to start creating the systemic change that the district needs. They said they worried about the legal ramifications of rescinding an offer.

Joyner said that the board had repeatedly missed chances to deal with the issue of diversity, especially when it narrowly picked Birks as superintendent over another Spanish-speaking finalist. He said halting the recruiter’s hiring would be ​“political football” and ​“crying games,” remarks for which he later apologized.

“We have chemistry and physics teachers that only speak English; we have all kinds of employees in the system that only speak English,” Joyner said. ​“Don’t get me wrong, we especially have to be able to communicate with parents in their language, and there ought to be someone in every single office in our district that can do that. It shouldn’t just be French and Spanish.”

“We have to stop beating up on our staff because they chose the most qualified person. I hope you don’t want them to say, ​‘We chose the least qualified person,’” he added. ​“Skin color has nothing to do with a person’s documented ability to reach out and teach people. We need to stop it.”

After Rivera’s plea, the board put the recruiter’s appointment to a vote. Rivera and Goldson lost, 4 – 2, on a motion to table it until the next meeting. After that, they joined in unanimously approving the whole package.

Iline Tracey, who was approved as interim superintendent at Monday’s meeting, said that she knows the district has work to do, after three top Latinx leaders — Abie Benitez, Gil Traverso and Madeline Negron — left the district while Birks was superintendent.

“What happened? Where’s everybody?” Tracey said she asked at her first cabinet meeting, noticing that Pedro Mendía-Landa, who’s in charge of programs for English language learners, was the only Hispanic director left in Central Office.

Tracey said she’s working with Mack on ways to diversify the district’s staff. She said she’s started by asking the state to use part of its multimillion-dollar Alliance grant to hire a recruiter who’d just focus on diversity.

“We realize that we need to have a diverse staff among us,” Tracey told the board. ​“When I say diverse, it’s not necessarily just Latinos, but a diverse staff among us to represent our student body. They may speak Pashto. But whatever it is, we have to make a concerted effort to recruit and retain.”