Melissa Bailey File Photo
Vereen: Newhallville people “wear many hats.”
Newhallville activists, unions and a charter school group spoke with one voice Wednesday night as negotiations resumed on a proposed sale of a vacant public school.
They all found themselves united, as well, as targets of a ministers group charging them with conducting “secret” talks that “trampled” open government.
The topic at hand: Whether New Haven will sell the vacant Martin Luther King School on Dixwell Avenue to Achievement First (AF) for $1.5 million. AF plans to raze the building and construct a new home for its charter Amistad High School — if the deal goes through.
It was on a fast track until this Monday night, when it got derailed as negotiations seemed to hit a wall on a crucial “community benefits agreement” being negotiated between AF and the neighborhood’s labor-backed alderwomen. Read about that and some of the issues at stake here.
Those negotiations seemed to return to life Wednesday night — and the battle lines continued shifting, with a Newhallville clergy group issuing statements supporting, then attacking, the neighborhood’s alderwomen.
Representatives from several groups negotiated for hours in a private session held at Lincoln-Bassett School: AF; AFSCME and UNITE HERE, unions that represent custodians and cafeteria workers; and Newhallville’s alderwomen and members of the local management team. They “met tonight in good faith with a goal of reaching an agreement that will allow Achievement First to build a great high school with the Newhallville community as a full partner,” according to a joint handwritten statement issued afterwards. The statement was signed by AF officials Dacia Toll, Candace Dorman, and Reshma Singh; and Newhallville Alderwomen Brenda Foskey-Cyrus and Delphine Clyburn.
“Both sides feel we made significant progress toward that goal, but there remain important issues to resolve and details to iron out.
“We are all committed to do that work as quickly as possible and in continued good faith, with the desire to come to an agreement in time to ensure that the school is built on time to serve New Haven’s students.”
End of statement.
The statement offered no details on what progress was specifically made on the big-ticket outstanding questions of the school’s sales price, guarantees of enrollment slots for local kids, or hiring guarantees for New Haveners as custodians and cafeteria workers.
No word either on other reported sticking issues such as those workers’ pay, management neutrality in a “card-check” unionizing election, or AF financial “investment” in Newhallville youth “enrichment” programs. (The Omni Hotel’s workers unionized, for instance, in a card-check election, in which workers sign cards stating support for forming a union rather than voting by secret ballot; Yale’s president and New Haven’s mayor brokered a neutrality deal with Omni management in that election.)
The fact of Wednesday night’s joint release was the real news. It was the first time the sides spoke with one voice, after days of public ante-upping.
While the alderwomen and AF negotiated, Newhallville ministers fumed. Their group, the Greater New Haven Clergy Association, issued two statements attacking AF for trying to “bully” the neighborhood and Newhallville’s alderwomen for conducting a “closed-door” negotiation that locked out the community. The Rev. Boise Kimber, a former president of the group and a once-prominent Newhallville powerbroker unaffiliated with the new alderwomen, tried to get into the meeting but wasn’t allowed.
In the statements, association President Rev. James W. Newman III vowed to file Freedom of Information requests to pry loose copies of the proposed community benefits agreement.
He also criticized the active role played in the negotiations by labor. Connecticut Center for a New Economy (CCNE), a not-for-profit labor-affiliated think tank and advocacy group, has participated in the negotiations in concert with Newhallville alderwomen and neighbors.
“Why are Alderwomen Brenda Foskey-Cyrus (D‑21) and Delphine Clyburn (D‑20), Achievement First, and the unions meeting behind closed doors at Lincoln Bassett School, a public funded facility, to discuss the sale of the MLK School?” Newman asked in one of the statements. “Tonight transparency and openness were trampled when these three groups met and locked out the neighbors, the community, and reporters from a private meeting in the public school. In order to keep it private and secret they didn’t even go through the proper channels to schedule the meeting, therefore meeting without a permit to use the facilities. No one else could do that.”
“When did the unions become a major player in these meeting, and what role are they playing? Why did the participants at tonight’s meeting feel it was necessary to post a union staff member at the door to keep the general public out of the meeting?” Newman asked.
On Tuesday, prior to the negotiating session, Newman’s group had issued a release praising Foskey-Cyrus and Clyburn for taking a firm negotiating stance on behalf of the neighborhood.
Thomas MacMillan Photo
Foskey-Cyrus and Clyburn (pictured at Monday night’s Board of Aldermen meeting) did not return calls for comment Wednesday night.
One of the Newhallville negotiators in the room, Barbara Vereen, responded that she and other neighborhors have spent six months working hard on the deal and came together as a result of an extensive public process.
“The people [present Wednesday night] have been involved from the very beginning. There’s been a lot of community engagement,” Vereen said.
Vereen is an organizer for Local 34 of UNITE/HERE, which represents Yale’s pink-collar workers; a co-chair of the Democratic Ward 20 Committee; and a volunteer with CCNE.
“We in the community wear a lot of different hats,” she said.
In the earlier release Wednesday, Newman criticized AF for “being bullies” by threatening to abandon the plan and find another site. The release also criticized the group for being primarily white while running schools with primarily non-white student populations.
Click here to read that release.
AF spokeswoman Singh said she was “shocked by the tone and the substance” of the release.
“They haven’t been at any of the community meetings we’ve been at. They haven’t been at any of the negotiating meetings,” Singh said of the ministers. “We are negotiating in good faith and trying our best to make sure we are true partners with the Newhallville community. It seems to come out of left field.”
