Paul Bass Photo
Carolina would assign New Haven the story of three men who overcame obstacles to success.
Fourth of four parts on where mayoral candidates stand on major issues.
The four Democratic mayoral candidates have books ready to assign all of New Haven to read — and some competing ideas about how to improve the schools.
Those suggestions and competing visions emerged in four separate interviews with the candidates running for mayor in next Tuesday’s Democratic mayoral primary: Kermit Carolina, Justin Elicker, Henry Fernandez, and Toni Harp.
The next mayor will face the challenge of taking the city’s nascent school-reform drive to its next level — and start showing meaningful results. The candidates all agreed about the centrality of that mission and the need for experimenting with new ideas. They disagreed on how to get there — on whether or not to continue with outside management or internal “turnaround” plans for failing schools, for instance, or whether to seek Yale’s or Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU)‘s help in training principals.
Here’s what they said in the interviews:
Do you agree with the idea of asking Yale’s School of Management (SOM) to create a track to train principals, as a feeder for future New Haven’s building leaders?
This idea came from Henry Fernandez during the campaign. He suggested SOM create a training track for principals. It would draw top students from across the country and include field work in New Haven schools. Students would include current and future New Haven public school employees. And the goal would be to see some of each year’s graduates move on to jobs in New Haven’s schools. Click here to read more about Fernandez’s plan, which has drawn an initial positive response from SOM’s dean and Yale’s president.
Elicker: “Yes, but … we can’t tell SOM what to do and expect them to do it. We can’t as mayors force Yale to do things” He’d explore the idea of building on the model of the Yale legal clinic with a variety of Yale professional schools, including forestry and divinity: having the schools dedicate their resources to city issues as part of an academic mission.
Harp: Bad idea. SOM’s the wrong partner. “Principals in New Haven don’t manage a budget in a way that business owners would manage a budget.” Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) is the better partner because it already has an education school. “It produces most of the teachers in our region.”
Carolina: “Better options” than SOM already exist. He would make use of a program run by the Connecticut Association of Schools that trains principals. He went through it himself. “I had a coach coming in as principal of Hillhouse High School. I can’t tell you how invaluable he was. There’s something to be said for somebody who has practical experience” training principals, he said.
Would you experiment with more outside management of schools?
Elicker: Yes. “What’s good about the mayor’s school reform effort is an acknowledgement that one size does not fit all” in experimenting with different models.
Fernandez: Yes — making sure to be careful about the companies the city hires, requiring they prove they have succeeded at one school before giving them a second school. He said the firms hired to run Clemente and Urban Youth have not yet proved successfull.
Harp: Yes, after first ascertaining that existing experiments have worked. “We need to make our schools work by whatever means necessary. We’ve got to look at any models.”
Carolina: No. “I haven’t seen one that’s worked effectively yet. Some of these companies were not successful in other places.”
Do you support the proposal to create a hybrid Board of Education?
The proposal will appear as a referendum question on the Nov. 5 general election ballot. It would make two of the board’s seven seats — all of which the mayor now appoints — popularly elected.
Elicker: Yes. Click here to watch his video explaining why.
Fernandez: “I’m comfortable” with the proposal because it creates “more transparency” and “parent involvement” while leaving a major of appointments to the board in the hands of the mayor.
Harp: “Yes. I do believe the mayor should be involved in the Board of Education and sit on the board.”
Carolina: “Definitely. I just personally went through my own experiences needing the support of the board when I was wrongly accused of grade-tampering. Politics got in the way of a fair investigation … Because [Mayor John] DeStefano put them on the board, they felt an allegiance to him. A hybrid board, having students and parents involved in that board, would create the kind of independence that’s needed. We don’t want to turn it into a political circus. But we need more inclusion.”
Fernandez would have the city read a reminder about the need to speak out about social justice.
Do you plan to attend Board of Ed meetings? Why or why not?
Elicker: Yes. An Independent story earlier in the campaign quoted Elicker saying he would not attend, because he wanted the board to be more autonomous from central mayoral control. (Asked at a fundraiser if he’d sit on the board, he responded, “the short answer is no.”) In the interview for this article, he said that he has since thought more about the issue, and that he never ruled out attending in the first place. “‘I’m going to look at it and get back to you’ is what I said” then, he maintained. Since then, he argued, the question of mayoral control has become less pressing because with the system poised to change, with two of seven board members now becoming elected rather than mayorally appointed. What if the proposed change doesn’t pass? “It will pass.”
Fernandez: “Absolutely. One of the primary reasons I’m running for mayor” is to improve the schools. Fernandez has asked voters not to elect him to a second term if the schools don’t improve under his watch in a first term.
Harp: “Yes. I do believe the mayor should be involved in the Board of Education and sit on the board.”
Carolina: Certainly. If you’re the leader of the city, and education is the most important thing to you, which it is to me, it is at the center of progress particularly for our most distressed neighborhoods and low-income residents, you have to lead by example. Being there sets the example. If it’s important to you, it’s important to everyone else.”
Should we designate more turnaround schools?
A central part of New Haven’s school reform effort has involved grading and “tiering” schools — and naming some failing schools as “turnarounds.” Principals of those schools get the power to hire their own staff and make changes (like longer school days) in rules in conjunction with unions. Some have criticized the process for falsely designating schools as “failing” based on unfair criteria; others have argued that the process has enabled some schools, like Brennan/Rogers, to start afresh and post gains.
Elicker: Yes. The data gathered as part of tiering process is the kind of information parents want in order to judge the performance of their children’s schools.
Fernandez: Yes, but with a new plan. He would broaden the turnaround concept by creating basically new schools within “failing” school buildings, rather than simply naming a new principal with new powers. “When you have a school that’s failed for a significant number of years, you have to change the culture. … You don’t take all the kids who were in a failing school last year and have all those kids come back.” He would redirect students from a failing school to other schools in the system. Then he would rebuild the “turnaround” school with brand-new classes, perhaps two a year (say, a first grade or kindergarten and a fifth grade in the first year).
Harp: Yes, whether or not the term “turnaround” is used or a new name. “I’ve always thought as a mother that the school day’s too short and inconvenient for working women.”
Carolina: Skeptical of the program. Low test results do “underscore the need” to try new ideas. But “it seems like the dance of the lemons” when a principal can get rid of all the teachers he or she doesn’t want — but those teachers go elsewhere in the system. “Where does the other half of that staff go? It has a negative impact.”
Elicker would have the city read about the pitfalls of an earlier approach to urban renewal.
Everyone has mentioned cutting the number of “administrators” to save money at the Board of Ed. Can you name at least three such positions you’d cut? Any?
Elicker: No. He does say the “central office” has too many administrators in it in general. “I think that what is important is quality.” For instance, strong principals set the tone for a building’s success; he points to the success of New Haven Academy Principal Greg Baldwin in motivating everyone in his building, as opposed to the tone set at Wilbur Cross High School, where an administrator crashed a classroom and gave the impression that “everyone was in trouble” because students had invited Elicker to speak to them about politics.
Fernandez: Cut the jobs of assistant principals sent “on assignment” to other schools because they haven’t performed well in their current assignments; “it’s not as hard to fire an assistant principal as to fire a teacher, and we fire teachers.” Also examine whether the system gets “value added” from some of those assistant principal positions, period.
Harp: Assistant principals who are in charge of discipline. She would also cut “dean” positions (like these at Hillhouse).
Carolina: Examine central office staff to weed out unneeded positions. Replace assistant principals currently focused on “school climates” with lower-salaried positions filled with people better suited to handle behavior problems. He did that at Hillhouse by creating those “dean” positions; he can hire two deans for less money than one assistant principal.
Do you support the partial-day vo-tech high school being developed? If you support more, how would you pay for it?
New Haven is developing a partial-day vo-tech school (similar to the Education Center for the Arts) in which students take some classes a their regular schools in the morning, then attend the specialized program in the afternoon. The program is scheduled to open soon inside the Hillhouse High School building. (It had originally been planned to occupy space at the old Gateway Community College building on Long Wharf.) Before he dropped out of this year’s Democratic mayoral primary race, candidate Sundiata Keitazulu called for the opening of another vo-tech school as well.
Elicker: Rather than build an additional school, consolidate existing classes in city schools — on automotive repair, cooking, engineering — to create a certification track.
Fernandez: Not a new school. He does support having vo-tech options at school, but doesn’t want students in a track separate from tracks preparing students for college. “Otherwise it can quickly end up training people for jobs that don’t exist or won’t exist in the near future.”
Harp: Integrate existing vo-tech courses into regular high-school curricula rather than spend money on new programs. Explore possible afternoon opportunities at Eli Whitney.
Carolina: “Very excited” about the vo-tech program moving into Hillhouse’s building. “We’re not in a position” to afford spending more city money on creating an additional school.
Harp would have the city read a story about women who overcame gender and racial barriers together.
If New Haven does another “Big Read,” what book should it be?
In recent years New Haven has invited people of all ages to read one book at the same time—To Kill A Mockingbird in one case, Fahrenheit 451 in another — then hold communal discussions about it.
Elicker: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. That book is a bible of sorts to New Urbanists critical of the destruction of New Haven neighborhoods during mid-20th Century urban renewal. Alternative selections: Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma or Paul Tough’s How Children Succeed.
Fernandez: Letter From A Birmingham Jail or Why We Can’t Wait by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “Dr. King speaks of the urgency of tackling the major social justice issues that our society faces now. All of us can from time to time look away” from challenges of poverty, crime and social justice.
Harp: The Secret Life Of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. “It deals with domestic violence and women coming together and providing a place of healing and growth for one another. It’s all very subtly about race and ways in which women can overcome racial issues together.”
Carolina: The Pact by Sampson Davis, George Jenkins and Rameck Hunt. “It talks about three young men who grew up in a tough neighborhood. They made a pact that they would become successful and they would support each other through times to reach their goals. It’s a great example of how to overcome our young people overcome obstacles to work together and successful in their lives.”
Previous installment in this series:
• Where the candidates stand on housing and neighborhood development
• Where the candidates stand on public safety
• Where the candidates stand on management and budget questions