Candidate Bows Out Amid Infighting

New Haven’s school board is spending a lot of time arguing and fighting, without doing much to help kids learn.

So observed Mayor Toni Harp on Monday, as she and others sought a way through the debilitating rancor at the Board of Education.

Harp, who serves as Board of Ed president, made the remarks as she prepared to spend Monday afternoon in an hours-long ​“retreat” with fellow board members aimed in part at figuring out how to ease the acrimony that has marked meetings that last well into the night and have stalled decisions since the first-ever elected officials joined the body this year.

She spoke a day after a candidate for a system-wide chief academic officer withdrew her name from consideration following a procedural spat on the board. Superintendent of Schools Garth Harries had planned to name Karen Lott — a standout former city principal who went on to a job in Hartford — to the position after a vote by the board at its meeting last Monday night. But he didn’t submit the matter in time to make it onto the agenda. Board members, who have repeatedly clashed with Harries and attacked his performance, declined to allow the matter to be added to the agenda at the meeting.

Board members argued that Harries needs to follow the rules about giving advance notice of agenda items. In addition, they had been working on a separate plan to meet with district officials on how to reorganize the central office, and that process hadn’t started yet. They also have argued that school decisions require more review and transparency than the Board of Ed has provided in the past.

“It’s all political,” Harp said of the episode during an appearance on WNHH radio’s ​“Mayor Monday” program.

Harp said she hadn’t heard directly from Lott about why she turned down the job. But, Harp said, ​“When you have this kind of acrimony, meeting after meeting after meeting, a lot of people may look around and say, ​‘Do I really want to work in New Haven?’ That’s what we really have to be concerned about. I would think that as a reasonable adults, we should be able to conduct ourselves a little better than we have.”

Harp added that she shares ​“guilt” for the impasse at the Board of Ed, for sometimes having urged her colleagues to ​“just work this out at a meeting.”

“It appears as if everything but educating the kids is getting in the way of moving New Haven schools forward, I fear,” Harp said. ​“We just have to keep working on it. we have to learn how to work together better.”

Harries informed board members on Sunday of Lott’s withdrawal from consideration.

“I will not recommend another of the candidates at this time, and will assess alternatives going forward, in consultation with you,” he wrote in an email message.

He added that he had hoped to ​“be persuasive about Karen’s candidacy” by distributing a separate email message from a member of the interview team that chose Lott. (Lott could not be reached for comment for this story.)

“The process was well thought out, efficient, and was rigorous enough for our group to choose the four best candidates to move forward to the next round,” wrote the interview team member, New Haven Reads Executive Director Kirsten Levinsohn. ​“I have to say I am especially pleased that Karen Lott was the final choice. While I was impressed with all four people who were considered by the Executive Team, I personally hoped that Ms. Lott would be the person to be chosen. She has a proven track record in a variety of situations, has the benefits of being both an internal and external candidate, and is caring, smart and tough.”

Next For Baker?

Harries informed board members that he does still hope to proceed with a second hiring that stalled amid last week’s procedural dispute: He hopes to move Career High School Principal Madeline Negron to fill the position of retiring director of instruction Kim Johnsky, at $152,532 effective July 1.

If that happens, the position of Career principal would open up.

It turns out that the school system is looking for a new slot for a principal who had been the first among equals running Hillhouse High, Zakiyyah Baker. Last week the school board announced the appointment of a new Hillhouse principal, Glen Worthy, to replace her, after a year of turmoil, some of it at the Board of Ed, about problems at Hillhouse. During her tenure in the classroom before she became a principal, Baker was named the city’s teacher of the year.

“I really admire Zakkiyah Baker as a leader. I am certainly hopeful that New Haven Public Schools finds the right spot for her. I know that she’s a leader. I know she can lead any building in our system,” Harp said.

She said Baker shouldn’t be blamed for the controversy surrounding Hillhouse this year, which centered most on whether it should have been divided into three separate academies with three separate principals within one building. Worthy will serve as the one principal of the school starting next academic year. Harp said that while Hillhouse will no longer be split into three separate ​“academies,” it will retain the three separate academic tracks.

Hillhouse Graduation Redux

Also on ​“Mayor Monday,” Harp said she expects the school system to learn from a problem that occurred at Thursday’s Hillhouse High School graduation.

An estimated 100 people, including ticket-toting parents of graduates, were not allowed into the building after the fire marshal deemed it filled to capacity.

In the future, tickets should be scrutinized more carefully at commencement exercises and an effort made to avoid counterfeits. Also, she said, officials should expect a crowd bigger than the number of advance ticket-holders and use a large enough venue.

In the meantime, Harp, said, officials plan to hold a second, small ceremony on Bowen Field this summer for parents who didn’t get in to see their children graduate.

Click on or download the above audio or subscribe to ​“Dateline New Haven” on Soundcloud or iTunes to hear the full episode of ​“Mayor Monday,” in which Harp also discussed her upcoming city-business trip to Cleveland; the Chris Murphy filibuster; and graduation season.

Monday’s ​“Mayor Monday” episode of ​“Dateline New Haven” was made possible in partnership with Gateway Community College.