Melissa Bailey File Photo
Toll (center): Elm City Imagine a “win win win.”
New Haven Public Schools and Achievement First are exploring an unusual partnership, starting up an alternative charter school together.
The proposal for the school — now tentatively called “Elm City Imagine” — includes an extended school year with a calendar alternating eight weeks of regular classes with two weeks of “expedition” career engagement; longer school days with staggered teacher schedules; and small-group instruction with more focus on technology.
Achievement First has been researching and developing the school design for two years. The two sides are currently working on a memorandum of understanding. It dubbed the project “Greenfield,” to represent the “unconstrained,” wide-open nature of the process, according to the charter network’s CEO Dacia Toll. The district hopped on board at the tail end.
The partnership would be primarily financial, Toll said, with the district providing a “modest” amount of about $2,000 per student, $500 in operating funds and the rest through in-kind services such as nursing and food. The state provides about $11,000 per child, she said. AF would be responsible for hiring and day-to-day management of the school. The benefit to the city would be to ease overcrowding in existing schools, reduce the burden of mid-year transience, and add another educational option for families, officials said.
“It’s an important step in the direction of having at least one charter school be a more explicit part of the district’s portfolio,” she said. The school would ideally open in August 2015.
Unlike in other cities, New Haven Public Schools has had a working rather than adversarial relationship with local charter schools. That relationship was strained last month when the pro-charter Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN) held a rally on the Green that blasted the district for “trapping” kids in its “failing” schools.
However, both sides continued their commitment to working together. Mayor Toni Harp stressed that the discussions around the proposed school are “ongoing even as participants remember New Haven already has a full range of options and charter schools available to students.”
“The mayor and I have been clear about our frustration about the rally,” said Superintendent Garth Harries. “But in other ways, we have had a model partnership with Achievement First. … We are looking to expand it.”
Harries said the additional state resources that would support Elm City Imagine could be an opportunity to reduce class sizes at other, over-enrolled public schools and share the burden of enrolling “transient students” who switch schools after Oct. 1.
Technically, the Elm City Imagine proposal would be an “expansion” of AF’s charter that would allow for a “new model,” he said.
Elm City Imagine would be an extension of AF’s two Elm City Prep schools. It would start as a K‑1 and expand every year through fourth grade, with enrollment at 80 – 90 students per grade, Toll said. The “Greenfield” model would also be integrated into existing charter schools, starting with Elm City Middle School next fall.
Toll said it felt “fitting” to launch the new model in New Haven, historically a “collaborative” city. The design prioritizes increasing students’ motivation to learn. The two-week “expeditions” interspersed throughout the year will allow students to “choose from a menu of curated high-quality options,” for example, learning about neuroscience by speaking with scientists and studying images of the brain.
During the eight-week class sessions, students will have extended days from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., with teachers on two staggered schedules, one from 7 – 3 and the other from 9 – 5. In the current charter school model, everyone starts at 7:30 a.m. and goes until 4 p.m.
She called the proposed school a “win win win”: New Haven families get access to an innovative school design; the district gets more state resources to reduce class sizes; and Achievement First gets to try out a “high-potential new model that we want to learn from as a network.”
Many details still need to be ironed out, Harries and Toll both said. A major criticism of charter networks is that students transfer out of their schools midyear for district schools, but charter schools do not accept midyear transfers.
“We’re still figuring out how to do it, but we’re trying to have charters take their quote unquote fair share of mid-year transfers and other high-need students,” Toll said.
Melissa Bailey File Photo
Cicarella: AF not to be trusted.
Not everyone is on board with the proposal. Teacher’s union President Dave Cicarella said he does not trust that AF will fulfill its promises in the partnership.
He said the rally’s message proved that the “whole existence” of charter schools is based on “negativity” about district schools.
Cicarella said he does not know if the additional money will actually be used for the benefit of the district: “You can’t earmark money and say that the money from the state will be used to reduce class size. What happens when there’s a budget deficit .…That’s the plan, but what happens four or five months from now? It’s a lean year.”
Harries said he understands the partnership will not be universally welcomed, but that it’s important is to provide “high-quality options” to all families.
“Education is consistently and persistently controversial,” he said. “I expect controversy around any potential conversation with charter partners.”
The partnership with AF is only one of a “full package” of proposals the district plans to roll out in January, Harries said. Among the others is a partnership with the teachers union around restorative justice and a plan to improve reading in early grades.