Laura Glesby Photo
High school senior Thailynn Morehead, right, called for the budget to fund functional school bathrooms.
To 69-year-old Linda Randi, who’s worked as a paraeducator in New Haven Public Schools for 38 years, more funding for the Board of Education would mean “I wouldn’t have to work a second job.”
Specifically, she said, she’d no longer have to work a nightly six-hour shift waiting tables on top of her full-time classroom hours.
Randi joined a group of fellow paraprofessionals, teachers, and students Thursday night at the final public hearing for the city’s Fiscal Year 2024 – 25 (FY 25) budget to call on alders to allot more city funds toward the school system.
In the budget that Mayor Justin Elicker submitted to alders for review, the mayor proposed increasing the city’s general fund contribution to the school by $5 million (to a total of approximately $208 million). This contribution makes up about 60 percent of the current school budget.
That proposed allocation falls $12 million short of what Schools Superintendent Madeline Negrón had asked the city to fund, in what New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) leaders have described as a“keep the lights on” request.
A stream of school community members testified before the Board of Alders Finance Committee on Thursday evening on the second floor of City Hall to call for the city to meet this additional $12 million ask.
Linda Randi and Diane Guz.
Randi focused her public testimony on one way that an extra $12 million could be spent: a higher salary for herself and her paraprofessional co-workers.
Randi said she earns $27,165 — “and eighty one cents” — for every ten-month school year as a paraprofessional at Nathan Hale School, where she supports kindergarten students and their teachers.
She and her colleagues have been working without a contract since their previous contract expired in June 2023 as negotiations continue.
She arrived with fellow paraeducator Diane Guz, who said she earns about $24,000 annually as a special ed assistant at Celentano.
Guz has worked in the district for 23 years. At 63, she said, “I have no savings. I have no retirement funds.”
“Paras need to have a living wage,” she implored alders.
Thailynn Morehead, a high school senior at Engineering and Science University Magnet School who lives in Newhallville, said that some of that additional $12 million could be spent on “clean bathrooms, with soap, tissues, and working toilets.”
The girls bathrooms at her school, she described, are usually fairly functional, except they often lack soap and paper towels.
The boys bathrooms are in worse condition. “Five bathrooms are closed,” she said, leaving only one boys bathroom by the first-floor gym for the entire sixth through twelfth grade school.
She came to the alders’ meeting — her very first one — to testify as a representative of an inter-school advocacy group called the Student Defense Collective.
Bathrooms are “a basic necessity,” she said. Having $12 million fewer dollars than what the superintendent had originally requested “would do no justice for our school.”
Testifier after testifier shared other dreams for what a better-funded school system could look like — speaking of more school librarians, better ventilation systems, sustainability-focused staff, safe and clean sports fields, and higher teacher-student ratios. Click here to watch a video recording of Thursday’s full Finance Committee meeting.