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Birks: In.
Highsmith: Out.
Sixty parents, teachers and community members penned a letter to the Board of Education that “strongly urge[d]” it not to hire Carol Birks as the next schools superintendent — hours before she won the support of a majority of board members for the job in an informal vote.
After a community forum Tuesday night at which all three finalists for the job spoke, the teacher-community group debriefed and then put their impressions of the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses. The co-signers said they were fine with Pamela Brown or Gary Highsmith, but they took issue with Birks’s support for the “school choice” (aka charter) movement, her proposal to change the district’s administrative structure and her perceived political connections.
“While we have personal preferences,” said the letter signed by 44 parents, 10 teachers, and six community organizers, “we would be pleased to see either Dr. Pamela Brown or Mr. Gary Highsmith emerge as our new Superintendent. Both offer numerous notable qualities that we believe would serve the district well.
“With respect to Dr. Carol Birks, we have come to a different conclusion,” the letter continued. “[W]e strongly urge you not to select Dr. Birks as Superintendent.”
Their opposition may have come too late to influence the outcome. The Board of Education met in private to interview the finalists Wednesday night. Afterwards, the board members took an informal, nonbinding straw poll. First they voted to eliminate Highsmith from consideration. Then four of the seven board members voted in favor of hiring Birks, according to four people with knowledge of the nonbinding vote. The official vote is scheduled to take place at this coming Monday night’s Board of Education meeting. One of the four Birks backers Wednesday night — Mayor Toni Harp and board members Jamell Cotto, Frank Redente, and Darnell Goldson — would have to change their vote for her not to win the job.
The community opposition note, meanwhile, highlighted five primary concerns.
The co-signers rejected Birks’s “strong support” for charter schools. They argued that the district shouldn’t be opening new charter schools when money’s already tight, with some students lacking proper textbooks and four schools (Creed High School, Quinnipiac School, High School in the Community, and West Rock Authors Academy) lacking buildings.
“Why keep incubating when we have to fix what we have?” one mother phrased it.
At Tuesday’s forum, Birks defended charter school operators, while Highsmith rejected them and Brown took a middle position “[W]e shouldn’t fight charter schools; we should learn from them,” Birks said, citing the way her district had picked up on disciplinary practices Later on, she said, “Charters give parents another choice opportunity.”
Birks also admitted that she serves on Achievement First Hartford’s eight-member board of directors — a position she did not mention on her job application.
At City Hall on Wednesday night, city Youth Services Director Jason Bartlett argued that Birks was on the board simply to meet a requirement of state law. The law requires that the chairs of local boards of education sit on charters schools’ governing councils — unless, that is, they appoint another school board member or the superintendent instead. Carlos Torre, for example, took a seat on Achievement First’s board in 2015, just a month after he fought against the network’s proposal for a new charter school, Elm City Imagine.
Reached by phone, Birks reiterated her support for giving parents choice and then added, “I’m a strong believer in public schools.”
“Money Follows The Child”
The co-signers called out Birks’s “past advocacy for student-based budgeting.” Under that system, a school district allocates a set amount of money to a school for each desk that’s filled, rather than the standard practice of ensuring base staffing levels and then earmarking additional dollars for specific purposes. Used in Houston and Denver, the idea is also sometimes referred to as a “money-follows-the-child” system.
In response to a convoluted question about how to address socio-emotional learning, Birks talked up Hartford’s use of student-based budgeting as a way to achieve equity.
“I’m not talking theoretically,” she said at the forum. “I want to take some of these practices and replicate them here in New Haven, but first I need to assess how you spend money, how you spend time at central office, what principals are doing.”
In 2015, a controversial study identified disparities in New Haven, prompting then-Board of Eductatioin CFO Victor De La Paz to float several student-based budgeting formulas. Advocates say those kinds of funding formulas are more equitable and give schools more ownership for the results they achieve. On the other side, opponents like Chris Willems, a co-signer and member of the New Haven Educators’ Collective, argue that it reduces students to dollar amounts and simplifies the complicated reality of kids’ needs for extra support, variations in teacher salaries or building costs or ever-shifting counts in a transient population.
In a conversation Wednesday, Birks clarified her answer in the forum. “We have that [in Hartford]. I didn’t say if it’s good or bad,” she explained. “I said what we’ve done and how we use that to look at equity.”
The letter co-signers also opposed Birks’s proposal to elevate the district’s three director of instruction to assistant superintendents. At the forum, Birks said these administrators were “handcuffed” in their decision-making. Parents argue that change would only line administrators’ pockets with higher salaries, taking money out of the classroom to make the district more top-heavy. They added that they worried about political favors being owed for the promotions.
The co-signers took exception to a comment Birks made in a Tuesday morning forum with student council members regarding closing schools. Birks said in an interview that she’d given an example that was being misinterpreted. Students asked her how she had listened to student voices in Hartford; she gave an example of how students’ input was considered in “how to reimagine our district, including everyone in the process to determine which schools should stay open, should [any] have to phase out or go offline,” she explained.
Finally, the co-signers alleged Birk used her “political connections in the recruitment process, which suggests that political favors will be owed.” That’s a reference, in part, to her Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, to which Mayor Toni Harp; two Harp-appointed search committee members, Maysa Akbar, founder of Integrated Wellness Group, and Tamiko Jackson-McArthur, a pediatrician; and Housing Authority of New Haven Executive Director Karen DuBois-Walton all belong. At Tuesday’s forum, Birks referenced Akbar’s Integrated Wellness Group, a contractor that has received at least $1.34 million in contracts from the district in recent years to work on YouthStat and socio-emotional issues, as an organization she’d continue to partner with, along with Junta for Progressive Action. Back in June, three months before she sent in her job application, Birks also attended a fundraiser for Harp at Anthony’s Ocean View, where she wrote a $150 check to the mayor’s reelection campaign.
Birks Wednesday said she had no comment about the parents’ charge of political connections. “I have no idea what they’re talking about,” she said.
Click on the links to download copies of the full applications for Birks, Brown and Highsmith.
Evaluating the Rest
Finalists Birks, Brown and Highsmith.
The letter also weighed the pros and cons of putting Highsmith or Brown in charge of New Haven’s public schools.
“In the case of Dr. Brown, we note as positive characteristics her bilingualism; level-headed demeanor; experience navigating diverse school districts; emphasis on collaboration; the feeling that we can learn from her; status as an outsider who doesn’t owe any political favors; and first- hand knowledge of poverty from her own childhood. We also note a few concerns regarding Dr. Brown, including the fact that she has worked in many different places for short periods of time; the learning curve in navigating NHPS and New Haven; and politically-correct answers that sometimes felt canned and jargon-filled, particularly regarding the role of charter schools.
“As for Mr. Highsmith,” the letter went on, “we also note many positive attributes, such as extensive experience in schools and classrooms; broad grassroots connections in New Haven; skill in connecting with and inspiring people; the impression that high-level positions have not changed him; the fact that his children attend New Haven Public Schools; and his insistence that he does not owe political favors. A few concerns regarding Mr. Highsmith include: we observe that he has limited district-level administrative experience; the fact that he did not reference the Latinx community in his remarks; and the possibility that he may owe political favors due to his extensive New Haven connections.”
On Wednesday night, around 5:45 p.m., four public-school moms — Sarah Miller, Fatima Rojas, Maritza Baez, and Kirsten Hopes-McFadden — stormed the district’s facilities offices on Ferry Street, where board members were conducting the last interviews with the finalists, to pass out copies of the letter. Lisa Mack, the district’s head of human resources, accepted the packet on the board’s behalf. But up in the conference room, the board members told her to set the letter aside until interviews were over. Several forgot to pick up a copy before deliberations began.
Members of the Board of Education will take their final vote on Monday, at 5:30 p.m., in a special meeting at L.W. Beecher School at 100 Jewell St.
Click above to watch Tuesday night’s superintendent candidate forum.