Part-Timers Get New Letter— & Confusion

Never mind, part-timers, you’ll get your jobs back.

For now.

But check your mailboxes again next month.

The school system’s current and past part-time workers got that latest ​“clarification” from a Board of Education criticized by at least one member of ​“undermining” and micromanaging a new superintendent it fought hard to bring to New Haven.

Layoff notices that were sent last month are being rescinded, but a plan to figure out who to keep is still being worked out with the school board, Superintendent Carol Birks told Board of Alders Education Committee at a Wednesday night hearing at City Hall.

In late June, just after kids left school for the start of summer vacation, Birks sent termination notices to over 1,100 part-time school employees. The recipients included secretaries, bus monitors, librarians, athletic coaches, teaching assistants, and arts and language instructors.

Then, two weeks ago, Mayor Toni Harp and Board of Education President Darnell Goldson called a press conference at City Hall in which they directed a conspicuously absent Birks to rescind the notices.

Birks said that a letter rescinding the notice was sent out on Tuesday. That letter apologized for causing any undue stress and confusion, and it added that a timeline and process for keeping their job next school year would be forthcoming.

But unless the board finds money to keep all 700-plus current part-time employees on the payroll amid a $19.4 million budget deficit, some will likely be getting a third letter saying their services aren’t needed after all — a seemingly inevitable outcome that Birks denied. (Over 300 of the people receiving the original notice turned out not to have worked for the school system for up to five years.)

“There’s a lot of factors that come into play, so I can’t commit to that,” Birks said. ​“The decisions that we make will be tied to the state’s accountability indicators, absent priorities as a district that we have enacted publicly.”

Next time around, though, school board members themselves will make the decision about who stays.

Based on their interpretation of the board’s existing policies, they’re withholding authority for Birks to dismiss part-timers without their vote — the latest salvo in a battle about the superintendent’s authority to make decisions without the school board’s explicit approval. A new trove of emails (described later in this article) reveals the extent of the behind-the-scenes wrangling taking place.

“We’re In A Crisis”

Part-timers are viewed within the school district as ​“flexible workforce,” said Darrell Hill, Birks’s interim chief financial officer. ​“They are not guaranteed hours. They don’t cross over years. They didn’t have a full-time position to be laid off from.”

But that wasn’t clear to many of the temporary employees, Birks said, because the district hadn’t consistently followed its own hiring guidelines.

According to a 2016 document, which Birks presented to the alders, school principals or office administrators are supposed to first send requests for part-time hires to the Finance Office to confirm that funds are available.

If money’s available in the site-based budget, supervisors will then confirm that the requested hires meet ​“programmatic appropriateness,” which Birks defined as making sure it ​“matches our academic indicators.”

Requests then go up the chain again to Human Resources Office for final approval after confirming that the hire aligns with current union contracts, pay rates and staffing requirements. That office also takes fingerprints and runs a background check.

That three-step approval didn’t always happen, Birks told the alders.

“Given that we are a portfolio district, we have given our principals a lot of autonomy around hiring part-time staff. In some cases, our process was not followed with fidelity, but it varied,” she said. ​“In this case, people were not given notice of a term of employment consistently throughout the district, so in the letter, it said you’re a part-time employee and your assignment ends at the end of the school year.”

After hearing that explanation, Fair Haven Alder Kenneth Reveiz acknowledged that Birks had procedural errors to clean up and a massive deficit to close. But he asked if she’d recognized the ​“tremendous amount of worry and concern and panic” that dismissed employees had experienced over the last few weeks.

“We’re in a crisis situation. This is not very easy,” Birks said. ​“We know that they are people, but we also have to make decisions that focus on student achievement. We have to focus on the classroom first.”

Birks said that right-sizing the staff would allow the district to put more money toward training the employees they choose to keep. She also said that the district was creating an evaluation to process to make sure that non-certified staff are doing what they’re supposed to.

She added that human resources staff is also working to make sure the hiring process is followed more rigorously in the future to avoid another surprise.

But from now on, every hire and every termination won’t be in her control. Instead, those will have to go to school board for approval.

After the press conference at which Goldson referred to her actions as an ​“avoidable” ​“stumble” by a rookie superintendent, the Board of Education is now seen in some quarters as trying to micromanage multiple aspects of how Birks does her job.

Behind-Scenes Tension Revealed

A trove of school board members’s emails obtained by the Independent reveals that, for the last two months, the Board of Education has been second-guessing the superintendent’s decisions behind the scenes.

Starting in May, the board — the majority of whose members fought hard to hire Birks earlier this year — intervened in a small disciplinary matter: whether a student should be allowed to go to prom.

That dispute flipped the board’s earlier allegiances.

After a hard-fought battle to get Birks appointed, her one-time boosters are now trying to keep her on a tight leash, while the one board member who voted against her hiring is now calling for the others to give her more slack to do what they hired her for.

After the board voted to shut down Cortlandt V.R. Creed Health & Sports Science High School, students walked out of the building in protest. On the way back to class, one girl refused to have her bag searched. She stormed past the security checkpoint, screaming and swearing, as one administrator described it.

Creed’s principal, with Birks’s support, suspended the student for five days. That meant she was barred from going to prom the next night.

But in an email the next day, signed by five board members (excluding Mayor Harp and Ed Joyner), Goldson said the girl should be allowed to go to prom. The Board of Education prepared to hold a formal hearing about the suspension.

“We have met and taken a vote by phone and email, and have decided to stay the suspension until such hearings has been held,” Goldson wrote in an email to Birks.

“We would like to reiterate our support for the administration, from the principal to the superintendent,” he continued. ​“Normally we would not and do not intend to involve ourselves in these types of situations, but we feel that this situation is highly unusual based on several factors, including what we believe is the BOE’s role and decision to close this school just three days ago.”

In an email to Goldson, Joyner, the board’s other elected member, protested. He said he believed the school board was micromanaging Birks.

“I believe that we have established a precedent that we must immediately walk back to preserve the proper relationship between the board and the superintendent,” Joyner wrote. ​“We the board undermined the authority of Dr. Birks in an illegal electronic meeting by overturning her ruling. The superintendent’s decision, based on my interpretation and experience, was the correct course of action.”

Joyner said he was emailing Goldson privately to ​“try to solve this issue inhouse and avoid any more negative publicity that would undermine our credibility.”

After prom, the student withdrew her appeal. The board cancelled the hearing and left the suspension in place. But the relationship with the new superintendent still had to be worked out.

Roles Defined

More recently, amid the controversy about laying off part-time employees, the Board of Education has clarified the superintendent’s role, saying she has no authority to bring on employees, contractors or consultants without them.

In an email last week, Birks, now in her fourth month on the job, gave the board members a heads-up that she would be appearing before the aldermanic committee and gave some idea of what she planned to focus her presentation on.

This Monday evening, Mayor Harp said she wanted to give Birks direction on the next steps. She asked to see the latest draft of a letter going out to part-time employees and said to hold off on committing to any plans for how open spots would be filled next year.

“Please provide the new draft of the rescission letter to the part-time employees. The letter you previously shared we agreed was not drafted properly,” Harp wrote in an email. ​“In addition to your remarks to the Board of Alders, I am concerned about a possible ​‘job fair’ without the Board of Education signing off on next steps.”

Later that night, Goldson followed up with more instructions, based on the statement that six board members had agreed to before the press conference. He said he didn’t want to ​“micro manage” Birks, but he then gave her three tasks to carry out.

“It is our goal see you, as well as the school system, grow and prosper together. We intend to provide additional support and guidance to you as our superintendent. We do not intend to micro manage you, but do intend to carry out our responsibilities as outlined in [state law] as well as our own policies,” he wrote. ​“Therefore, we are setting clearer short term goals for the upcoming few months.”

Goldson said the board was ​“immediately” directing Birks to rescind the previous layoff notices sent to 764 part-time employees and inform them that administrators would be conducting a ​“more thorough analysis … whether or not those roles will fit the boards desire to increase educational outcomes.”

He also directed her to ​“focus on completing the central office reorganization” and ​“pay particular attention” to getting ready for next school year’s start.

Goldson added that, going forward, the school board would be the final decision-maker for hiring and laying off all personnel as well as paying for contractors and consultants.

He cited board existing policies as justification.

“Issues have been raised by you as to whether or not you have certain authorities outside Board designated and approved authorities,” he wrote. ​”In order to avoid confusion, I would implore you to become familiar with state statutes as well existing BOE polices as soon as possible.”

Goldson cited a policy for temporary and part-time personnel that says the Board of Education is responsible for employing ​“such person as may be needed to conduct the business of the school district.” The policy says that, except in ​“extraordinary conditions,” no part-timer can be brought on without its official action.

But the policy, which hasn’t been revised since 1999, doesn’t provide any guidance about when those temporary employees can be let go.

Goldson wrote in the email that he interpreted the policies to mean that the board had sole authority ​“to create, hire or eliminate a position, part-time, full-time, temporary.”

In response, on Tuesday afternoon, Joyner distributed a guide to all the board members put together by the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education and the Connecticut Association of Public School Superintendents that lays out the best practices for delegating authority.

The guide said that, usually, the school board acts as the ​“legislative body” that sets policy, while the superintendent is the ​“professional educator” chosen to implement those policies. ​“The focus of the relationship must always be collaboration on behalf of children,” the document read.

Regardless of who has the final say, the board’s recent methods for telling Birks what to do likely violate the state’s open meetings law. The Independent has filed two complaints to the Freedom of Information Commission arguing that the school board shouldn’t be giving the superintendent directions outside of public meetings, whether secretly by email or publicly at press conferences.