Laura Glesby photo
School Psychologist Yesenia Garcia calls for smaller class sizes at Monday's rally.
Fair Haven School has just one social worker, one psychologist, and one school counselor — to support over 800 students.
At one of three rallies that took place across the city’s public school district Monday morning, Mayor Justin Elicker said that the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) system needs an additional $35 million in order to fund a “reasonable” ratio of one social worker per 250 students.
Elicker offered that assessment as 50 educators, students, and allies gathered outside the Grand Avenue public school to call for that funding.
Similar education-funding rallies took place across Connecticut Monday to mark a key expiration date for school systems’ pandemic-era financial relief.
As part of an effort from the statewide Connecticut for All coalition, the New Haven Federation of Teachers (NHFT) organized rallies outside Fair Haven School, Metropolitan Business Academy, and Brennan-Rogers Magnet School on Monday morning. Attendees included school staff union members, children waving excitedly at their teachers, NHPS Supt. Madeline Negrón, and several alders.
The rallies coincided with the Sept. 30 deadline for school systems across the country to contractually obligate funds from the third round of federal pandemic school aid (known as ESSER III). New Haven received $80 million in that round of ESSER funding at the start of 2022, part of a total of over $127 million in federal pandemic aid that the city received specifically for its school system.
That funding has supported pay bumps for staff, facility repairs, and upgraded teaching materials (such as a new reading curriculum rooted in structured literacy), among other initiatives.
“The federal government has shown they can provide funding for schools,” declared NHFT President Leslie Blatteau. “It shouldn’t take a pandemic” to justify providing schools with sorely needed resources, she argued.
Blatteau also took a firm stance on a statewide debate over how much financial restraint Connecticut truly needs, given the state’s recent budget surpluses and “rainy day fund” growth. “The obstacles to progress that some legislators call ‘fiscal guardrails’ are not keeping us safer,” Blatteau argued, calling on the state to spend some of its surplus funds on educational resources.
The teachers union announced a proposed resolution before the Board of Education calling for more state funding, as well as a petition to that effect.
Mayor Elicker argued that while New Haven currently spends less than the state average on each public school student ($20,451 in New Haven compared to $21,143 on average in Connecticut), “we need to be spending more per student than our counterparts,” given the support needs of so many New Haven students.
Fair Haven Alder Frank Redente, an outreach worker based at Fair Haven School, stressed the importance of “support staff” — many of whom, he said, come from the same neighborhoods as the students they work with. “To have one social worker for almost 900 kids” is not enough, he said.
Leslie Blatteau echoed this message, noting that the union’s three mental health supporters at the school — a social worker, a psychologist, and a counselor — is not enough.
“Oftentimes, because of the high caseloads that support professionals have, teachers are wearing multiple hats,” she said, adding that “when cortisol is high, learning is low.”
She argued that a lack of sufficient resources sends a false message to students that they deserve less than their peers in the suburbs. “There is enough money in the state of Connecticut and there is enough money in the country” to meet the district’s needs, she said.
NHFT President Leslie Blatteau (right) with the rally's cutest and most important attendees.
ESL educator Michael Soares holds open the door.
According to Elicker, 75 percent of students in the school district are low income, and over 20 percent are learning English as a second language.
Debra Riding, the director of education at the local immigrant and refugee resettlement agency IRIS, pointed out that the growing proportion of New Haven students who are immigrants face extra hurdles to learning and thriving at school. Many have experienced trauma, disruptions to their education, and/or separation from their family, on top of working through a language barrier and acclimating to a new culture.
For 18 years, Michael Soares has witnessed those students strive and grow as an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher. Through a combination of classroom work and small group instruction, Soares said he works with 115 students learning English every day.
Soares said he hopes to see a day when every classroom can have a paraeducator alongside a teacher to help individual kids in hard moments. He added that every middle school should have a fully-funded art program — “our arts teachers bring in their own supplies” — and sports teams to help kids push themselves out of their comfort zones. And he argued that as facilities age, the school district should invest in full-time custodial staff, rather than relying on part-time staff from private contractors.
Soares held the school doors open on Monday morning, greeting the flood of students skipping through. “Investments in our children pay off,” said Soares.