Sam Gurwitt Photo
Hamden’s schools are playing catch-up with the 21st century. Roxana Walker-Canton wants to help.
The town’s black and brown population has been growing. Black and brown students now make up a majority of students in the school system.
Meanwhile, all but two of the members of the Board of Education are white.
Walker-Canton (pictured above)— an African-American university professor who has shepherded three children through the public schools — has noticed the ways the system is failing to serve a diverse student population amid “the browning of Hamden,” she said. Now she’s running for a Board of Education seat to add her expertise to the mix.
In addition to tackling diversity, she has other observations to inject into the decision-making process, about gaps in writing and foreign-language education as well as the discipline-centered culture of the schools.
Walker-Canton said she was motivated to run after taking part in protests over the incident earlier this year when a Hamden cop crossed into New Haven’s Newhallville neighborhood and fired bullets into a car with an unarmed young black couple inside.
We’re living in a new “civil rights era,” she said. And she wanted to figure out what role she could play in seeking social justice.
She decided that her background prepared her to serve on the school board.
The Democratic Party endorsed her for a seat over an incumbent at its July convention.
“In our home, education is the family business,” she said during an interview on WNHH FM’s “Dateline Hamden” program. Her husband, too, is a college professor.
Besides teaching film studies at University of Bridgeport, Walker-Canton runs an after-school tutoring program called KIMCAN Academy in central Hamden. There, she sees firsthand some of the challenges Hamden school children face. She also saw some of the barriers her children faced going through the schools. (Two have graduated; a third is still in high school.) She has been active in public discussions about diversity in the schools.
“Diversity is more than redrawing the lines of the district” in search of more integrated classrooms, Walker-Canton said. “We need to look at diversity in a wider way.”
For instance: How does the district attract more teachers of color? How does it train white teachers to relate to students of color? How are white and black teachers trained to work well together? And what books are taught in the classroom — only books by by “white American authors”?
Diversity is also about culture, Walker-Canton argued: What plays are being staged? What music does the chorus and does the orchestra perform? Who deejays at parties?
And how do teachers address students?
Meanwhile, amid a national focus on STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education, schools have paid too little attention to other important disciplines, Walker-Canton argued. Like foreign language instruction. Based on the Spanish courses her daughter took, she said, she’s convinced the schools should start teaching foreign languages earlier, and teach to higher standards.
In her tutoring, and in her college teaching, she has noticed how little attention is being paid to developing students’ writing abilities. Even in English classes, not enough writing is being assigned and taught, she said. She’d like to see Hamden change that.
Walker-Canton was asked about a proposal to station police officers in elementary schools.
“I’m so against it,” she said. She questioned the timing of the proposal — was it to make white parents “feel safe” as a redistricting plan sends more black students into mostly white schools?
She also opposes the presence of cops in middle and high schools, she said. “We have security guards. Students respond well to security guards.” The use of cops fits into a larger approach that emphasizes discipline and order about creativity and one-on-one connections between teachers and students. To promote those relationships, she proposed building in required time for teachers (and paying them) to spend with students in after-school programs.
Walker-Canton praised the work of the Special Education Parent Teacher Association (SEPTA). It has spoken up for more advance notice to parents about where their children will be placed in advance of a school year. She also criticized the disparity in suspensions, which usually target black and brown students who often aren’t properly diagnosed as needing special ed. She said “SEPTA is doing what PTAs need to do” — not just raise money, but raise consciousness and issues about policy.
“I believe Hamden can be one of the best systems in the state,” Walker-Canton declared. She’s ready to do her part to help make that happen.