Christopher Peak Photos
Board members look over how much they’re spending on six schools.
Birks at Monday’s meeting.
Tasked with cutting at least $14.3 million in next year’s budget, Superintendent Carol Birks said that multiple public schools will have to be closed and consolidated by summer.
Birks talked about that plan Monday with the Board of Education.
In her sixth week on the job, Birks has already written up a reorganization plan for several schools and programs — a draft that she’s keeping tightly under wraps until a final decision is made.
Confronted with state budget cuts and the phase-out of a major federal grant, the Board of Education is scrambling to make up millions of dollars from its roughly $190 million budget. Before summer break, the district needs to close a $6.58 million deficit in this year’s budget.
Next year, the district needs to find at least $14.35 million — and possibly more if the alders don’t approve the mayor’s budget request for a $5 million increase in school spending.
The superintendent expects to make up most the money through reducing staff. During a presentation at Monday’s Board of Education meeting, members of her budget team said they’re looking to save $5.58 million by realigning and reducing staff. They’re projecting that school closures will recoup another $3.29 million.
The accountants also plan to draw down $1 million in carry-over funds from grants and cut $1.85 million from operations, transportation and other non-instructional sources.
“The budget presented to the Board of Education was not my budget. I was not here and just started, but I’m going to ensure we get what we need in running the organization more efficiently,” Birks said. “Remember, we’re #OneNewHaven. It’s very difficult to make decisions. We value everyone in the organization; we value every program. However, we can’t operate under a $20 million shortfall. This is not a personal thing: How do we run the organization more efficiently to ensure that students meet their academic needs?”
While Birks is keeping quiet about her exact reorganization plans, the Board of Education is targeting six schools. Darnell Goldson, the board’s president, said that Reggie Mayo, the interim superintendent, had picked out two high schools, an elementary school and three alternative schools for review.
Birks said her list could be different.
At the meeting Monday evening at Celentano School, the board requested pages of data on those schools’ operating costs, staffing ratios, chronic absences, test scores and graduation rates to review at the next Finance & Operations Committee.
Anxiety around the looming closures is already being felt throughout the district, perhaps most acutely at Cortlandt V.R. Creed Health & Sports Sciences, a small high school that’s been threatened with a shutdown before. Once again, a teacher and a coach from Creed Monday begged the board to save their school.
Darnell Goldson looks over a spreadsheet of after-school funding.
The Finance & Operations Committee asked for site-based operating costs for six schools: Creed, an inter-district magnet high school with 250 students that’s been located in temporary quarters in North Haven since 2013; High School in the Community (HSC), an inter-district magnet high school with 237 students that’s run by the teachers union; West Rock Authors Academy, a K‑4 inter-district magnet school with 217 students; and the district’s three alternative schools, New Horizons, Riverside Academy and New Light, which together have 211 students.
Will Clark, the district’s chief operating officer, told the committee that it shouldn’t expect a huge windfall from staffing changes, because the faculty would likely need to be bulked up wherever students land next school year. The main savings will be from rent, utilities and transportation, he added.
Among the six schools the committee looked at, Creed costs the most by far. The buses to North Haven cost $497,000, and the rent costs $408,892, including utilities and cleaning fees.
Riverside, an alternative school in the Hill with 88 students, shells out the most for its building, paying $647,265 for rent, utilities and cleaning fees. HSC spends the most for transportation, paying $530,000 to bus students to its location in Wooster Square.
But of the six schools, HSC also brings in the most inter-district magnet school money from the state, totaling $1,015,543 this year. “With inter-district schools, you want to be careful,” Clark told the committee. “If you close a magnet school, you lose that money unless they go to another magnet school.”
Frank Redente and Jamell Cotto.
After looking those numbers over, Goldson asked Birks if her staff ius looking at the right schools.
“Are there any schools that need to be added to this list for study? Or taken off this list?” he asked. “Or maybe would you rather not talk that much in detail?”
Birks said that she didn’t want to discuss specific schools “to be respectful” to each community. “I would like, if we have to go this route, to engage people in a respectful way and have a plan around staffing,” she said.
Later, she told the Independent that she’d be basing her decision on several factors, including enrollment numbers, the cost to operate facilities, the size of the faculty, and the presence of racial isolation with more than 75 percent of the students being minorities, among others.
Birks said that she plans to make her initial recommendations to the board within two weeks.
“I know that we’re up against a timeline. We want to make sure that families know what options they have,” she told the committee. “I can do it tomorrow, but I don’t want to. It won’t be prolonged. We’re going to do it in a way that makes sense, because as [Goldson] mentioned, June will be here before we know it.”
Birks said it hasn’t been easy to think about closing schools, just as she’s trying to get to know the district. But she believes the changes will benefit the district’s academics overall.
“It’s not easy because I believe people empower people,” she said. “We’re in the adjustment phase because the revenue’s just not there.”
Melvin Wells: Come to visit Creed.
Before the superintendent makes that decision, Creed’s track coach invited her to come visit the school, even if she drops by unannounced.
“We take students that schools do not want to deal with and we make it work,” said Melvin Wells. “We would love the opportunity to be back in New Haven. That is up to you; we’re dying to do it. Please do not make a decision like that without seeing what we do here at Creed.”
Another faculty member at Creed, Jennifer Sarja, the lead English teacher, also asked the board to consider whom their decisions would affect.
“To the board, respectfully, I keep reading in the newspapers that what we know what we’re going to save,” she said. “My question is, Do you know the cost of what you are going to lose?”