Christopher Peak Photo
Che Dawson: Enough about the past. What do we do now?
The Board of Education will interview in-state applicants to become the city’s next superintendent of schools, after an executive search firm deemed them unqualified.
The school board broke into open warfare last week after the search firm — consultants from Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates (HYA) — advanced a slate of six semifinalists that included no internal candidates.
At a full board meeting Monday evening, members reached a truce. In a 3‑to‑2 vote, they decided to advance all Connecticut applicants with baseline credentials to the next round of interviews.
The precise definition of who’s up to the job still needs to be hashed out. But the temporary detente revives a search process that had been halted.
Tensions, of course, still ran high at Monday’s three-hour meeting at L.W. Beecher School. The board’s two elected members sparred over who’d let the search process spin out of control. Then a procession of 17 public commenters repeatedly excoriated the board members for the perceived chaos that personal attacks, meeting boycotts and slighting of key stakeholders had generated.
Maritza Baez.
“Our students deserve better!” Maritza Baez said. “It’s sickening. I’m sitting back there, listening and saying, ‘Our kids deserve better.’ We paid money to get rid of a superintendent and now you want to start the process all over again. It’s a joke.”
The audience joined her in chanting again, “Our kids deserve better!”
Opening Shots
Ed Joyner and Darnell Goldson trade words.
From the start of the meeting, elected board members Ed Joyner and Darnell Goldson, two former allies, ripped into each other. Goldson has criticized the search firm’s six final picks; Joyner has supported the firm.
Goldson first tried to corner Joyner into saying that New Haven’s administrators lack talent and therefore didn’t end up making the list of six finalists. “Mr. President, are you suggesting that no internal candidates meet the standards that those external candidates met?” he asked.
“Those are your words, not mine,” Joyner answered.
“OK, you know these people who work here. You’re willing to go on the firm’s word that none of the internal candidates had skill sets to at least get an interview?” Goldson tried again.
“Those are your words, not mine,” Joyner repeated.
“I’m asking you: Did you support their position that none of the internal candidates have the skill set or résumés to warrant an interview by this board?” Goldson pressed.
“First of all, I’m not stupid enough to try to say something that’s going to pit me against friends of mine for years. I’m not going to say that,” Joyner said. “To try to trap me into saying something against people that I love dearly, that I think have done a really good job in this district, I’m not going to do that. But we asked [the firm] to find the best candidate for this position, based on a number of factors.”
Goldson made a motion to grant “every Connecticut applicant” a second interview by the search committee.
That proposal went down in a tie vote: Mayor Toni Harp, Frank Redente and Goldson voted yes; Joyner, Torre and Dawson voted no. (Jacob Spell, the student representative, said he would abstain.)
Locals Added
Full Board of Education meeting for first time this school year.
Carlos Torre, the board’s vice president, fired back at Goldson (who technically chairs the board’s search committee), saying these criticisms have come far too late in the process.
That was enough for Che Dawson, the governance committee chair, to raise his hand to stop the escalating fight.
“We’re going back and forth; we could be here trying to hash this thing out forever,” Dawson said. “So, where do we go from here, right?
“Let’s just go from here to a place that incorporates what people think should happen. Number one, we don’t want this process to carry on forever. Number two, we want to make sure that we communicate the right perception of New Haven.
“Sometimes, we’re passionate and we can disagree, but we can move on from these things and figure this out. I’m suggesting people think what we can put in place to move this process ahead. Let’s debate those things. Let’s not debate who said and what. Where should we go now?”
In trying to broker a compromise, Dawson said he’d support a process to add Connecticut applicants, who are “relatively qualified,” not just everyone willy-nilly.
That suggestion led to another motion from Goldson to develop a process to add Connecticut applicants who meet baseline requirements.
Fellow board members questioned some of the vague language in the resolution. Who would do the vetting? The whole board, Goldson answered. Shouldn’t it just be New Haven applicants? No, the whole state, he said. Would the state’s superintendent certification be a fair baseline? No, he said. “I would like to leave my motion as is. I don’t want to start adding amendments to it,” he said at one point.
Redente, this time, abstained. Joyner and Torre voted no. Goldson, Harp and Dawson voted yes. It carried.
Public Reacts
Florence Caldwell: If we wanted locals, a nationwide search was a waste of money.
After the motion narrowly passed, the public thanked Dawson — Lonnie Garris, the retired longtime principal at Hillhouse High School, called him “the voice of reason” — and weighed in on the merits of hiring local.
Kermit Carolina, youth development director, thanked the board members, singling out Redente by name, “for showing respect to your colleagues.” He said the interviews would give internal candidates a chance “to show what they know.”
Monica Givens, a mother of two, added that those in the district already have a handle on the issues facing children in the Elm City. “Credentials look great on paper. Then, they get on and they can’t handle it. We’ve experienced that here,” she said. “We shouldn’t just let [internal candidates] back in the pool, but we should give them special consideration. Knowing our city and kids should be valued, just as much as a certification.”
On the other side, Robert Gibson, Hillhouse’s librarian for 35 years, said that other top city hires, such as the fire chief from Jersey City and corporation counsel from Hartford, were outsiders. “In no case have students given up hope in their ability and potential. Kids are made of sterner stuff than this,” Gibson said. “There’s no need to fear if someone from outside the district were chosen to be superintendent.”
Baez pointed out that one risk of an internal hire is favoritism in hiring and contracts.
Florence Caldwell, a respected grandmother who routinely calls for respect at the board meetings, argued that the board should have had this discussion months ago. “A national search is just what it says, and it’s not just limited to in-house people or people in Connecticut. If that was [what we wanted], we wasted money in doing a national search,” she noted. Whatever the board decides, Caldwell added, “we need to have a candidate, whether internal or someone from across the country, that is capable of doing the job and is ready for the task.”
Fixing a Fitful Year
New Haven has been without a permanent superintendent since the board pushed out Garth Harries last October. (Former superintendent Reggie Mayo came out of retirement to fill in since then on an acting basis.)
A search didn’t begin in earnest until February, when board members met with three consulting firms. As Torre explained on Monday, they included a new outfit that had consulted largely for corporations; Ray and Associates, an Iowa company finding a superintendent for Bridgeport; and HYA, an Illinois firm. After Joyner heard Ray and Associates had bungled Bridgeport’s search — “a horrible job,” he said at a March meeting — board members fell back on HYA, which the Connecticut Association of Boards of Education said had a “very solid reputation,” Torre recounted.
An agreement with HYA wouldn’t be approved for another two months.
Its contract was slipped onto the agenda of the Finance & Operations Committee, without any prior notice, on May 1, before it was unanimously approved by five board members, without any discussion, on May 8. (Daisy Gonzalez, the late board president, and Frank Redente, the Finance & Operations chair, were both absent.) The board agreed to pay $24,500 “until services are completed,” plus an additional $13,785 to cover ancillary costs like “advertising, background checks, travel costs and other expenses.”
HYA posted an online survey by the month’s end, but miscommunication led to delays in scheduling focus groups. Only 18 people showed up for a poorly noticed forum on June 14; other events had similarly low turnout. In total, HYA consultants met with 41 individuals, with no students or clergy represented in their interviews.
The board discussed the low participation at a meeting that month. Tthe issue was tabled when Gonzalez died unexpectedly in early July.
As the process neared its conclusion in the fall, however, those missteps resurfaced. “How can you feel okay with such low numbers? How can you go ahead when they’re even saying they failed?” asked Krystal Augustine. “I feel they don’t care. They should be terminated immediately, and a proper search should start to be performed.”
Now board members are trying to drum up more engagement. The consultants offered union leaders and a parent rep a first look at all 45 applicants in a closed-door meeting last Wednesday, and the firm met with ministers at Career High School last Friday. This week, On Wednesday night, HYA plans to hold a meeting at Iglesia de Dios Pentecostal Church, at 99 E. Pearl Street, at 5:30 p.m., and at L.W. Beecher School, at 100 Jewell St., at 7 p.m.