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Rosa: "Why does my school feel more like a battlefield than a place to learn?"
HARTFORD — When Sound School ninth grader Journey Rosa thinks of an average school day, they ask themself, “Why do I watch my teachers ration supplies like war rations, spending their own salaries to make sure we have the bare minimum?”
Rather than raising that question at their City Point aquaculture high school building, Journey did so at the state legislative office building in Hartford.
They did so by reading a poem they had penned just hours before they joined 80 fellow New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) students Wednesday on a trip to the State Capitol to call for increased funding for public education.
Journey moved to New Haven from Massachusetts three years ago. They explained Wednesday that poetry has helped them to convey their emotional urgency on topics like school-funding equity, which was the focus of the poem they read at the State Capitol.
“We can’t get through this issue with just facts alone, because if facts were all we needed, we wouldn’t be here,” they said.
They spoke about the lack of busing offered to New Haven students who attend Sound, and about how the school often runs out of Chromebooks for students.
They said that attending school in New Haven means receiving educational opportunities that “come with terms and conditions.”
Journey read their poem at a press conference held in advance of the group of students testifying before the Education Committee in support of Senate Bill 1511: An Act Concerning Disconnected Youth.
At the press conference, students from New Haven and New London spoke about teacher shortages, building disrepair, and the missed opportunities that beset underfunded school districts.
“We cannot allow them to label young people as disconnected when we know the problem is lack of money and lack of listening to what young people have been saying all along,” CT For All Organizing Director Constanza Segovia said at that same press conference.
“Why is it that we don’t see high rates of disconnected youth in Greenwich? They have funding and get the support they need. Our young people are connected. Look at this room.”
Journey then read their poem, entitled “This Is The Cost.”
"This Is The Cost," by Journey Rosa
They say education is the great equalizer.
That’s what they tell us.
That’s what they print in brochures, paint on the walls, write in speeches about how far we’ll go.
They say education is the great equalizer.
But if that’s true, then tell me why —
Why does my school feel more like a battlefield than a place to learn?
Why do I sit in classrooms where the ceiling leaks, where the Wi-Fi never works, where the mice in the walls learn more about survival than we do?
Why do I watch my teachers ration supplies like war rations, spending their own salaries to make sure we have the bare minimum?
They tell us to dream big, but how do you dream when the walls around you are crumbling?
How do you dream when your friend sleeps through class — not because he’s lazy, but because he spent the night in a shelter, woke up before the sun, took three buses just to sit in a school that won’t fight for him?
They tell us to work hard, but how do you work when your school is falling apart around you?
How do you work when the ones who hold the money count dollars like we don’t count at all?
They say there isn’t enough.
But tell me —
How can there not be enough when $4.1 billion sits untouched?
How can there not be enough when cities where opportunity is assumed get thousands more per student than we do?
How can there not be enough when we live in one of the richest states in one of the richest countries but my school still can’t afford working heat?
They tell us education is an opportunity.
But whose opportunity? Because it isn’t ours.
Not when New Haven gets $10,000 less per student than districts where kids never wonder if their school will have teachers next year.
Not when New Haven has the most homeless students in the state, 1,087 kids trying to survive, and the state still says “There just isn’t enough.“
Not when schools like Wilbur Cross, schools that carry our community, get thousands less than the state average while places like Greenwich spend $7,000 more per student.
Is opportunity just for the ones who never had to fight for it?
They say education is the great equalizer.
But tell me —
What kind of equalizer leaves some of us struggling just to keep up?
What kind of equalizer only works if you were already ahead?
What is the cost of an education that never had a chance to be equal at all?
A Lesson In "Fearlessness"
State Rep. Khan: Disconnected youth or disconnected resources?
Hartford and Windsor State Representative Maryam Khan thanked the group of students for attending Wednesday’s hearing and helping to teach her and her colleagues a lesson in “fearlessness” and the real-life experiences of today’s youth.
She shared her belief that rather than labeling the issue as a disconnected youth problem, it should instead be identified as a problem with “disconnected resources.”
“But when we have disconnected resources for certain places, and when we have disconnected teachers for students, and when we have disconnected funding for certain programs, why are we concerned now that all of a sudden we have this huge problem that we have no idea how to solve, which is disconnected youth?” Khan asked.
She concluded that children are only “disconnected” because of the learning environment many students are in, which more times than not are the districts with educational funding gaps.