Melissa Bailey Photo
Dawn Gibson-Brehon and Rachel Heerema.
School board members asked why no more than six parents came to a public hearing about a superintendent search. They soon got a lesson — about the way officials interact with school parents in New Haven.
The lesson came Tuesday evening at Hill Regional Career High School, where the school board held the first of three public hearings aimed to gather public input on the search for a new schools superintendent.
The city hired an Illinois-based firm, PROACT Search, to conduct a fast-tracked search for a new superintendent. The school board aims to have a new candidate in place when longtime schools chief Reggie Mayo retires on July 1.
Angelina Bua of the PROACT flew in from Chicago for an action-packed week of three public forums and 17 private “stakeholder” focus groups that are set to comprise the “public engagement” portion of the search.
She sat at a table in the front of Career’s spacious auditorium. For nearly an hour, she took feedback from six members of the public who sat scattered through the audience in the low-lit room. Two members of the school board sat in the back to observe.
After about an hour, several more members of the school board walked in from another meeting they had held at City Hall. Two more members of the public sat down, too.
At 8 p.m., just as Bua was about to adjourn the meeting an hour early for lack of participation, school board Chair Carlos Torre turned to the audience and professed disappointment in the turnout.
Torre (pictured) said he “expected a big crowd” there. He asked why more parents didn’t show up.
The conversation quickly devolved into a debate between parents and school board members.
Parent activist Dawn Gibson-Brehon said she had learned of the meeting through a robo-call only two days prior, which she said was not enough lead time for most parents to plan to put the event on their calendars. She said the lack of notice made the process feel “rushed.”
Board member Susan Samuels raised her hand from the back of the row of seats. She said she was trying to wrap her head around why members of the public feel the process is “rushed.”
Samuel T. Ross-Lee, a pastor and a parent of elementary schoolchildren, said the July 1 deadline for hiring a new superintendent sounded like a short amount of time.
Rachel Heerema, who heads the citywide youth coalition, noted that the compressed timetable for “public engagement” also made the process feel rushed.
Torre said that deadline isn’t firm — if no candidate surfaces by that date, the board would ask Mayo to stay on for another month or two until a replacement is ready.
Wooster Square Alderman Mike Smart asked why the school board couldn’t just appoint an internal candidate for the next year. He was referring to Assistant Superintendent Garth Harries, though he didn’t name him.
Appointing an interim superintendent would be the equivalent of “pressing pause” for one to two years, replied school board member Alex Johnston, because the person would not be empowered to make significant changes.
“Less than half our kids are reading at grade level,” Johnston said. Johnston said while the district has much work to do, it has begun some promising new initiatives, such as new emotional supports for kids at Barnard School, that address the poverty-born trauma that parents at the meeting had expressed concern about.
“If you press pause,” Johnston said, new initiatives like that one “start to fall by the wayside.”
He argued the work is too important to put the brakes on for one or two years.
“What’s going on is too important to rush,” countered Lee.
“We’re not rushing,” Torre replied.
After a back-and-forth with Samuels, Lee tossed up his hands. “You wanted community input,” he said. “That’s my community input.”
Alderman Smart, who had been listening to the exchange, drew a lesson.
“This is why people don’t come to meetings,” he said. Instead of taking feedback from the public, he said, board members “push back” defensively against public comments.
“You need to listen!” he urged.
Similar lessons about school board accountability and openness to students and parents have been drawn in previous encounters like this one, this one and this one.
Johnston hit a conciliatory tone.
“We’ve had challenges in the past with people who have a defensive tone” when members of the public approach the board, Johnston said.
“I regret the tone that emerged during this discussion,” Johnston said. “This isn’t a debate. This decision is just so consequential,” he said, that board members feel passionately about not delaying the search for a replacement for Mayo.
He vowed to take parents’ concerns about the “rushed” process back to the school board, and to take any measures necessary to better communicate about the next two hearings.
The next two hearings are set to take place Wednesday, April 24 from 7 to 9 p.m. at Fair Haven School, 164 Grand Ave. (Spanish translation provided); and Saturday, April 27 from 9 to 11 a.m. at Hillhouse High School, 480 Sherman Parkway.
Members of the public are also invited to weigh in through an online survey, available in English and Spanish.