Birks Lays Out Transition Plan

Carol Birks has a lot to do in her first four months as superintendent: visit every school, form a district-wide improvement plan, hire top administrators and close a multi-million dollar deficit.

She outlined that work Monday night at her first Board of Education meeting since taking the job. The two-and-a-half-hour meeting of the usually fractious board, held at Celentano School on Prospect Hill, was uncharacteristically congenial.

During the next four months, Birks will take a ​“listening tour” throughout the city, review data and documents and hire new staff, according to a 135-day transition plan she presented.

“This is an aggressive plan,” Birks said in her first report about what she’s been up to during the first week on the job. ​“People usually take a lot longer to do this, but we have to do this quickly, because we have a lot of work to do.”

As the first step in the handover, Birks said, she will conduct a series of community meetings around New Haven, including a public town hall at Gateway Community College on April 3 at 5:30 p.m., where ​“internal champions” and ​“national experts” will discuss the district’s strengths and weaknesses. Birks also plans to host a forum for school employees and a board retreat.

At the get-togethers, she said, she wants to hear how people would answer the question, ​“What would you do if you were the superintendent?”

After that, Birks said, she plans to review the district’s guiding documents, taking another look at school improvement plans, the curriculum, union contracts, employee evaluations and board policies. She also wants to pull tons of data, both quantitative and qualitative, to give a sense of how students are performing academically.

“What are the numbers telling us?” she asked. ​“But also, what are the perceptions? How do people feel about the organization, which is important.”

Finally, in the transition’s last phase, Birks will put all those findings into practice. ​“We have a great deal of intellectual discourse going on, everyone’s passionate. But we need to accelerate and get some action going,” she said. In particular, that means hiring staff who can carry out the vision, like top budget and academic chiefs, she said.

“We need to run the organization,” Birks said.

“How are we developing people? What pipelines do we have?” she asked. ​“We should have an organization where people are ready to go into the next seat, so we don’t have to — while I’m glad you did — conduct a national search to have people ready to assume key roles within the school district.”

Darnell Goldson, the board president, agreed with that priority, but he said that each new hire would be accompanied by reductions. (The board members haven’t done that so far with the promotion of an executive assistant and the hire of several part-time financial consultants.) ​“We’re committed to not growing the budget,” he said.

One of those new staffers might be Darrell V. Hill, Hartford’s chief financial officer up until his resignation last November. The school board for now has brought him on part-time. Paid with former finance chief Victor de la Paz’s unbudgeted salary, Hill is constructing a back-up plan.

Hill, a former city manager in Norfolk, Virginia, provided the board Monday night an update on the district’s current budget deficit. Starting at $13 million, school officials were able to cut the gap down by half. Hill will now try to zero it out during the last quarter.

Showing some provisional numbers, Hill said that the school district could save $360,000 by cutting back on part-time workers, $510,000 by pausing some contracted services, and $580,000 by winning union concessions, like on how pay-outs occur for retirees.

Reached after the meeting, David Cicarella, the teacher’s union president, said any changes to their collective bargaining agreement should be a ​“last resort.” He said he’d need to ​“verify they have in fact done every possible cut in personnel and programs before they come to us asking for concessions.”

Even if those three big-ticket items get through, the district would still be $5.25 million in the red, Hill pointed out. Further ​“budget-balancing strategies” might include freezing all non-essential hiring and travel, limiting overtime, consolidating programs, reviewing end-of-year activities, and reducing site budgets at magnet schools.

Once this year’s numbers are under control, Hill plans to provide a multi-year financial forecast for where the district’s headed. Because costs increase each year while the state and city usually flat-line their funding, the budget has a ​“structural imbalance” that must be resolved each year.

“Our expenditures are outpacing our revenues,” he explained. ​“Each year, unless there’s new funding, we will have to reduce something, be it head count or programs or all of those.”

That document, which will look ahead for at least three years, will be essential for long-term planning, giving more time to deliberately plan cuts — rather than leaving it to the last quarter of the school year, like Hill’s doing now.

While Hill reviews this year’s agenda, Birks is also looking at résumés for the applicant who will eventually take over the role full-time.

She’s also reviewing vendors for a full audit of the district’s books, another role the board approved last month with the rest of De la Paz’s salary. The proposal to hire a strategic planner has temporarily been put on hold as a low priority, Birks said after the meeting.

“I just want to thank you, board members and community, for entrusting me with 22,000 gifted, talented, beautiful jewels in all of our care, as well as the 3,000 employees,” Birks said.

The presentation of the entry plan swayed at least one skeptic.

Ed Joyner, who voted against Birks’s hiring, said she’s starting off in the right way. ​“I needed this,” he said. ​“I’m more optimistic about the leadership of the school district than I’ve been since I’ve been on the board. Dr. Birks, I think you’re going to be a great superintendent, if this is any indication.”

One last item on Birks’s to-do list was added by Joey Rodriguez, the newest Board of Education member, who was sworn in at the start of the meeting. Rodriguez, a longtime activist in Fair Haven, urged the administration to study the cost of translation services for Spanish speakers to access school board’s documents and meetings.

“I recognize we are in tough financial times,” Rodriguez said, ​“but if we are going to preach the importance of our parents participating, we should meet their needs.”