Christopher Peak Photo
Co-Op High’s jazz band performs before Birks takes stage.
“We have to do business differently for the benefit of our children,” Carol Birks, the new public schools superintendent, told an enthusiastic crowd at Gateway Community College at her transition team kick-off.
“We’re going to try to remove some barriers: ‘We’ve been doing this for 25 years, and Dr. Birks, we’re going to do this for another 25 years.’ I want to push us to have a more open growth mindset in how we see our children and how we look at the organization,” she said at the event, which was held Tuesday evening. “I need you to partner with me, because we cannot run this organization the way we have.”
Carol Birks: “We cannot run this organization the way we have.”
Before Birks took the stage, in a quieter meeting upstairs, a group of 70 people started to plan out exactly what that change for the city’s public schools will look like over the next three years.
At a series of all-day meetings over the next two months, the transition team will hash out the challenges facing New Haven’s public schools, analyze data, gather community input, and eventually propose solutions that will guide Birks’s priorities at the start of her first full school year. While the discussions themselves are confidential, the transition team’s findings will be released in a comprehensive report in August.
On Tuesday afternoon, the committee heard from Birks about the work that’s ahead. Then it dived into an exercise to start thinking about the district’s trajectory.
In each corner of the room, the team members — principals, teachers, reverends, alders, professors, city employees — marked out important events during New Haven’s last century. (Some groups stretched their timelines back even further, including to the first all-black school in 1812 and the slave revolt on the Amistad in 1839.) In big arcs, they traced trends, like “white flight” to the suburbs, urban renewal, and a crime wave. And inside those, they placed smaller hatch-marks delineated the individuals moments that mattered: court cases, grant awards, protests, school openings, hirings, departures.
What emerged from the exercise, the committee said, was a history of progress in New Haven, a series of firsts that the city was still notching today — a preview, they hoped, for big wins that Birks might soon achieve.
During Wednesday’s scheduled session, the group plans to dive into a vision and goals for the transition, the challenges that might get in the way and the opportunities ahead. In small groups, they’ll start to talk about the systemic issues affecting the district. They’ll ask themselves what else they need to know moving ahead. What data do they need to collect, and who do they need to talk to?
PDK’s Joshua Starr.
The process is being managed by PDK International, a professional association for educators.
The group’s chief executive officer, Joshua P. Starr, Stamford’s former superintendent, mentored Birks as a principal. Its chief program officer, Gislaine Ngounou, the former chief of staff for Hartford schools, wrote Birks a recommendation letter for her latest job.
Starr told the transition team members that they’d be coming up with more than just a set of pointers for Birks to follow. He said there’s a difference between an entry plan, which lists an individual leader’s first steps, like establishing a presence in town and learning how the system works, and a transition plan, which envisions collective goals for how the system might be. Their work, he said, should be the start of any future strategic plans.
PDK’s facilitation will cost about $50,000, Birks estimated. The Greater New Haven Community Foundation and the city have committed to cover a big chunk of the cost. She said she’s still fundraising for the rest.
“We wanted to use research and best practices for systems reform,” Birks said. “That’s why we wanted their thought leadership in this work, as opposed to people who haven’t thought about structure in this way.”
Transition Team tri-chairs: Nitza Diaz-Candelo, Nadia Ward and Edward Fergus.
The individual discussions will be led by three “tri-chairs”: Edward Fergus, an education professor at Temple University who has written about inequities for black and brown school-children; Nitza Diaz-Candelo, a consultant for the State Education Resource Center, a quasi-public hub for professional development; and Nadia Ward, a Yale psychiatrist who’s known the superintendent for 18 years, dating back to when Birks was working for the state managing GEAR UP, a college readiness program.
As facilitators, they’re trying to come in with “no preconceived notions,” Ward said. “This process is really exploratory at this point. What’s exciting is to have all these people Birks has worked with before and some new folks around the table as well, with all their perspectives and ideas.”
Ward said that she does hope that the input matters.
“I would love to see not only recommendations get put forward, but actions happen. There’s so much time we spend in meetings talking and dreaming about what should happen, but to actually take those recommendations, we’re expecting that from Dr. Birks. She’s an action-oriented person,” Ward said.
Keisha Redd-Hannans, the principal at Celentano Biotech Magnet School, is handling the logistics internally.
Birks said she hand-picked the committee members, many of whom have been trusted advisors during her 21-year career in education, for the unique expertise they’d bring. All the committee members are volunteers; the schools are reimbursing only the accommodations for out-of-towners.
The Learning & Teaching Committee is led by Yvette Jackson, head of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education, a professional development group that’s done trainings in Bridgeport; Fay E. Brown, director of Yale’s Comer School Development program; Madeline Negron, a director of instruction in New Haven focused on early childhood; and Valda Valbrun, a Charlotte-based executive coach.
The Talent Management Committee is led by Susan Marks, the former head of Norwalk Public Schools, and Lisa Mack, the district’s human resources director.
The Equity and Access Committee is led by Maree Sneed, a lawyer at Hogan Lovells who negotiated contracts for Birks and Harries; John Ramos, Bridgeport’s former superintendent; and Abie Benitez, a director of instruction focused on bilingual education.
The Organizational Efficiency Committee is led by Kenneth Wong, chair of Brown University’s education department who’s advocated for mayoral control of school districts and advised Bridgeport’s former superintendent Paul Vallas as he opened charter schools in Chicago, Philly and New Orleans, and Will Clark, the district’s chief operating officer.
The Family and Community Engagement Committee is led by Donna Thompson-Bennett, co-director of the National Parent Leadership Institute; Michele Brooks, an assistant superintendent in Boston; Ramon Gonzalez, a principal in the Bronx; and Gemma Joseph-Lumpkin, the district’s head of engagement.
Transition Team members grab a bite before the kick-off.
Answering some complaints that parents and students were under-represented on the panels, Birks said that she’ll push the committee leaders to solicit feedback outside their normal circles, making the report’s recommendations truly representative.
“We’ll all work together to ensure that we find out’s what happening,” Birks said. She’s considering also distributing surveys, particularly to the students, to capture a wider sample of data beyond what the committees hear in focus groups.
Ward is taking that need to hear what’s going on outside the conference room seriously. She pointed out that it’s one of the benefits of hiring someone who’s still learning about New Haven.
“The community is going to give her this feedback, and I think that’s part of the exciting piece of [Birks] being new to the city, recognizing that it’s not about her, but rather about the community sharing with her what needs to be done in the district,” she said. “To me, her ability to be open to that is really a strength, that the community is going to co-create this vision that she’s responsible for implementing.”
At the kick-off, Birks told the crowd she knew better than anyone else that outreach across the Elm City would be essential to her success — a lesson whose importance she learned while watching the flare-up during her hiring.
“As a community, when we through this [search] process, people were like, well, what’s going on here? Is there transparency? Who are these people applying for this superintendency? Who is Dr. Birks?” she said. “We want to build relationships with people. No significant learning can take place unless there’s a significant relationship. You don’t know me, and that’s why I’m trying to communicate with you and meet you and get to know you.”