Supe Candidates Split On Charters

While hundreds got an up-close look at the three finalists for schools superintendent, candidate Gary Highsmith vowed not to work with charter schools, while Carol Birks embraced them as a needed alternative and Pamela Brown offered a middle-ground position.

The starkly different approaches to the ​“school choice” movement — the nationwide push to open more charter schools that compete with traditional public schools, and to have traditional schools work with them — were the clearest policy distinction at a community forum Tuesday night with the three finalists for the open New Haven schools superintendent job. (You can watch the forum by clicking on a Facebook Live video at the bottom of this story.)

Highsmith, the human resources director for Hamden schools and former New Haven principal; Birks, the chief of staff in Hartford; and Brown, the head of elementary schools in Fontana, Calif., are all competing for the top job. Tuesday’s forum marked the first chance that the public had to meet the candidates in person, to get a sense of their personalities and hear why they envisioned themselves in New Haven.

At 5:30 p.m., the three finalists worked the room at Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School for a half hour, fielding questions from small groups. There was no other opportunity for audience members to answer questions. Worried about personal attacks, coordinators from the Citywide Parent Team instead pulled prompts from the online survey comments.

Harp: ​“Time For A Woman”

By 6 p.m., when the candidates took the stage, more than 200 people had filled up the auditorium. Wearing red, sorority sisters handed out sheets out with Birks’s résumé. A busload of students, meanwhile, took spots in the bleachers to root for Highsmith.

The district has been without a permanent superintendent for more than a year, after the board pushed out Garth Harries in October 2016. Former Superintendent Reggie Mayo came out of retirement to lead the district in an interim capacity. Since then, the board has stumbled through a chaotic search process that led some top candidates to withdraw their applications.

In a straw poll on Tuesday, Highsmith — a candidate rejected by the search firm but added later to boost representation of local candidates — emerged as the crowd’s favorite, snagging over half the votes.

In total, Highsmith claimed 121 votes, running up the score with support from 49 students, 25 teachers and 24 community members. Birks came in second with 56 votes, aided by a voting bloc of 25 community members. And Brown placed last with 32 votes, her best showing among 17 parents.

Dolores Garcia-Blocker, head of college and career programs and a semifinalist in the search, also earned one write-in vote.

The final decision, however, will be up to Board of Education members, who will conduct one last round of interviews on Thursday and then vote to authorize a background check and contract negotiations for their top pick on Monday.

As the search process nears its end, the school board is split over the most important qualifications: administrative experience to handle the mix of schools and their tenuous funding; rigorous pedagogical training, particularly on dealing with trauma; Spanish fluency to engage the fastest growing demographic in a district that’s already 43 percent Latino; or intimate knowledge of New Haven to institute necessary changes without running afoul of city politics.

With the recent appointment of Jamell Cotto, Mayor Toni Harp has an advantage in numbers on the board to see her choice through. As she left the forum, Harp said, ​“I think it’s time for a woman in New Haven.”

Charter Debate

In response to a parent question about charter schools, the three candidates articulated different opinions about their place in the public school system.

Highsmith said that the data showed that most charters don’t do any better than traditional public schools. ​“They’ve made public schools the boogey-man in everything,” he said. ​“They talk about being ​‘trapped,’ like they’re the answer. [Traditional public schools] might have the answer if you didn’t have to be transparent, didn’t let anybody know where the money comes from, suspend kids for having the wrong color socks or not raising their hand in class.”

He added, ​“Charter schools are not the magic bullet they pretend to be. … Take the most difficult kids, start a charter school for them, and let’s see what the results are.”

That’s why Highsmith said he’d fought the attempts by New Haven-based Achievement First to expand its network of charter schools in New Haven and engage in more joint projects with the New Haven public school system. He vowed that he would continue to do so as superintendent.

Birks, who sits on Achievement First’s board in Hartford, said that charter schools serve an important function in identifying ​“promising practices to support students and their achievement.” In fact, her schools have adopted some new ideas about discipline and guidance counselors from what they’d seen in charters, she said.

“We took the best practices. I say we shouldn’t fight charter schools; we should learn from them,” Birks said. ​“Bottom line: All the students are our students. All the students belong to us. Why fight?” She said that when charter schools do well, they’re more than happy to add their numbers in to the district’s test scores.

“Charters give parents another choice opportunity. In urban districts, there’s not enough great schools. Not all of them have the same data points as ESUMS and Hooker and John C. Daniels and Career. Others are not doing as well. Parents need other choice opportunities,” Birks added. ​“As superintendent I would do that and work to build a more coherent relationship and partnerships with these schools so that we continue to take all of our schools on the path to improvement.”

Brown agreed with Birks that charter schools function best when they’re ​“incubators of innovation,” the reason they were established in the first place, but she cautioned, ​“The intent, I believe, was not to replace traditional public schools.”

Her approach, she explained, would be to hold all schools accountable. ​“I’ve had experience with both, and as superintendent I would work to make sure that all schools serving children within this district are [providing] a great education.”

Why You?

Aside from their disagreement on charters, the three candidates generally voiced similar answers. (They appeared to hold slightly different views about the place of vocational training as an alternative to college, but their answers didn’t get fleshed out.) All three spoke about the need to articulate a clear plan for where the district’s headed, to maintain high standards in the classroom despite students’ tough upbringing, to hold administrators accountable, and to better engage parents.

To be sure, the candidates presented distinctive ideas: Highsmith advocated post-natal home visits to begin education even earlier than pre‑K. Birks promised to hold open office hours and quarterly forums to review progress. Brown suggested offering more after-school enrichment programs to get parents into schools.

The evening’s biggest contrast took a less tangible form in the three candidates’ personalities.

Brown, speaking in her Southern drawl from Liberty, Mississippi, ​“where everything was separate and nothing was equal, and people who looked like us did not have very many opportunities at all,” walked through the nuts-and-bolts of building functional school systems. ​“We can talk about the pie-in-the-sky dreams and visions and plans, so many plans,” she said, ​“but they can end up put on a shelf.” With a catch in her throat, Brown admitted she’d probably made mistakes, perhaps a reference to her tenure in Buffalo where a Tea Partier on the school board plotted to remove her. ​“I can’t promise that I will be perfect,” she said, but ​“my purpose in life is to make sure that I’m doing my best to make sure that every child will meet high standards.”

Birks, citing her doctoral research on student’s socio-emotional development, fired up the room by speaking of the ways she’d empower those around her, even asking the audience to repeat the conclusion of her speech with her. Birks said she’d focus on freeing the now-“handcuffed” instructional directors, ​“elevating parent voices” and educating the whole student. She said her trajectory — from a young woman who grew up in poverty in Bridgeport’s East End to a finalist for New Haven’s superintendent — was a ​“testament” to the uplift that can be earned through education. ​“I’ve spent several years combating inequality, more than 20 years of my life, and I want to continue to do that in New Haven,” she said.

Highsmith, recounting growing up in New Haven’s Hill neighborhood, said he couldn’t care less about politics. ​“No politician in this city has made me. No political activist in this city controls me,” he said. ​“I owe none of them anything.” Instead, he said he’d empathize with Elm City students, sitting in the same desks he once sat at, in a way no other superintendent could. ​“It all boils down to one thing: Do you care? If you care, you’ll do anything,” he said. ​“I can care for 21,500 students. I can care for each and every one of them.”

His message resonated with students seated in the auditorium’s back bleachers, who cheered him on. (His daughter, a sophomore at Co-Op High School, held up a sign, reading, ​“Hire my dad!”) After the forum, they cast dozens of votes for Highsmith in the straw poll.

Click above to watch the forum.