Supt. Search Soon To Enter Next Phase

The city’s search for a successor for the public school district’s soon-to-retire Supt. Iline Tracey is about to enter its next chapter, now that public-input meetings and focus groups are done, the public survey has closed, and the job posting has just one more day before coming down.

Wednesday was the last day New Haveners could offer their thoughts, hopes, and suggestions for the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district’s superintendent search through an anonymous online survey. That survey closed at 11:59 p.m. The district’s job posting for the superintendent role is set to close on Thursday. This comes as Tracey is set to retire at the end of the current school year in June.

Last week, the McPherson and Jacobson search firm conducted three stakeholder meetings that gathered community members together to share with the search firm what they want to see in the school district’s next leader. The firm also held several private focus groups with school community members who were personally invited by the search committee. (Click here to read about one of last week’s public stakeholder meetings.)

NHPS spokesperson Justin Harmon told the Independent that approximately 100 people attended last week’s three public stakeholder meetings. 

He also said that 87 people attended the various focus groups meetings, which took place between Feb. 15 and Feb. 17. The attendees at those focus group meetings were selected based on the search committee’s recommendations of local administrators, business and community leaders, parents, support staff, students and teachers.

By the publication time of this article, Harmon was not able to provide the Independent with the number of people who have applied for the superintendent job so far.

Now that the public input gathering by the search firm is just about done, the next steps in the search process include the firm putting together a summary of notes from the various focus groups, public stakeholder meetings, and the survey. The firm will then present that summary to the Board of Education at its Feb. 27 meeting. The full report will also be posted on the district’s website. The report will be used by the search committee during the process of vetting the candidates that will be presented to the Board of Education mid-March, according to the NHPS website. 

“On behalf of the Board of Education, I want to thank each and every person who made time to provide their valuable input and feedback about issues facing the district and the qualities we should seek in our next superintendent,” Board President Yesenia Rivera told the Independent in an email comment. ​“I feel confident it will help us as we sort through the candidates for this important position. It is clear that this community cares deeply about the quality of the education our students receive.”

Harmon added that the process is on track to meet the mid-April deadline posted on the district’s website to have a finalist selected and announced as the next superintendent. 

"We Can Make These Changes Happen"

Wilbur Cross senior and Board of Education student representative Dave Cruz-Bustamante told the Independent in a Tuesday phone interview that they haven’t been able to be as active of a participant in the superintendent search process as they had hoped as they deal with various personal, family, and medical issues. 

Last week, Cruz-Bustamante did participate in a student focus group with about 15 to 20 other student leaders. In the focus group, Cruz-Bustamante said his peers emphasized key characteristics for the next superintendent. Those included someone who is humble, someone who can take accountability, and a leader the community can work with and not against. 

“We don’t need another person who thinks they have all the answers or will work as an obstacle for students,” Cruz-Bustamante said. 

Cruz-Bustamante said they are hopeful that the next superintendent will shake up the district’s history of ​“bureaucracy, slowness, and not being responsive.” They also expressed concerns that 187 community members is not a big enough pool of public participants. In their student group ​“it was only hearing from the students who are in good standing.” They added that the next school leader should also respect student voices. 

“Everyone wants a superintendent who cares about schools. The real tension is, How?” Cruz-Bustamante said. ​“It’s about whether or not the next is going to be another obstacle or another conspirator.”

A final key characteristic desired by Cruz-Bustamante is a leader who can help mobilize the school community because ​“the city of New Haven, we’re not helpless puppies, we have the power of city government on our side, it’s just a matter of mobilizing the existing resources.”

“Regardless of what superintendent we get, I know we can make these changes happen,” they said. 

Hopefully Not Another Search In 3 Years

City teachers union President Leslie Blatteau attended all three public stakeholder meetings and one of the three teacher focus groups last week.

Blatteau said the union hasn’t participated in the search process as much as it had hoped, but she was asked to submit names of teachers to the search firm to invite to the focus groups. Blatteau shared a diverse list of educators from across NHPS. 

“Do I wish that we had been more involved since December? Yes. Am I glad that we’ve been involved in the ways that we have been? Yes,” Blatteau said. 

Click here to read a recent Independent article about a rally hosted by the teachers unions that discussed the search process.

She reported that two of the teacher focus groups each had seven participants and the third had 12 – 14 teachers.

“It was a pretty representative sample of teachers with race, ethnicity, gender, teaching experience, and subject area,” she said in a phone interview with the Independent Tuesday. ​“Our teachers’ voices were heard throughout this process.” 

“I think these are important conversations we should be having whether we’re looking for a superintendent or not,” Blatteau added. 

The stakeholder meetings and focus groups helped to highlight how much people care about schools, learn the strengths of city, highlight people’s trust and respect for educators, and raise awareness of ongoing issues, Blatteau said. 

She offered some tips for how the Board of Education can continue to grow the community’s trust throughout the search process, suggesting that the school board members willingly offer timely and detailed updates and share as much with the public as possible.

Blatteau added that she thinks it would have been beneficial for the school board members who make up the search committee to have listened in on the stakeholder conversations. She also said more notice should have been given for the stakeholder meetings, translation services, and meeting locations should have been spread across the city 

“These are the things that we’ve been wanting to talk about with our appointed and elected Board of Education members for years now,” she said.

Blatteau concluded that she is hopeful and excited for the search process. ​“If we get the right person, it would be great to not have to do a super search in three years,” she said. 

"We Need A Fresh Start"

Lisa Bassani, the mother of two students at Nathan Hale School, described last week’s public meetings as ​“last minute” and the selection process for focus groups ​“opaque.”

​“From my perspective, announcing on a Monday that you’re holding a meeting on Wednesday is disrespectful in my mind,” she said. 

She said the last-minute scheduling of the meetings made her feel the community’s voices were undermined. ​“If you’re really really seeking input, you would have done it with at least a couple weeks’ notice,” she said. 

She added that the anonymous survey should have been open longer and not during the district’s February break when some families are out of town. 

Bassani participated in a four-person parent focus group that she described as not diverse. 

One concern brought up in her focus group was parents’ hopes that the community was consulted before the posting of the job and so the public input could be used to create the job criteria. 

“In a district with 20,000 kids that’s not a good turnout, maybe for a district with a few hundred or thousand students, but not here,” she said in reaction to Harmon’s report that less than 200 people joined the stakeholder and focus group meetings. 

“We need a leader that can set a course and set us on a new path, and it’s going to be harder to find them with this process,” Bassani said. ​“Our great teachers need a leader that they feel like is behind them.” 

As a parent, Bassani said, the next superintendent should be responsive and willing to learn and replicate working initiatives from neighboring school districts.

“We don’t need another leader who just wants to throw their hands up and say, ​‘Other districts are struggling too.’ That doesn’t feel like leadership,” Bassani said. 

Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller, who is also the parent of a NHPS student, participated in a focus group made up of business and community leaders which had a total of six people in it. 

“I appreciate that they had well intentions, but as a participant it felt box-checky and transactional,” she said. 

She said some who participated in other focus groups described them as sparse and not representative, including a student focus group she was told was made up of two students. 

“There wasn’t a lot of care given to how to make all of it accessible,” she said. 

She said student focus groups should have been held on site at several schools. 

She recalled her neighbors telling her that they could not make it to the other side of town for any of the stakeholder meetings held at Barack Obama School and Betsy Ross School. ​“If they couldn’t have one on the east side and west side of town, why not have it hybrid?”

“I just hope that the people that came out were the ones that needed to be heard,” she said. 

Miller concluded that she hopes the next superintendent will be committed to New Haven and ​“not a part of the old guard.” 

In her focus group she said community members reminisced on the work of former superintendent John Dow Jr. who was New Haven’s first Black superintendent.

“He was the last superintendent the people really loved and that’s because he was always in schools and rarely in central office,” she said. ​“That was the last time we had somebody that was all about the kids.”