Christopher Peak Photo
Superintendent Carol Birks.
Superintendent Carol Birks wants two outside hires to take top positions in her administration.
In a new personnel report, Birks recommended hiring Ivelise Velazquez, New London’s chief academic officer, as her second in command and Paul Whyte, Waterbury’s instructional leadership director, as one of three supervisors for the district’s principals.
The Board of Education is scheduled to vote on whether to approve those appointments at a Monday meeting, along with the promotion of six administrators, the hiring of 21 teachers and seven security guards, the reshuffling of 42 teachers and three administrators, and the layoffs of 33 counselors, librarians and teachers.
Velazquez, who goes by “Evie,” would become deputy superintendent. A classroom teacher for almost 12 years, she traveled throughout Connecticut as a consultant for the quasi-public State Education Resource Center from 2006 to 2011 and worked as director of reading and social sciences in Windham from 2012 to 2014.
Most recently, Velazquez oversaw academics in New London since 2015. There, she implemented new teaching techniques, like “cognitively guided instruction” that tries to tap into children’s go-to strategies for math problems, and oversaw an expanded preschool pilot.
Whyte, a friend of Birks who graduated from the Columbia University Teachers College’s Urban Education Leaders Program right after her, will be one of three assistant superintendents for instructional leadership. Similar to the current directors of instruction but with a higher title, they’ll manage a portfolio of principals.
Whyte started his career by founding the Young Voices Initiative, an education and athletics program for 200 New Haven teens, in 1992, then went on to teach math in New York City public schools from 2000 to 2003.
Whyte spent most of his career at New Beginnings Family Academy, a Bridgeport charter school with an extended-day and extended-year model that kept kids in school for as long as nine hours a day, eleven months a year. Two years after it was founded, from 2004 to 2008, Whyte solicited donations and wrote grants as its development director. From 2008 to 2013, as its principal, he instituted data-driven decision-making and revamped teacher evaluations.
Most recently, in Waterbury, Whyte served as turnaround supervisor from 2013 to 2015, where he developed a plan for extra teacher training and a longer school day at Walsh Elementary and a summer pre-orientation at Crosby High. (The state still lists Walsh as a “focus school” for its achievement gap in language arts and Crosby as a “turnaround” for its low performance overall.) Whyte was promoted in 2015 to supervise principals in a portfolio of schools.
For the other two assistant superintendents, Birks promoted Keisha Redd-Hannans, a sorority sister who’s been one of her closest advisors during the transition and the principal at Celentano Biotech, Health and Medical Magnet School, which remains a “focus school” for its achievement gap in English, and kept on Gil Traverso, a director of instruction.
Iline Tracey, another current director of instruction, will also move up as assistant superintendent for curriculum, instruction and assessment. She’ll report to Velazquez, along with another assistant superintendent for early childhood education who hasn’t been hired yet.
The deputy superintendent will earn $175,000, and the four assistant superintendents will earn $165,000. Behind Birks, who has a $235,000 contract, the school administrators will all be New Haven’s top-paid employees, just ahead of Police Chief Anthony Campbell and Corporation Counsel John Rose, Jr.
The last current director of instruction, Abie Benitez, will make a lateral move to a newly created role: director of English-language learners. She’ll manage Pedro Mendia and Carmen Rodriguez, two “supervisors of bilingual education” who Birks asked to reapply for their positions and now plans to reinstate as “supervisors of English learners.”
Collectively, Birks’s team of administrators is projected to have 27 employees, at a cost of $4.1 million in salaries. Birks plans to have at least four fewer employees than her predecessor Garth Harries. She plans to eliminate a spokesperson, two curriculum supervisors, an evaluation supervisor, and a school finance resident, while adding a college and career director. Several other roles are changing ranks.
Altogether, Central Office roles account for $14.93 million in spending from the general fund, plus $4.58 million in special funds.
Mike Crocco, the former talent supervisor whose position was funded through a federal grant that expired last year, will become the principal at Metropolitan Business Academy, a high school known for its progressive pedagogy.
Grace Nathman, the principal at Quinnipiac Real World Math STEM School, one of only 16 schools in the state to exit from its status as a “focus school,” will fill Redd-Hannans’s vacancy at Celentano. Nicholas Perrone, the assistant principal at John C. Daniels Magnet School, is to be promoted into her spot.
The district is hiring new teachers for bilingualism, special education, chemistry and engineering, and elementary-school grades, while laying off school counselors, library media specialists and high-school teachers.