School Layoffs Tabled; Uncertainty Reigns

With the start of the school year just two weeks ago, nearly three-dozen educators have been temporarily spared from layoffs, while cuts might now fall on others — unknown others.

School board members meeting Monday night tabled the 33 planned layoffs and 28 transfers for full-time certified employees. They said they need more time to look at other ways they might close the rest of this year’s $19.34 million budget deficit without letting go of so many classroom teachers, school counselors and library media specialists.

The Board of Education unanimously cast that vote at a meeting at Celentano School after hearing almost an hour of impassioned pleas from parents, recent graduates, union leaders, retirees, the employees themselves and, perhaps most memorably, from the two non-voting student representatives.

Darnell Goldson, the board’s president, said he plans to call a special meeting soon, when the board will make its final staffing decisions in order to have everyone in place before the first day of school on Thursday, Aug. 30.

Standing Up For Counselors, Librarians

Many educators came out Monday night to support their colleagues, especially from the guidance department.

Superintendent of Schools Carol Birks had proposed eliminating one-third of the school counselors, saying she’d hire more social workers to cover elementary and middle schools schools while prioritizing counselors for the high schools. Overall, the district would have had a staffing ratio of one counselor for about every 525 students, more than double what experts recommend.

During public comment, school counselors said that they’re already stretched to the limit at current staffing levels. They said that social workers, who already have big caseloads of legally required work with special education students, couldn’t pick up much slack. And they said that thinking elementary school students did not add to their caseload was unrealistic.

“I can say to you that one of me isn’t enough,” said Mia Breuler, Edgewood Magnet School’s counselor. ​“We are spread so thin that the concept that you will reshuffle us and have us spread even thinner is just a recipe for failure. Our urban district needs more, not less. We wonder why our kids aren’t succeeding: the social-emotional needs of our community are huge.”

Splitting their time between even more students in multiple buildings, several counselors added, would inevitably mean they were missing when students needed to talk.

“Dr Birks, you’re quoted as saying, ​‘You cannot not have a fourth-grade teacher.’ The same is true for a full-time counselor in every building,” said Maria Nuterangelo, a counselor at Augusta Lewis Troup School. ​“With the issues in the country, the school shootings and this political climate, new and complicated issues, and the closing of the alternative schools, this is the worst time to eliminate counselors from the district. Many times we’re the first responders to many crisis situations and student issues.”

Others came out to support library media specialists.

Robert Gibson, a retired teacher who spent seven years as Hillhouse High School’s librarian, said that people don’t understand that library media specialists do more than ​“just pass out books.” As certified educators, they couldn’t be replaced by part-timers or local library branches.

“Library media specialists are teachers. They instruct students in research. They guide them to resources to learn with our literacy coaches. If we’re going to tell students that they need to read to succeed, then they need to have libraries with professionally trained library media specialists,” he said. ​“You can’t just put anybody in the room.”

The most poignant testimony of the night came after public comment ended, when the board’s two student reps rose to speak about the impact their own teachers had.

Makayla Dawkins, a rising senior at Hillhouse, said her high school’s counselor had been there as she confronted her father’s incarceration and her mother’s death. A counselor showed up to her mother’s funeral and helped her feel comfortable in school.

“Students across the district have lost: a place of peace to do work, a place to be helped with college applications,” Dawkins said. ​“They sat and listened to my graduation plans, how I want to go to Yale. They helped when I was coping with tragic events, including my mom’s death, and they comfort us when we cry. Guidance counselors always do more than we ask.

“This isn’t equity. This is a disservice to the students,” she added. ​“Just to realize that these people are gone hurts me. I already lost my mom, and now I’m losing the people who were there for me through that time.”

Nico Rivera, a rising junior at Metropolitan Business Academy, also said his counselor, his librarian and his other teachers had all been there when he felt alone, after his brother was incarcerated, his father was deployed and his grandmother was sick.

“This is my community. These are my people, who are all hurt,” he said. ​“They helped me through every step.” Goldson thanked everyone for sharing their concerns, but he asked where the crowd had been earlier in the year, when the Board of Alders voted to flat-fund the schools, zeroing out Mayor Toni Harp’s request for a $5 million increase.

“Dr. Birks is not the enemy; this board is not the enemy. The enemy are those folks up at the state, in the suburbs, and in the federal government who refuse to consider education as important for urban kids. We have tough decisions we have to make, and we’re going to eventually make them,” he said to the packed room. ​“We need you to be there in the future. We really do.”

Looking For Money Elsewhere

The executive board for the New Haven Federation of Teachers met recently to brainstorm alternatives that could keep prevent layoffs of their members, said Tom Burns, a school counselor and union vice-president. He asked for the board to give them this week to present a formal package of solutions.

Dave Cicarella, the union’s president, suggested that some of those savings need to come from the administration. He said the plan in place since April had been to reduce 135 teachers and 25 administrators. But while 110 teaching positions have been eliminated so far, only 14 administrative positions have been eliminated.

“Is that plan going to be changed?” he asked. With multiple administrative hires happening that night, he added, ​“This does start to sound like the same-old, same-old, where everybody sacrifices except those at the top.”

Cicarella asked for the teachers, counselors and librarians to be reinstated. He said that would give everyone time to ​“evaluate the work of everyone in the district, from the top right down to each and every position.” He said this would give ​“accurate, first-hand information to base such important decisions, not rely on what other districts say they do and anecdotal input from a handful of principals and supervisors.”

NHPS Advocates, a watchdog group of public-school parents and teachers, also sent out a nine-point alternative that transferred most of the cuts to administrators, instructional coaches and itinerant teachers. Their aim overall, the group said, was to ​“eliminate duplication of services, de-prioritize services not essential to the instructional core, and, above all, prioritize direct support to children in their schools.”

By the Independent’s estimate, their plan could theoretically save up to $6.35 million, although some of that would be lessened by employees with higher salaries ​“bumping” newer ones out of jobs.

The bulk of the savings that NHPS Advocates suggested would be achieved by slashing one-third of central office operational spending and by furloughing all employees for at least two days.

The biggest cuts they proposed include eliminating all ​“teachers, social workers, and coaches” from within central office, except for those who provide ​“direct services” to special education students; eliminating the Office of Family and Community’s non-grant-funded positions, putting the responsibility for engagement on school-based staff ​“without a supervising bureaucracy”; and halving the Office of Talent to let ​“human resources staff, content supervisors, and principals” take over the job of recruiting, onboarding, and evaluating teachers.

On top of eliminating those positions, NHPS Advocates suggested furloughing all employees for two days and all six-figure employees for an additional three days. ​“Ask more of those who earn more and protect those who earn the least,” they said.

Furloughs require approval by the unions’ membership. Cicarella has said that he’s open to putting furlough days to a vote by the teachers only if it could prevent layoffs.

The group asked Birks to also appoint a Budget Task Force that could bring together a range of stakeholders to present recommendations for closing next year’s deficit without impacting students.

Superintendent Carol Birks said she’d be meeting with her internal team this week to see if they can come up with another proposal. ​“We still have a long way to go,” she said. ​“We have to mitigate the budget.”