A ​“Promise” Catch-22?

Wilbur Cross junior Isaiah Lee arrived at a public hearing on the city budget with an armful of textbooks, complete with a message for city lawmakers.

Lee (pictured) was one of about 75 people who showed up at Hillhouse High School Thursday night for a hearing of the Board of Aldermen’s Finance committee. It’s the first in a series of community hearings on the mayor’s proposed $475 million budget for the next fiscal year, in advance of an aldermanic vote on the spending plan.

The mayor’s proposed budget doesn’t call for a tax increase. It does call for service cuts. Last month he laid off dozens of city employees, including 42 positions in New Haven’s public schools. Up to 190 school system layoffs loom in the next year budget.

For two hours on Thursday evening, aldermen heard public testimony on the proposed budget. A theme emerged: Protect school staff and faculty.

A dozen school nurses in the auditorium’s front row decried layoffs from among their ranks. Classroom paraprofessionals called for cuts at the top, rather than at the bottom, of the pay scale. Two students from Cross spoke against cutbacks in school staff.

People also testified in favor of the animal shelter and the Livable City Initiative, particularly the hard work of local neighborhood specialist Elaine Braffman.

Lee, the Cross junior, began his testimony by placing a number of books on the table in front of aldermen: a novel, a Spanish textbook, and several others.

“Those are just some of my schoolbooks,” Lee said. The books aren’t worth much on their own, without the staff to help students like him unlock them, he said.

The novel was Joseph Heller’s ​“Catch-22.” Lee presented aldermen with a paradox worthy of the book: The city has made a promise to put qualifying students through state college, but layoffs in school staff may prevent students from qualifying.

He was referring to New Haven Promise, the program announced last fall that offers free tuition to in-state universities for students who keep up good grades in high school. Promise is backed by Yale and The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.

“The promise is being taken away through the cuts we’re having,” Lee said. Students won’t be able to earn the good grades they need to qualify for Promise if they don’t have the staff support they need, Lee said.

School nurses and social workers are vital ​“tools” to support student learning, he said. ​“Without these tools, we cannot acquire that success.”

“You might as well keep those books. They’re useless to me without my teachers,” Lee concluded.

Allen Williams (pictured), another Cross student, also testified. He said the recent layoff of a school social worker affected him personally. The man was in the process of helping him and Lee and others to form the Wilbur Cross Political Action Club and to put together an event later this year to introduce students to different local social causes they could join.

He touched on another theme of the evening, that budget cuts should come out of the top salaries, not the lowest. ​“Our administrators aren’t the one’s doing hands-on teaching,” Williams said.

After the meeting, Lee (pictured) said that while his school just lost a social worker, it also gained three administrators this year, ​“who I haven’t seen do anything” except stand in the hall between periods and tell kids to go to class. ​“A security guard could do it,” he said.

A paraprofessional named Michael Ellison (pictured) said he helped a 4‑year-old named Oscar read for the first time on Thursday. ​“I make less than $40,000,” he told aldermen. Meanwhile, Will Clark, the public schools’ chief operating officer, makes almost $150,000, Ellison said.

“He says he needs us to sacrifice,” he said. ​“It’s just too much.”

Nurse Caron Wept For The Children

Several school nurses testified on Thursday evening. One of those was Jennifer Caron who said she received a pink slip last month and lost her job as the nurse at Barnard Environmental Studies Magnet School

Three school nurses lost their jobs in February, and another retired, one nurse testified. That leaves 29 nurses for 53 schools, or one nurse for every 759 students, Caron said later.

“As I cleaned my office out on the 17th, I wept,” she told aldermen. ​“I was really weeping most for the children. I was their fifth nurse in two years.”

Caron went on to deliver a stem-winder to the aldermen. She said the city should ​“not include children in our bottom line,” that ​“they are at our mercy,” that ​“the lives of the smallest and voiceless are not up for grabs,” and that nurses have ​“sheltered children from storms you would only pray not to be a part of.”

Caron said she is also the mother of three students at Mauro Sheridan magnet school in New Haven, spots she won in the magnet school lottery last year. She said she’s considering putting her kids back in West Haven public schools next year, where each school has its own school nurse.

West Haven is dealing with budget troubles of its own, she said after her testimony. But the town is ​“not putting the safety of students last.”

“I’m sorry,” West River Alderman Yusuf Shah, chair of the Finance Committee, told Caron after the meeting. ​“We didn’t want to do this.” He promised to work on the issue and to try to protect school nurses.