Aliyya Swaby Photos
Aprilrain Knox said she usually misses her parents when she’s in the classroom. As she walked in for her first day of third grade at Lincoln-Bassett, a small crowd eased her transition with whoops, cheers and a hearty round of applause.
Organized by State Sen. Gary Winfield, dozens of community members — most of them black men — showed up early Monday morning to greet Lincoln-Bassett students in Newhallville as they hopped off the buses for their first day of school.
Aprilrain (receiving the hug in above photo) was among 18,720 children who started the school year Monday. (The other 3,202 students — in pre‑K and kindergarten classes — start Wednesday.)
Dressed in formal wear, the men created a pathway at Lincoln-Bassett for students and parents and doled out high-fives, calling out, “Welcome back to school!”
“It’s amazing. It’s a rallying of positivity,” Aprilrain’s mom Rhonda Knox (pictured above at right) said. “It feels good.”
“I was nervous to come to school,” Aprilrain said.
“Did it make you more nervous or less nervous?” Rhonda asked her daughter.
“Less nervous,” Aprilrain replied.
Winfield was inspired to organize the rally after seeing black professional men host a similar back-to-school welcome at Martin Luther King School in Hartford. He created a Facebook event last week, which supporters then shared through different social media.
He focused his outreach efforts on black men to combat stereotypes that they are completely absent as role models in children’s lives.
“People say things about the community that I don’t believe to be true,” he said. “I didn’t want to limit it to men. But the mothers are in the community. The mothers are present.”
Lincoln-Bassett, which runs from pre‑K through sixth grade, is a state turnaround school, an underperforming school that signed up for a state-funded makeover through the Commissioner’s Network. Since Principal Janet Brown-Clayton took the helm at the start of last school year, Lincoln-Bassett has shown marked improvement in school climate and behavior, according to a January state audit. It has also become the test site for Mayor Toni Harp’s full-day school model, with pre-school activities and after-school meals and arts and recreation programming.
Superintendent Garth Harries said he is “open” to community-led events like Monday’s that help students “feel they belong.” Kermit Carolina’s new position as the district’s interim supervisor of youth, family and community engagement is intended to facilitate more of those events, Harries said.
Many of the men who showed up Monday have deep roots in New Haven. Brown-Clayton greeted a few of them with familiar hugs: “He was my student!”
Peter Cox, who works with homeless young people through the Hope and Faith Foundation, was flanked by his childhood friend Miguel Pittman and his mentor as he applauded the parade of students
“We grew up like this together. To be out here 45 years later, that says a lot,” Cox said. “We’ve been hit with a stigma. Today it’s going to stop. I grew up with half of these guys.”
Phi Beta Sigma fraternity provided every student with a fully stocked bookbag, said fraternity brother Tai Richardson, who helped cheerlead students Monday.
Antonio Walker walked his stepson to the steps of a school he used to attend. “It got me excited” to see the applause, he said. Nothing similar existed when he was a student at Lincoln-Bassett or Roberto Clemente. “They didn’t have anything like this when I was in school, that’s for sure. It would’ve made me graduate a lot sooner than I was supposed to.”
“These kids really need the support,” said Hanan Hameen, who led an arts and music program at the school over the summer. “They need to see positive models, and that they can aspire to be great.”
Zheysiel Vega clutched his dad’s hand as they walked toward the school on his first day of kindergarten. The applause startled him, but it made his parents feel a little more relaxed about leaving him at Lincoln-Bassett, said his mom Myra Torres.
“It’s good but kind of sad because it’s the first time we’re leaving him,” Torres said. “The applause helped.”