Zoom
Monday night’s Zoomed-in NHPS Board of Ed meeting.
• Board of Ed speeds up approval for pandemic marking policy.
• Also OKs next year’s schedule, with day off for Eid and shorter February break.
The New Haven Public Schools Board of Education unanimously voted to approve that spring 2020 grading policy on Monday evening.
The vote was a few weeks earlier than planned, after Interim Superintendent Iline Tracey asked the board to give teachers clarity as soon as possible.
“The grading policy seems pretty straightforward and a good recommendation. If people don’t have real questions, I would be supportive of having a vote,” said BOE member Darnell Goldson.
The board originally planned to read over the policy as a board, send it back to the Governance Committee and then hold the final vote at the next meeting. Goldson said that because the draft policy had already been reviewed by two committees, that step was not necessary.
No board members raised objections to the policy or the faster timeline.
The new policy is based on thousands of teacher, parent and student responses to a survey sent out by the school district in late April. It is also in line with guidance from the state on how to handle the many different kinds of challenges students have faced during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The final grades of middle and high school students will be based on their grades from before Covid-19 hit New Haven, unless they improved their performance during the pandemic. Read more about the policy here.
Eid Joins The Calendar
File Photo
Scene from an Eid held at Yale.
At the same Monday meeting, the Board of Education approved the calendar for the 2020 – 2021 school year.
Next year will be the first time New Haven schools close for the Islamic holiday Eid al-Fitr, which is scheduled to take place on May 13, 2021.
The approved calendar has the school year begin before Labor Day and mirrors the schedule of neighboring school districts.
NHPS teachers voted on the calendar as part of their contract. Because of Covid-19 school closures, teachers voted online for the first time. While teacher’s union president David Cicarella was worried about the outcome of the new system, participation was at the same levels it has always been, he said.
Goldson said that a teacher had emailed him worrying about fraud and error in the new process. Cicarella said that there were exactly six duplicate votes out of roughly 1,000. They seemed to be from teachers who thought their initial vote did not go through; Cicarella said he removed the duplicates.
The vote was close, with a 27-person lead in favor of the winning calendar. Goldson decided to abstain. BOE member Tamiko Jackson-McArthur and Student Representative Lihame Arouna both voted “no.” They said that they opposed the switch from this year’s weeklong February break to a four-day weekend.