Aliyya Swaby Photo
Parent Stephen Poland (right) at Hill session.
Career High School biology teacher Terrence McTague said he is “frustrated” by seeing “such great things” happen in his underfunded school go unappreciated while the “billionaires’ boys club” throws money to charter schools.
He joined about 20 teachers, parents and community members in the Wilson Branch Library in the Hill Tuesday night to organize opposition to a proposed deal between the New Haven Public Schools and the Achievement First (AF) charter network to serve as financial partners on an experimental new AF-run school called Elm City Imagine.
The group decried the “privatization” of public schools through projects like Elm City Imagine. Members of the local “educators’ collective” plan to show up to express their opposition at the next full Board of Ed meeting on Feb. 9, each prepared to make a two-minute public comment.
The controversy over the school has brought to the surface a broader passionate debate about the role of charter schools in the future of public education.
Starting as a K‑1 and eventually expanding to fourth grade, Elm City Imagine will be AF’s first school using the “Greenfield” model. The model, designed with the help of the inventor of the computer mouse, is aimed at inventing the school of the future. It encompasses a variety of creative teaching and learning methods, including a calendar alternating eight weeks of regular classes with two weeks of career “expeditions” and daily blocks of “self-directed learning.” AF is also planning to create a Greenfield middle school beginning with next year’s fifth graders at Elm City College Prep Middle School.
AF and the district are in the process of creating a memorandum of understanding to hash out the details of the proposed financial partnership, in which the district would provide $2,000 per student in money and services, AF CEO Dacia Toll said in a previous interview.
The Board of Education has not yet hosted a formal conversation about the partnership, though Superintendent Garth Harries said the district will discuss the details with the community before making a decision. Teachers and parents at Tuesday night’s meeting said they hope that decision will be a no — a sentiment shared by teachers union President Dave Cicarella in a recent public letter. They broke up into small groups to build their arguments against the proposed school.
“I want public schools to remain democratic, publicly funded institutions … When is the AF-public schools merger going to be made and is it already a done deal?” said Leslie Blatteau (pictured), a social studies teacher at Metropolitan Business Academy (MBA). She referred to AF as a “corporate-style charter,” funded and run by private institutions and individuals from wealthier regions of the state, instead of by local community members.
AF programs like Greenfield get results only because they overwork young teachers, resulting in a high turnover rate, argued one AF teacher, who asked not to be identified to avoid job repercussions. “Teachers are working insane hours — 13-hour days regularly,” the teacher said. Newer teachers feel they have to use “strict disciplinary measures” to make up for their “lack of skill in classroom management,” the teacher said. “If teachers unionized, a lot of successes [AF] promotes would be severely undermined.”
But the local teachers union is not an attractive option for AF teachers, even the small number interested in unionizing, the AF teacher said. “Not even for me.”
AF spokesperson Amanda Pinto sent a statement in response: ” Recruiting and retaining highly effective teachers is a top priority for our organization, which is why we provide hundreds of hours of professional development, assign every teacher a coach, and created our Teacher Career Pathway program — a nationally recognized teacher growth and retention initiative. The fact is most students enter our schools far below grade-level, and it’s the hard work and talent of our teachers that’s making the difference to close the achievement gap so that our students graduate college and career-ready.”
Harries has said the district could use the additional state resources to reduce class sizes at over-enrolled public schools in the district and to share the burden of enrolling students who switch schools after Oct. 1.
Leslie Cohen (pictured left), a former New Haven teacher and parent of a student at Edgewood School, said that funneling more money into allowing for smaller class sizes would make a “huge difference” in classroom management. But she and Blatteau said they doubt the money from the AF-district partnership would change much at district schools.
“Your school might continue to fail, but this new school will have smaller class sizes,” Blatteau said.
The increasing prevalence of charter schools in New Haven’s neighborhoods is “part of a larger plan” to gentrify the city, said Engineering and Science University Magnet School teacher Eric Maroney. “Teachers unions are often pitted against civil rights,” he said. “We have to change the narrative,” by making a connection between the anti-corporate-charter fight and larger fights against injustices such as police brutality. “We also understand that the reason why children are not doing well in class are also because of all these issues.”
Though the district has had a working relationship with local charter schools, the relationship was strained when pro-charter Connecticut Coalition for Achievement Now (ConnCAN) held a rally on the Green to save kids “trapped” in local “failing” public schools.
“The large narrative now is that people who are not for these charter schools are basically against kids doing well,” said Worthington Hooker teacher Tim Shortt (at left in photo), this year’s Teacher of the Year. He said the narrative was a false one and one that harmed teachers in district schools.
Shortt said he was concerned about the overuse of standardized testing as a way to determine whether schools and students are performing well.
“An important point is to not say we are opposed to tests. It’s the amount of testing, the type of testing,” responded Chris Willems, MBA teacher. “I’m concerned about the volume of testing especially near elementary school…It doesn’t tell us what we need to know.”
And the money used for test preparation and the tests themselves could be spent equalizing standards at neighborhood schools, ensuring that students without wealthy parents can access education resources “whether or not their parents are able to subsidize it,” Blatteau said.
MBA humanities teacher Nataliya Braginsky urged everyone there to reach out to parents and teachers and bring them to future meetings of the collective or of the Board of Ed. She told them to come to Monday’s Board meeting wearing “red to show our unity.”
“They’re ready for a big crowd,” Shortt said.
Blatteau said community members should attend every meeting of the Teaching and Learning Committee, which gathers every second and fourth Monday after the full board meeting. At the upcoming Monday’s committee meeting Feb. 9, she said they should prepare to issue public comments answering the question, “What do successful schools have in common?”
For previous coverage:
• The School Of The Future Gets A Dry Run
• Teachers Union Prez Pens “Imagine” Critique
•Charter Plans Detailed; Parents Weigh In
•Elm City Imagine Sparks Debate
•NHPS, AF Team Up On Experimental School
•Elm City Charter Eyed For Futuristic “Conversion”
• City’s Charter Network Hires San Francisco Firm To Design The K‑8 Public School Of The Future