The Hartford Board of Education voted Tuesday evening to approve revised educational specifications that, in conjunction with State and City support, stand to revive the original Weaver High School, now Martin Luther King, Jr., School, as a combination Middle (Grades 6-8) and Pre-K-5 magnet school.  The key developments are a major physical renovation, unattended since 1924 – and co-location of the Breakthrough II Magnet School, intended to spur the long-postponed funding for this giant fixer-upper.

A question haunting too many cities in this country is why schools and boulevards named for Dr. King always seem to hunker in the back of the budget bus.  If Dr. King went to jail for civil and voting rights and then was assassinated (with so many others), how is it that his legacy isn’t a more proud reminder?

The back of the budget bus is where MLK on Ridgefield Avenue has been situated for way too long; unmitigated vermin and mold (as well as crumbling entry ways) insult children and staff and send a negative signal to the entire school community.  “When our kids come to a building and things don’t work,” Board Member Juan Hernandez advised, “it causes children to question their self-worth.”  That’s exactly why any further delays would be unconscionable.

Here are some highlights of the discussion of the new educational specifications (the video is here), plus the Courant coverage yesterday.  The Board voted 7-0 (with Board Members Robert Cotto, Jr., and Karen Taylor not present) right in the aging auditorium of the vast, and out-of-Band-Aids MLK building – to finally get around to upgrading it:

• Location, Location, Location. Board Chair Craig Stallings (a Weaver High grad) changed the location of this week’s meeting over to MLK to call attention to its needs, he said.  He also credited Board Member Richard Wareing with starting the process to keep MLK open when a previously promised $64 million State project requiring a 20 percent City match was dying on the vine.
• Team Effort. Board Member Wareing, in turn, described the MLK situation as a “symbol of institutional neglect,” and Board Chair Stallings cited Board Member Tiffany Glanville for constantly pushing against the building’s demise.  “She was not going to let us forget MLK,” he said.  Matt Ritter, past Board Chair David MacDonald, Pastor A.J. Johnson of Christian Activities Council, HPS Facilities Expert Claudio Bazzano, and MLK Parent Leader Natalie Langloise also were recognized for playing important roles in pushing to keep King alive.
• “The Promises Always Fell Through.” MLK Teacher Leah Baranauskas (the 2015 Hartford teacher of the year) made an eloquent plea for her school, on video here, at the 1:06:21 mark.
• Delays Drive Up Costs. The current spec’s, to be submitted in the form of a construction grant application before the end of the month, call for a $68 million renovation with a 95 percent State reimbursement; a 400-student middle school drawing from several North End elementary schools; and another 400-student Breakthrough North inter-district Magnet School in the renovated building.  It was $4 million cheaper when the past deal fell through; it will be even more expensive if we bide our time further than these past 93 years.

The Bottom Line

The trajectory of Hartford’s Dr. King school transformation has been a death spiral … but now may be hopeful.  The original Bulkeley High School, now the M.D. Fox School on Maple Avenue, was a similarly decaying structure until renovated; it’s now one of the most beautiful schools in the city.  The MLK school is similar: gigantic, architecturally significant; and left for a long time in serious disrepair.

Honoring Hartford children – and posthumously Dr. King – by making this building an inspiration to children and families, would be a great triumph for this City and State.  We can’t again punt or drop the ball.

Are School Governance Councils Fake News?

The Hartford Board of Education Parent and Community Engagement Committee Tuesday dove into the issue of School Governance Council (SGC) functionality and came up with good guidance on this crucial topic.

Committee Chair Julio Flores, who has served as a parent on SGCs at two schools, did not mince words: “We need to start scheduling the schools to come into our meetings in September.”  In his SGC experience, he said, the only time he experienced a superintendent coming to meet with the group was back when Dr. Christina Kishimoto was at the helm.  Administrators need to be held accountable for their SGC responsibilities, he also emphasized.

As outlined in State law, SGCs are advisory bodies at each school, representing parents, teachers, and community members.  When active, they participate in helping guide budget deliberations, selecting a new principal, refining parent involvement approaches, articulating a school compact regarding school goals, and even assisting in school surveys regarding educator evaluation.

When the SGCs are only marginally functioning, however, it’s a different kettle of fish.  “We haven’t been able to get parents to be trained,” Chief Operating Officer José Colón-Rivas told the committee, as it reviewed the log of Hartford Parent University (HPU) PTO and SGC trainings since November.  Only the Mary Hooker and Rawson Schools completed the training; 10 other schools have not.

“The reason only two schools got SGC training is that so few are fully functioning,” HPU Executive Director Milly Arciniegas told the committee Tuesday.

The Bottom Line

Of course, it is near-impossible for an SGC to advise on a belated, unformed budget, one still percolating but not yet brewed by the higher ups in the General Assembly and City Hall.

Notwithstanding the unusual Fiscal 2018 uncertainties, however, the infusion of parent and community views at the school level is as important a parent engagement activity as there is.  High-functioning SGCs can be the right arm of activist principals.  Weak SGCs simply fail the responsibility laid out in the law and miss the opportunities both to inform parents – and to be informed by them.  A faux SGC can indicate that a principal is weak.

But it’s more complicated than the blame game.  SGCs are where the rubber hits the road between school improvement and stakeholder engagement.  The fact is, if every school had a high functioning SGC, the District would not have to exert so much effort to generate family engagement; high-level SGCs can handle that.

To understand how to improve SGCs, all we have to do is look in the rear-view mirror.  Past Superintendent Steven Adamowski made these councils a priority; the District hired a full time coordinator to take calls on Sunday nights.  Achieve Hartford evaluated the SGC implementation.  From the vantage point of the rear-view mirror, Hartford was on its way to changing the city culture – all pushed by parents, most notably Hartford Parent University Executive Director Milly Arciniegas (at the time serving as head of the council of school-based parent organizations).

We all know what happened to the collective momentum when SGCs were de-prioritized and their evaluations became less than rigorous.

It is a good thing at this time that Executive Director Arciniegas has been able to take her advocacy work up a notch to train SGCs and PTOs throughout the District.

If the District is looking for a cost-effective solution to the problem of lackluster parent engagement, high-functioning SGCs are a good bet.  No number of Powerpoint presentations in empty rooms can ever match the power of empowered parents working hard to spread the word that they can have a voice through School Governance Councils.

Did a New and Better School Consolidation Process Just Start?

It appeared that way this past Monday night at the Artists’ Collective, where roughly 200 stakeholders gathered to learn about and discuss school quality and redesign, given Hartford’s declining enrollments and the statewide fiscal crises afoot.  The question of the night:  What makes a great school?

In pursuit of the answer, Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez led a discussion of the key characteristics of successful schools, which the attendees discussed at small tables (a sort of huge focus group on steroids!).

Attendees weighed 15 characteristics of strong schools and rated the District’s performance in implementing them.  They included these characteristics, as described:

Even though there was not enough time for discussion outside the scope of the structured “agree or disagree” conversation, the participants at each table did have a chance to each identify their top five characteristics for a strong school from the list.

For what seemed more like a data collection exercise than an in-depth discussion, it will be very interesting to see the ratings when compiled.  Overall, the exercise signified a healthy interest in feedback on the part of HPS.

One clear area of improvement will be to make sure that when residents are engaged in this type of discussion, the materials speak more directly to the urban education experience, as we heard the following four pieces of feedback:

1. “Teachers know their material and teach it well” must include a reference to how well teachers understand social/emotional learning and how well teachers support students who bring the effects of trauma into the classroom;
2. “Parents and other family members are involved” must examine how effectively teachers and staff engage families;
3. “Students and their families feel safe and secure” must take into account whether the school culture and climate are positive (after all, a prison can feel very safe and secure but remain a place where a visiting family member is disrespected, according to a parent at our table); and
4. Somewhere on the District’s list of characteristics that make a great school, a reference must be made regarding [and action taken to grow] the ability of the school to leverage community partners and resources.

The Bottom Line

Dr. Torres Monday appropriately emphasized that the District needs to do things differently.

Her leadership on display was marked by a deliberative tone and a transparent manner.  Being open to feedback (even when fraught with objections and frustrations) exemplifies strong leadership, from our point of view.

Plainly, trust in the District’s capability to lead varies greatly from school to school, neighborhood to neighborhood, zone to zone, magnet to non-magnet, and parent to parent.

Monday night made a good start toward restoring trust.  While the next steps are not precisely clear, sharing the data collected Monday evening seems like the first thing the District must do, along with holding another forum that engages even more parents from throughout the city.

As Dr. Torres put it, we must do things differently – and that starts with even more grassroots organizations joining the effort to engage even more parents.

Judging by the energy in the room on Albany Avenue Monday, this was a great start to a new process.