For too long, teachers have been told to simply do the best they can with what they have, untrained and under-resourced to address the sometimes serious mental, social and emotional health issues of their students.  Finally, education and health leaders have begun to come together to address trauma, violence, and other adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) that research now proves do indeed impact learning heavily – but also can be successfully mitigated.

Addressing trauma may not be what all educators, school staff, and administrators signed up for, but unfortunately, in meeting students where they are, effectively addressing trauma is a necessary part of doing the job well.  The good news is that educators don’t have to do it alone.

More than a buzzword approach to educating and caring for the whole child, trauma-informed practice promises to help school communities effectively address adverse childhood experiences.  ACEs are defined by the CT Department of Public Health as “traumatic events within the household that are widely believed to increase susceptibility for poor outcomes in adulthood”.

On May 24^th, the Trauma-Informed School Mental Health Symposium at UConn’s Neag School convened Connecticut experts, advocates, and leaders from multiple sectors to share key learnings on how to better address trauma in schools and beyond.  The event was co-hosted by seven partner organizations:  the Child Health and Development Institute (CHDI); Capitol Region Education Council (CREC); UConn Neag School of Education; Clifford Beers Clinic; UConn Collaboratory on School and Child Health; the Ana Grace Project; and the CT State Department of Education. Over 100 experts came from across the state.

Here are some key learnings from the Symposium, noting that, given the complexity of the problems, some lines of reasoning lead to answers … while others only raise more questions:

Silos Don’t Work in Addressing Trauma.  Despite advances in research and practice (and a trending interest in trauma-informed practice), we have not yet accepted a different role for education to address barriers to learning.  Bridges must be built between schools, mental health providers, families, and communities to address trauma in K-12 students.

Changing How Teachers Teach Requires Changing How Teachers Learn to Teach.  What impact will changes to how teachers learn to teach have on how students learn and grow?  How can we better support and prepare educators coming into difficult-to-impossible-to-succeed circumstances – when success for our children is necessary but remains impossibly elusive?

Educators can’t do this alone, and they should not be under-resourced, under-trained or otherwise left to fend for themselves.  How might the partnerships leading to new modes of teaching and managing schools alter the balance of resources and change the system forever, not just on a program basis?

The Bottom Line

The big question driving current concerns is “How will Hartford ensure both proper care and quality education for the whole child – reaching every single one?”

The big idea presented at the UConn Symposium was that the path to proper care for the whole child must travel through the land of trauma-informed practice.  Not only is this the case, but the need to move on this is urgent.

Yet our sense of urgency cannot overcome the need to get it right.

If we have any hope of living up to the HPS tagline of “every student thrives and every school is high performing,” really smart and effective implementation will be needed.  When Alice Forrester of the Clifford Beers Clinic says, “This is a movement, not a program,” we realize that the opportunity here is to change culture, not just provide more training.  But, do we know how to do that?  Time will tell.  Let’s all prepare to get on board.

On Again, Off Again?

As if pulling a rabbit out of a hat, the District Tuesday unveiled a plan to put the renovation of the Martin Luther King, Jr. School back on the table, after the City could not come up with a 20 percent match on an earlier $68 million plan.  With a new plan to house a magnet school in the building, along with a 400-student middle school, the renovation proposal comes with a broad idea to reconfigure the K-8 elementary school model for nearby schools.  As long as the quality of education exceeds the new building quality, this is going to benefit North Hartford.  Let’s launch the school design process right after next Tuesday’s vote.

Tuesday, at the Martin Luther King, Jr. School (the original Weaver High School), District and State officials promised that the building’s long-deferred renovation will be completed by the 2020-21 school year.  In a Wednesday follow-up letter, Superintendent Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez referred to the coming adjustment as “a fundamental redesign that prioritizes high quality teaching and learning for all, and ensuring student safety within a fiscally sustainable model.”

On May 30, HPS officials will be recommending that the Hartford Board of Education approve the superintendent office’s North Hartford Schools Update plan unveiled earlier this week. This vote is needed to finalize submission to the state by June 30^th to obtain the 95% funding for the construction project needed to move the project forward.

State support for the construction aspects of the project includes the deployment of State School Construction Grants Office Director Kosta Diamantis, who Tuesday reiterated what everyone knows: Hartford has more school buildings than it can afford.  But he also gave his word that the MLK construction project would be completed if the district can meet the submission deadline with a quality construction proposal.

If the District can meet the June 30^th State deadline to submit a proposal, MLK could be restored in similarity with the beautiful, original Bulkeley High School revamp at M.D. Fox on Maple Avenue (and with the promised construction already underway at Weaver High School).  And, as noted by Superintendent Dr. Torres-Rodrigues, approval also means that by the 2020-2021 school year the long-neglected North End will have high quality buildings for both middle school (MLK) and high school (Weaver).

Expectations

With declining HPS enrollments, stagnating student outcomes, flat-lining funding, and ever-rising maintenance costs at nearly 50 sites (all further complicated by Sheff implications impacting the above mentioned areas and beyond), how can the District meet ambitious quality and equity goals for neighborhood children?

More plainly – starting with the redesign and constructions projects for Weaver High School and MLK Middle School in Hartford’s North End – how can the quality of the school buildings (finally) be met or exceeded by the quality of outcomes for the students therein?

Achieve Hartford! believes it is possible (we wouldn’t be here if we didn’t!), and certainly district leaders must also share that belief. But the gap between possibility and reality is potentially wide, and the last decade of history suggests more times than not that our hopes may be misplaced.  History more than suggests that results won’t come without a process of greater transparency and partnership in decision-making with a broad spectrum of engaged and informed stakeholders, tapping all the city’s assets.

The Bottom Line

In truth, it won’t be easy (either designing the process or ensuring the results) – and will certainly require decisive action by the Superintendent and Hartford Board of Education.  But lest we forget the lessons of the past, we cannot allow our sense of urgency to run roughshod over strong community-informed process.

Fortunately, a model for launching a community-informed design process has already emerged with promise to match the quality of building construction with that of educational outcomes and student opportunity. And we don’t have to look too far from MLK to see it: the Weaver High School redesign process.

Spending the next year engaging people for counsel as to the building construction will be a waste of time unless the District simultaneously plans to solicit community collaboration in determining the vision, standards, partners and resources to make this middle school the best school in Hartford.

That dual approach – of partnership in decision-making through a community design process that informs planning on real time – is one way to mitigate the calculable costs of yet another interminable delay and the far more important incalculable costs of failing yet another generation of students.

Over the past decade of Hartford school financing, little change has occurred in the available resources. The District remains flat funded by the city, the availability of special funds has decreased over time, while costs have risen each year.  It’s a depressing situation, but it’s also the exact problem our public leaders have signed up to solve.  How bold have we been in addressing our situation?  We would say not bold enough, and maybe even not bold at all, begging the question, What is it going to take for necessity to actually be the mother of invention here in Hartford?

Looking in the rear-view mirror, we see that last year’s Fiscal 2017 budget discussion, detailed here by Dr. Narvaez a year ago, forecast the current Fiscal 2018 mess.  A strained financial situation resulted after theme-based academies proliferated for a decade but then could neither be adequately filled nor funded.  And, similarly, the year before talked of financial hardship and predicted a crisis in the following year as well.

And this year? “It’s challenging, not having enough to do the bare minimum,” the superintendent reflected in her statement at the 3:50 mark of this video.  If it was a crisis then, it is really a crisis now.

With not much changing each budget season these past three to four years, other than shrinking staffs, it seems like Hartford is stuck in a time of drought simply waiting for rain.

Does our public leadership not yet realize that more money might never come, and so we must deliver education in fundamentally different ways?

The only way to reach hundreds and even thousands of students with great programming is to leverage more and more resources outside of the schools, and to think in terms of new business models.

Using the Hartford Performs innovation as an example, the very capable HPS leadership can figure out how to:

• Deliver sports differently, tapping private nonprofit entities to help run fewer, more robust and diverse cross-community teams citywide;
• Market all CREC and HPS schools together, with community partners doing heavy lifting with their constituents helping guide them in the process;
• Tap Hartford NRZs and other community hubs to rethink and take ownership of family engagement in our schools;
• Share school and nonprofit budgets to serve kids on site at schools, and
• Work with nonprofits to “double employ” teachers who already stay after school to help students catch to grade level using technology, among other strategies.

If we continue to refuse to innovate – and even worse, slash public investment in innovation, like HPS seems ready to do to one of its most compelling inventions, Hartford Performs – we send a message to every corporation, foundation, and nonprofit partner in this city that when the going gets tough, we just tighten our belts.  To save money, HPS is choosing time and time again to use a bit less electricity every year, while completely ignoring the fact that they have the ability to build wind turbines – it may not be the prettiest wind turbine, but it can get the job done.  Divesting from innovation at this time sends the opposite message needed right now.  Now, is the time to be bold.  If we wait for a better financial situation to foster innovation, we will be waiting for a long, long time, sacrificing another generation of children.