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ALL-IN for Measurable Progress

“Action” and “Data” were the watchwords at a key meeting last week of Hartford education leaders who gathered to focus on repairing and improving the K-12-college-workforce pipeline. The ALL IN! Coalition held its inaugural “Stakeholder Caucus” last week at Capital Community College, hosted by its backbone organization Achieve Hartford! and featuring active participation by both Mayor Luke Bronin and newly hired Hartford Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez. What was achieved?

The Stakeholder Caucus event was an invitation-only update for current and potential coalition member organizations that both reported on ALL IN!’s progress since launching last October and solicited feedback for direction in Year 2.

More than a mere update presentation, the Stakeholder Caucus allowed for vibrant, solutions-driven, two-way discussions on how organizations in the room and others can work together to identify and increase the number of young people who not only complete post-secondary education, but who also are hired into high-demand occupations.

Change is Coming

Attendees recognized the need for sweeping change in Hartford to ensure ALL IN! meets its bold but achievable goals (listed below), while noting such progress requires collective action.

ALL IN! is a public-private coalition with a goal-oriented agenda for 2025:

Increase the high school graduation rate from 71.5 to 95 percent;
Increase the post-secondary enrollment rate from 50 to 70 percent; and
Increase the post-secondary completion rate from 23 to 50 percent.

Within the ALL IN! Coalition’s theory of change, Action Teams are workgroups designed to facilitate collective action efforts to solve discrete, concrete pipeline problems. Member organizations sign on to an Action Team and together assess baseline metrics, identify one specific target goal, and realign existing member organizations’ efforts and resources to address the problem.

In May, the ALL IN! Coalition’s Steering Committee will hear full proposals from members on new Action Teams to add in the Year 2 Collective Action Plan, which will work alongside already existing Action Teams from Year 1:

Action Team #1: Reduce Summer Melt
Action Team #2: Longitudinal Data Analysis Project

The Bottom Line

Nine years is not as long as it might sound to achieve the goals that have been set. ALL IN! intends to celebrate the above-listed achievements in 2025, while measuring and publicly reporting progress along the way. As we grow, ALL IN! will design and build out additional Action Teams to help reach the 2025 goals, which will likely span the continuum of the education-workforce pipeline, based on Hartford need.

Everyone knows that the only way to get to the finish line is through the alignment of efforts and resources, which is why key corporate and philanthropic institutions have joined the coalition as well. Be on the lookout soon for a press release on who has joined the coalition, and be sure to check out the All IN! website, www.AllINHartford.org.

The Facilities Clock Is Ticking

Public discussion – not to say outcry – has put the need to address Hartford’s under-enrolled and unsustainable schools on the front burner, but other, subtler challenges are simmering as well. The District is currently applying for State funding that, at best, will help renovate and maintain a fraction of the facilities on a long-deferred list.

The Hartford Board of Education’s School Choice and Facilities Committee this week wrestled with the fact that its 40-project list for $2 million in State Alliance Grant funding is based on a sound rubric of priorities, but reflects only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.

Executive Director of Facilities Claudio Bazzano Tuesday advised the committee that modifications to facilities plans over the past few years have had a fits-and-starts impact as the City and State budget spigots have been cut or shut. A long-range plan for five-to-10 schools is being developed for presentation to the Board late this year, he said, noting that the Martin Luther King, Jr. school has been on the Capital Improvement Project list since 2015, but has been on hold under dire City fiscal conditions. That’s the original Weaver HS Building.

Projects bump around according to the reimbursement rate and the City’s ability to fund them – and give a false impression of what the priorities actually are.

Here are other key points from Tuesday’s meeting:

Re-Gifting? The PCB-afflicted Clark School, now closed, is subject under the law to be relinquished to the City and discussions for that transfer are under way, District Chief Operating Officer José Colón-Rivas explained. What might happen if the City declines to accept the gift?

Up the Street? Plans are under way to co-locate the Capital Community College Magnet Academy (CCCMA), which has some 60 students, over at Capital Prep, a few blocks up Main Street. For next year, Grade 12 students will have the option of attending either Great Path Academy or Classical Magnet Academy. Capital Prep has room for CCCMA students – and the Board will be asked to de-magnetize it for 2018-19. The partnership with Capital Community College will continue, but may look different in the future.

The Board’s draft policy for school closure, consolidation, and relocation is being sharpened, Board Member Karen Taylor advised – and it will now also be augmented with separate guidance on the co-location of schools. Updating policy will only be one of many steps toward building closure and school consolidations and relocations that will inevitably take us back to the world of Equity 2020. Will the second time be a charm?

The Bottom Line

There is a growing awareness in Hartford that, despite the convenience, having nearly 50 schools doesn’t make sense either qualitatively or quantitatively in today’s fiscal climate and in this geographically-small city. Now we need equal awareness of the facts that many under-enrolled facilities also urgently need renovation and that critical partnerships and assets must be preserved and protected somehow. While some building facilities are on life support (diverting necessary resources from children’s educations to temporarily fix buildings, defies logic). The comprehensive facilities plan slated for November will be crucial to the District’s future.

Why Weaver Matters

Weaver High is back in the spotlight next week, and the timing couldn’t be better.

On Monday April 3^rd, the District will host a community forum on Weaver High School construction, offering the latest opportunity for community residents and North End families to hear updates on construction plans for the new Weaver High. Anchored by a presentation given by construction company Arcadis, the community forum also will feature presentations by District leadership and community partners jointly leading the redesign process.

But we have been here before with Weaver… and it didn’t go so well the first time.

Weaver Déjà Vu?

The project to redesign and reopen Weaver High has been a long-delayed and, dare we say, “deferred dream” for a high-functioning and fully-resourced neighborhood high school in Hartford’s North End. Redesign delays, inadequate community engagement and alignment of needs and other factors have pushed construction back by years. This has frustrated and disillusioned a large and powerful base of Weaver alumni and feeder school communities hoping to join the historic and illustrious Weaver alumni family.

All the while, as made clear in the debacle of the Equity 2020 process, clusters of community feeder schools in the North End of Hartford have been starved of resources and de-prioritized support. This has left student outcomes to suffer, wraparound support to languish and enrollment to continuously decline – further imperiling the survival of treasured neighborhood schools as community hubs. The North End community has been asked time and time again (for years now) to be patient … and trust that improvements will come with not much firm information to justify such trust.

A New Hope for Hartford

Despite past failures and trust issues, there is cautious optimism that this time might be different.

And with the recent restart of the Weaver High redesign process, things can be different.

A diverse and very engaged set of community stakeholders from across the city, including Weaver Steering Committee Co-chair Vicki Gallon-Clark from Blue Hills Civic Association, have been invited by the District to co-lead the process. Additionally, each of the four Weaver Committee Work Groups (Construction, Student Experience, School Culture, and Family & Community Engagement) will be co-chaired by a resident and community leader, providing a broader and deeper commitment to shared leadership, in an effort to ensure that community voices won’t be stifled like they were when Equity 2020 stumbled.

And why does Weaver matter so much? Weaver is more than a building. Weaver High shines as a bright symbol of hope for the North End, and making sure this light is not dimmed offers HPS a more than symbolic opportunity to signal District leaders have learned from past failures and missteps.

The Bottom Line

Clearly, the current phase of the Weaver project is about much more than the end goal of constructing a new building: Weaver stands as a symbol of hope, opportunity, community, and success for Hartford (not just the North End). Moreover, Weaver offers an opportunity for new leadership in the District to signal that a new day in Hartford has come – a day where we can all come together and design something that will rival the quality of education elsewhere in our region.

In many ways, a new day is here. Internally, HPS will have two new leaders at the top, with the upcoming selection of a new superintendent (Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez or Mr. Tim Sullivan) and the recent election of a new board chair (elected member Mr. Craig Stallings).

Together, our city’s top education leaders have an opportunity to bring a true shift toward prioritizing the needs of students to show that we – as a city-wide community – are prepared to tackle the deep challenges facing us head-on and to plan and operationalize a strategy for success.

In the coming weeks and months, we will be keeping a spotlight on Weaver, bringing to you many different community, educator, and city leadership perspectives on why Weaver matters. In the meantime, please attend Monday’s upcoming community forum on Weaver.

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