Winnowed down from two dozen aspirants, Acting Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez and Capital Region Education Council (CREC) Assistant Superintendent for Operations Tim Sullivan are the two final candidates to fly the District plane into the fiscal 2018 budget storm.  It’s going to take an extraordinary captain to seize control of the HPS cockpit at this time and land in a good place.  But, as we see it, it shouldn’t be all on their shoulders.

With upcoming community forums featuring the two candidates, the question on everyone’s minds is: Which one of these two candidates can do a better job?

The question on our mind, however, is can either of them do the job, given the seemingly intractable challenges at hand?

Answering that question depends on your understanding of what is needed in Hartford. There is no question that the two finalists have incredibly impressive track records – but so did the past two superintendents.  Yet most would agree that previous leaders did not fully address the long-simmering and hence subtle challenges that only recently have turned into crises.  Alas, what’s needed in Hartford goes beyond a 12-point job description.

What’s needed includes at least these four capabilities and many more:

• The ability to leverage all of Hartford’s assets to both mitigate the effects of multi-generational poverty and inspire students to reach their potential in a way not fully supported before;

• The ability to build an effective team of complementary skill sets – one of which has to be more effectively engaging the community;

• The ability to structure a partnership with CREC that would allow for more HPS resources and attention to be focused on neighborhood schools;

• The ability to take industry-themed high schools and turn them into legitimate career pathways; and

• So much more that will be part of a blueprint we will offer education leaders shortly.

Amidst all the challenges and opportunities, one thing is clear:  We can no longer expect one person to solve it, plan it, and then execute all of it.  That narrowed field of expectation is a recipe for disaster, and we know this because it is a road we already have traveled.

Bottom Line 

If Hartford leaders, stakeholders, and families put the responsibility for fixing Hartford schools solely on the new superintendent, we should not expect either finalist to be successful.  The responsibility must be shared amongst the Board of Education, City Hall, the corporate community, philanthropy, nonprofit partners, and even our robust institutions of higher education.  In the coming weeks, we look forward to hosting a candidate forum to explore more on this topic of shared responsibility and encourage other planning forums to do so as well.

For bios of the finalists, read our past article on the search process. Here is the Courant article on the two finalists.

Juan Hernandez came to Hartford from a far NE Chicago neighborhood, where he earned his chops at an innovative high school – and vaulted into a Posse Foundation leadership scholarship to come to Trinity College in downtown Hartford.  Now, about to turn 26 years old, he is on our Board of Education.  Who is he – and what does he bring to the game?

No games with this guy.  He’s a scholar, like we hope our students might want to be.

Undergraduate and master’s degrees at Trinity, done.  Now heading to the University of Hartford for a doctorate, to dig even deeper into his passionate research, on why Black and Latino men don’t graduate from college.  This is a problem our society has not yet been able to address … but warrants real solutions.

He got to know the neighborhoods while working for City Council officials Shawn Wooden and Glendowlyn Thames, through attendance at NRZ and other community meetings and also currently serves on the superintendent search committee.

Now director of the Myatt Center for Diversity and Inclusion at the University of New Haven, Board Member Hernandez commutes from Hartford.  In his past work, staffing Hartford City Council members since 2015, he learned the city’s neighborhoods, heard the citizen (and non-citizen) concerns, and gleaned a fine-grained knowledge of both the youth and priority issues facing our city.

Here are some indicators of his views, as expressed in an interview Tuesday:

• Education policy, with strong analysis and implementation, and both public service and justice taken into account, is paramount.  At his high school, Mr. Hernandez said, autistic children walked the same halls and attended the same classes as other students, rather than being plucked and isolated all day among a handful of kids “without remorse” … an integration as it should be;
• Whereas his Posse Foundation scholarship could have taken him to the University of Wisconsin-Madison or Pomona College in California or other places, he chose Trinity.  As he tells it, in his words, his trajectory has taken the exact road it should have, to right here;
• Knowing the national patterns of white flight to the suburbs, he is well aware of how neighborhood, city, and metro area economies have gone off the radar or been cut off by unfortunate riverfront highway building;
• At his Uplift Community HS in Chicago, Mr. Hernandez said, he and his freshman class [established under its former city school superintendent, then U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan], had no students above them … and hence could find ways, at a young age, to learn and lead.

Board Member Hernandez, at this time, is “pretty sure” he will run in the fall for the vacated seat to which he has been appointed.  “I don’t know if nine months is enough to get things done,” he said, thinking about taking this temporary appointment forward.

Some of his most important concerns, Board Member Hernandez also said, relate to the special needs and English Language Learner students he has known so well, coming out of his social-justice themed, 97 percent Black high school in Chicago.

He believes academic achievement stems not from assessment, but from the highest-quality teaching and learning, yielding growth.  Moreover, he recommends culturally-committed reforms, recalling the special education and English Language Learner students from his high school – and now highlighted by the Office of Child Advocate report regarding abuse and neglect in Hartford schools.  The legacy of mistrust he has observed in Hartford, he says, could delay progress for years, if unattended.  He asks good questions:

• Why can’t central office be relocated from the G. Fox site to a school building that has space for it, like the top floor of Bulkeley HS?
• Why can’t the superintendent and Board better convey to the community a clear vision of what the Hartford schools should look like?
• Knowing that the name “Weaver High School” has a deep meaning across generations, how can the North End be persuaded that it is not getting the short end of the stick once again, in the latest Weaver re-design?

These are good questions from our newest Board member – questions that many others on the Board, in the District, and among parents and community members, are asking as well.

“The first step is admitting you have a problem … so here it is, in black and white, for all to see that we have an issue.”  With these words, Hartford Board of Education Member Karen Taylor accepted the findings of last month’s stunning State report on child abuse and neglect in our schools and acknowledged the role (and failure) of the Board and other Hartford leaders to address such tragedies.  This acceptance comes with a promise from the Board, acting superintendent, mayor, and others, that such horrors will never happen again.  But are spoken promises enough to overcome significant trust issues?

No.  Hartford has responded to crises in times past, but the responses rarely have led to aligned collective action or otherwise sustainable solutions.  We have been here many times before; this is why so many Hartford residents have trust issues with State, City, and other education leaders.

Deep trust issues bedevil Hartford.  Many are justified, particularly cynicism about the prospect of lasting change.  It has taken the Sheff v. O’Neill lawsuit to belatedly (and still not fully) address racial isolation.  The gross and unconstitutional funding inequities found in the CCJEF v. Rell lawsuit are widely acknowledged, but the jury (or, rather, the CT Supreme Court as well as the General Assembly) are still out on both the final verdict and obvious corrective actions.

How many lawsuits will it take to truly transform Hartford’s “Avoid and Protect” culture, as indicted by the recent State Office of Child Advocate (OCA) report?  Are class-action lawsuits really the best way, or do we just need public servants inclined (and well trained) to protect our children?

Are Lawsuits the Best Way to Ensure Safety in Hartford Schools?

Some think another lawsuit is precisely what is needed to keep the pressure on Hartford education leaders so they will deliver on the promise to protect our children, rather than relying upon the adults whose past neglect and unlawful actions has done kids harm.  Any reader of the case studies presented in the OCA report would have to conclude that, notwithstanding the anti-bullying campaigns in schools, some of the worst bullies are misguided, adult staff members.

The Hartford Courant reports that Gwen Samuel, head of the Connecticut Parents Union, and Hartford Rep. Minnie Gonzalez hosted a community event and press conference at the State Legislature this week, where they advised the parent leaders to collect stories of abuse and to spread the word to other families.

Testimony, from impacted students and families, certainly would help lay the foundation to justify and support a class-action lawsuit, citing a reality, in which, according to Samuel in the Courant, “We have far too many people who are willing to look the other way and not tell what’s happening” … let alone act to prevent it from happening again.  As shared on Education Connecticut, for those children and families who have been negatively impacted, Samuel lamented, “None of them say how they’re going to make your children whole.”

Is Gwen Samuel right?  Do current Hartford education leaders need an outside, independent third-party mechanism – like yet another lawsuit and court decision after another generation goes by – to truly do right by our kids?  Or will the HPS Corrective Action Plan do enough or go far enough to address the problems in the system, remedy past harms, and prevent future ones?  We believe a lawsuit is not only justified; it already would have been filed in the suburbs in any cases like these.

The Bottom Line

Acting Superintendent Dr. Leslie Torres-Rodriguez is asking for our trust and to her credit, she is putting action behind her words, hosting multiple community forums in partnership with parent organizations and quickly rolling out a robust action plan with aligned implementation strategies.

The HPS Plan is a good start … to a much longer process, but it should not be the only strategy for changing culture at the Hartford Public Schools (and within the entire system, which includes the State Department of Children and Families (DCF), which also dropped the ball in connection with the incidents detailed in the OCA report).

As noted by Gwen Samuel, District and City leaders must find ways to make harmed children and families whole, and must truly change the culture so that the cycle of systemic failure stops.   A lawsuit may be needed to accomplish that.

While we all wish we didn’t have to focus so much on the very bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs – physiological and safety – and instead talk about student self-actualization, this is where Hartford is right now.