The Hartford Board of Education has had two empty seats for months, with appointed member José Colón-Rivas having shifted over to become the District’s chief operating officer and elected member Beth Taylor having moved from the city.  What does it mean to have two unfilled seats for an extended period of time?

It’s problematic.  With five mayor-appointed and four elected seats to carry the load – and one of each left empty for months – the Board is not at full capacity.  This, at a time when the fiscal pressures and community needs are at an all-time high.

For his fifth appointment, Mayor Luke Bronin is now identifying potential candidates and considers it a priority to fill that post, Special Assistant to the Chief of Staff and Intergovernmental Affairs Specialist Alex Beaudoin said in an email today.  There is no specific time frame for that appointment, she added.

Some, including us, have called on Mayor Bronin to step in personally to join the Board, as previous mayors in times of crisis have done – despite any campaign promises the mayor may have made, reasoning that the needs of the school district and the city during a crisis trump political promises made during a campaign.

The procedure to fill the empty elected seat (previously held by Beth Taylor) was originally controlled by the Democratic Town Committee (DTC) and related to the November 2016 election, for which there was a time crunch, Chairman Marc DiBella said today.  “Because of the timing, the party was unable to get another name on the ballot,” he explained.  Given the time constraints, he added, he and his colleagues instead are working toward the fall 2017 election of four Board members.

Any recommendations they have for temporary Board members during the interim will be informal, he said.  “The Board does not have to take our recommendation.”

While a seat on the Board could be appealing to young people who want to be politically active or to specialists, the time required of a Board member – with no pay and some amount of aggravation – could be a disincentive, he reflected.
“There’s always going to be somebody who finds a flaw in your pick,” he pointed out.  “It’s a constant struggle.”

[clickToTweet tweet=”Nonetheless, Chairman DiBella said, the Board, not the DTC, has appointing authority for the intervening months” quote=”Nonetheless, Chairman DiBella said, the Board, not the DTC, now has the appointing authority to fill the vacant elected seat for the intervening months, if it so chooses. “]  Here is the relevant City Charter provision, with this language in Section 5 (c):

In the event an elected position on the board of education becomes vacant, it shall be filled by majority vote of the remaining members of the board until the next regular general municipal election, if any, at which a successor shall be elected for the remainder of the vacant term and shall assume office at the first meeting of the board following the certification of the results of the election. If the vacancy occurs too close in time to the next general election for the process of nomination to be completed in accordance with the General Statutes, the vacancy shall be filled by appointment for the remainder of the vacant term. Any person so appointed by the board of education shall be of the same political party as the departed member [emphasis added].

Here is the 2016 elected membership listing of the Democratic Town Committee.

The Bottom Line.

Is anyone available for this pro bono, temporary, and perhaps thankless Democratic seat on the Board for the remainder of the year?  If so, take a look at the current complement here and email any of the Board members.  We will have more commentary on this soon.

As the ball descended in Times Square, a lot of shoes have been dropping here: The State is resisting a major, lower-court school finance equity ruling even as the governor announces he will redesign education aid – and Hartford’s mayor is finding tough sledding as he appeals for regional support to forestall City bankruptcy.

There are a number of pieces to the current and coming budget puzzles:

• Brother’s Keeper? With the City facing a $23 million shortfall this fiscal year and a $50 million deficit in fiscal 2018, Mayor Luke Bronin has been meeting in suburban towns to press his case for regional support, but the reception has been chilly.
• Redesign Coming.  The $1.5 billion projected State budget deficit for the next fiscal year has prompted Gov. Dannel Malloy to call both for pension reform and a “fairer distribution” of education funds in sync with the local property tax burden, student need, and current enrollment.  Here are the full transcript of the governor’s State of the State address yesterday and the CT-N broadcast (the governor’s municipal aid and education focus is at the 15:13 mark of this video).
• Accountability Clause.  The governor also pledged to address inequities in school funding, such that no city will have to resort to bankruptcy, although he made plain that fiscal help “shouldn’t come with no strings attached.”
• Work to Do.  The governor noted the Hartford Superior Court ruling last year that found the State’s education funding formula unconstitutional.  Referencing Judge Thomas Moukawsher’s ruling, the governor asked, “Are we ensuring that all students, regardless of the life circumstances into which they are born, regardless of what city or town they live in, can receive a quality public education?  I don’t believe we are meeting that standard.”
• Fine Print.  At the same time, the State last month filed its Supreme Court appeal in that case, CCJEF v. Rell, arguing in technical terms that the lower court made mistakes when it found education funding to be irrational.  The plaintiffs also plan to appeal.  Here is a useful CT Mirror synopsis.
• Local Perspective.  Hartford Board of Education Member – and Trinity College Director of Urban Educational Initiatives – Robert Cotto, Jr., offered his personal perspective on the CCJEF v. Rell decision, here.
• Noteworthy.  The State also has signaled that it will scale back funds for school construction.

The Bottom Line

The necessity for fairer public education funding in our state, region and city is inarguable.

Factors underscoring the need for drastic change include Hartford’s lack of a tax base, concentration of poverty and need, opportunity to flourish as a regional hub, and unique potential to solve the split-personality segregation that is endemic in every American metro area.  We can get our arms around this problem here, if we muster the will.

Mayor Bronin’s appeal for regional cooperation – and the governor’s emphases yesterday – run smack into suburbs’ resentment over the smaller slice of the pie they receive when hard-pressed cities are prioritized.  That resentment has to be addressed.

More than at any time in memory, the General Assembly in this session will have to assert leadership at a very high level to address the school improvement deficit in CT cities – the foundation of the shameful state achievement gap that leads the nation.

While state and local leaders work together on fairer funding, a larger redesign of Hartford’s school system is needed in line with fairer funding and student enrollment trends.  Now is the time for Sheff negotiations to address squarely the lack of financial viability in the Hartford Public Schools – capped from accepting more suburban students who carry tuition with them, hemorrhaging more students every year from the system, paying tuition for them to attend CREC and suburban schools, and taking on more and more need every year due to poverty concentration.  The 2017 year must be the one to figure things out in Hartford – and not just for the next 12 to 18 months.

Two dozen candidates reportedly have tossed their hats into the ring for the permanent Hartford school superintendent position, which will be filled around the time the District confronts its annual budget crisis, this time replete with school consolidation decisions.  An extraordinary leader is required.

The 12 core competencies that the search committee has spelled out for the position are daunting; so are the demonstrable traits, past record, future vision, and depth and breadth of skills that have been laid out in the profile of the new superintendent.

Hartford Board Chair Richard Wareing said yesterday that the search committee recommendations will come “hopefully, sometime in March.”  But he also advised that there is a big difference between an internal candidate on hand to take the job and another wrapping up a tenure elsewhere, perhaps with a longer time frame in which to give notice.

While Hartford is about to hire its fourth permanent superintendent since 2006, it still is beating the rough national average of a three-year tenure at the top – but not by much.

“Everyone wants longevity – the Board, the community, the people who work for the school system, and the superintendent her or himself,” Chair Wareing elaborated.  “But there are lot of factors that make it hard to achieve – the difficulty of the job, political changes, a superintendent’s own changing professional aspirations.  It is hard to see into the future and plan for all eventualities.”

While we agree with Board Chairman Wareing, we also note one of the biggest factors in superintendent stability: effective governance.  This has to do with the role Board members and the mayor play to support education citywide – a conversation we started before the holidays and recapped here.

Here is the December 30^th Courant coverage of the search process.

In a related matter, the Courant argued in an editorial this week that CT school superintendents’ performance evaluations should be made public – as is the case in Hartford.

The Bottom Line

Hartford’s fourth school superintendent choice since 2006 will come soon – and it will be crucial to the fulfillment of the District’s commitments to its five-year strategic plan and the complex task of consolidating under-enrolled schools (while addressing those that are chronically low-performing).  If not squarely faced, these challenges will undermine school improvement efforts in the capital city for years to come.  Whether or not we have or can find a leader capable of leading our city – alongside our Board and mayor – remains to be seen, and is something we will weigh in on soon.