Achieve Hartford!’s new development director, Christine Homa, is a strategic planner, marketing and communications specialist, and experienced fundraiser.  Oh, and she also has a law degree and more than a decade of experience leading small and large nonprofit organizations on development.

“In welcoming Christine, Achieve Hartford! is again augmenting its small staff with an extraordinarily versatile professional,” Executive Director Paul Holzer said today.

Coming out of Sacred Heart University with a concentration in political science and minors in business management and philosophy, Ms. Homa earned a J.D. from the Quinnipiac University School of Law and then attained the relatively rare Certified Fundraising Executive (CFRE) mantle.  The CFRE test took about an hour – but the 10-15 page application was even more daunting, she recalled.

Ms. Homa has served as director of development for the neurological pain disorder organization RSDSA as well as for the Girl Scouts of CT, the Channel 3 Kids Camp, the Immaculate Conception Shelter in Hartford, and the American Red Cross in Westport.

“I was drawn to Achieve Hartford! by its mission,” Ms. Homa said, expressing her interest in promoting the independent research and community engagement work of the organization, so key to closing the educational achievement gap in Hartford.

And yet, she emphasized, “Without fundraising, it all falls apart.”

In her 13 years of development work, Ms. Homa has grown revenue, established community, government, and individual partnerships, directed fundraising events, and run successful direct mail campaigns.

“We are delighted that Christine is on board,” Executive Director Holzer said.  “She will be an important strategic planner for our work supporting community engagement in North Hartford, backing the training of parents as advocates for their children’s education, and mobilizing the All In! Coalition to get Hartford students not just into, but through, college.”

Two reasons.  Because national lawmakers introduced in Congress just last month a bill called the Stronger Together Act of 2016, which, if it is signed into law, would support voluntary racial integration efforts in schools nationwide with $125 million in funding.  Because Hartford is the national poster-child for school integration efforts, the bill, unveiled nationally by CT Senator Chris Murphy, was the subject of a public discussion yesterday at the K-12 Hartford Magnet Trinity College Academy, recognized in 2011 as America’s top magnet school.

The discussion featured Senators Murphy and Richard Blumenthal, Governor Dannel Malloy, Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin, students, parents, and educators, and was moderated by Hartford Public Schools Executive Director of School Choice Enid Rey – who last year brought Hartford’s desegregation efforts into the national spotlight on the nationally syndicated radio program, This American Life.

While details of the bill were not the focus of the discussion, merits for desegregation were.  CT senior Senator Blumenthal pointed out that kids in segregated schools are unprepared or less prepared to live in a global world; what he called a fundamental truth.   And he drove the point home that “separate is never equal.”

U.S. Secretary of Education John King spoke to the potential for schools to save lives, revealing that schools “diverse by design” saved him.  Many states and districts have yet to assign the resources needed to turn around struggling schools, the secretary noted.  The new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) tries to address that, he said; integration carried out under State law can be a great strategy to help improve those schools that have chronically underperformed – in some cases for 30-plus years.

Our junior senator, Chris Murphy, spoke to how Hartford is a shining example of how a metro area can tackle the school improvement issue.  “The federal government should never be involved in schools except as it relates to civil rights,” he intoned.  The proposed Stronger Together Act, coupled with the recently reauthorized, rebuilt, and renamed Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), puts equity at the center of federal education policy, he said.   Not only have national leaders expanded the measure of school performance to include indicators like suspension and expulsion rates and school climate, but now student demographics can be spotlighted as well.

Hartford Trinity College Magnet Academy Principal Sally Biggs brought the discussion to the personal/student/teacher level, emphasizing that positive interactions in class, the cafeteria, and across the campus are the most important things we can give children.  There are kids who didn’t have support at home, she advised, but because of the expectations at the school … all are heading off to college … just like their more advantaged peers.

Governor Malloy reminded his audience that the 44 percent minority student body statewide is taught by some 8.4 percent teachers of color.  That might not be the most talked about achievement gap, but it is undeniably a gap – and it needs to be addressed.  State Education Commissioner Dianna Wentzell pointed to the new minority teacher recruitment law as a way forward.

The mother who brought the original Sheff v. O’Neill integration case, Elizabeth Horton Sheff, gave her view – that school improvement is a justice question.  If we don’t give our children equal access to being American together, to compete in a global economy together, our nation is at peril, she warned.  “We can either do it, or wait for our own demise …  This is not something we should be bargaining about.”

Here is the CT Mirror coverage of yesterday’s roundtable discussion.

The Bottom Line.  Senator Blumenthal mentioned that in his decades of public service, he has learned much, including that whether you work alongside or against Elizabeth Horton Sheff, “you fail to listen to her at your own peril.”  Indeed, her warning towards the end of yesterday’s event is one worth heeding: “Now is not the time to turn back and throw the baby out with the bath water; we have come far, much too far to drown in shallow waters.”  Referring to the ongoing Sheff negotiations, she is absolutely right.  It’s time to lay down our petty differences, and not make this about adults, she noted.  We agree.  Now is the time to talk about how Hartford and the State can ensure all Hartford students gain access to great schools.  We must be bold to make this happen.  There is no better time to advocate for what we believe in.

The Hartford Board of Education Tuesday received its eighth member (and sixth parent), Julio Flores, sworn in after being appointed by Mayor Luke Bronin.  The Board also executed a nifty U-turn to gradually return the Journalism and Media Academy (JMA) to its original neighborhood school status at Weaver High School, bringing the effort to make it an integrated magnet school to an end.  These are two very important developments.

Mr. Flores, a South End resident, has chaired the School Governance Councils both at the Latino Studies Academy at Burns and at the McDonough Expeditionary Learning School – and also has served on the boards of numerous community organizations.  He is a parent who has been in the trenches when it counted.

With Dr. José Colón-Rivas now resigned from the Board to assume the chief operating officer position at the District, the fifth, mayor-appointed seat on the Board remains open.  It will be interesting to see what additional skill set the mayor taps to further strengthen the Board.  Going from six parents to seven can’t be the only goal.

Is De-Magnetize Even a Word?!

When Weaver High School re-opens in 2019 in a smaller and better-designed environment after its ongoing renovation, the plan is to return the Journalism and Media Academy to its original home there.  In the interim, the Board wants JMA to begin operating next July 1, 2017, not as a magnet … but as a neighborhood school … under the name The Thomas J. Snell Weaver Journalism and Media Academy.  Weaver “has great historical and emotional significance to the people of Hartford,” as the Board resolution Tuesday put it.  Here is the Courant article on this maneuver.

Notwithstanding regional marketing efforts, JMA has not attracted suburban white and Asian students; its enrollment has hovered at 200 students – half of the possible capacity at this beautifully renovated, former Barbour School on Tower Avenue.  While not meeting the integration goals of the Sheff v. O’Neill case, the school also has barred Hartford children from seats that must be held open for the non-enrolling suburban students, Board Chair Richard Wareing said – similar to other magnet schools that employ the same practice for compliance purposes.

The gravitation of JMA back to its Weaver home also opens the possibility to repurpose the nicely updated Tower Avenue facility for North End students now attending old and compromised facilities.  This is one key move in the District’s attempt to build out a long term facilities plan – an effort dubbed Equity 2020.

Ultimately, the Board has the authority to convert the status of JMA, just as it has done before with High School, Inc., Chair Wareing asserted.

Board Member Craig Stallings maintained that most of the community felt JMA never should have been magnetized in the first place.  With Kinsella and High School, Inc. slated to participate with JMA under the Weaver umbrella, he said, the prospects are exciting.  “This is going to be, in my opinion, the flagship for whatSheff should be in the future; not forced integration, but a gradual, general, voluntary participation from families who are willing to be a part of a social experiment to advance our community.  I am grateful for that, I am very thankful for that.”

The new Weaver, restoring JMA to the neighborhood, puts the focus on the kids rather than getting bogged down in politics, Board Member Karen Taylor added.  Board Members Stallings and Taylor are Weaver alums.

Here is the video of the meeting.

The Bottom Line.  Hartford, as a City – and with its Board of Education – needs to take a position on both the value of the Sheff v. O’Neill integration case so far … and how its parameters must be updated to help more Hartford students become workforce and college ready and more schools elevate their quality.  Achieve Hartford! will soon host a public program to shine a spotlight on what we can do together to address the obstacles facing Hartford children.  Not just to talk about it, but to spell out actions that are reasonable and impactful.