What could be more important than preparing our kids and parents for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) innovations, unless it is building their creativity and health and wellness?  STEM is the most common buzzword; but entrepreneurship and fitness – and so many other Hartford school activities – are the future.  We hope you will join us to experience all on May 4^th at the XL Center.

Presented by UnitedHealthcare – and infused with the work of Hartford Performs, CREC, and UConn Husky Sport – the Inspire Hartford event at the XL Center May 4^th will offer a unique opportunity for parents, children, and their advocates to see what 21^st century learning is about.

Inspire Hartford will be held on Wednesday, May 4, 2016 at the XL Center in downtown Hartford. An exclusive VIP reception begins at 5:30 p.m.; the main event runs from 6 to 8 p.m with food, drink, networking and free ice cream.  To purchase tickets visit: www.inspirehartford.com

The event features four thematic, interactive zones, each demonstrating a different aspect of education innovation:

STEM Zone with Connecticut Pre-engineering Program (CPEP) 

You will experience the future as students wow and amaze you with Rube Goldberg Machines, Wind Turbines, one of a kind 3D printed items and so much more.

Future Entrepreneurs Zone with Pathways Academy of Technology and Design: Entrepreneurship Education

Entrepreneurship education prepares students to carry out the entrepreneurial process and experience the entrepreneurial spirit. Developing an innovative idea and writing a business plan are only the first steps of a successful business.  Hear students pitch their business ideas in our Shark Tank.

Creativity Zone with Hartford Performs

Find out what happens when a highly skilled teaching artist transforms a classroom lesson about math or reading into a creative and interactive artistic experience. Hartford Performs will demonstrate how the arts make learning more memorable, meaningful, personal and even joyful for students. You might even have a chance to exercise your own inner artist.

Health and Wellness Zone with Capital Region Education Council (CREC)

Do you like an adrenaline rush? Get inspired to literally watch your heart rate increase through virtual, adventure experiences and creative fitness games! It’s good for your body and good for your brain! The latest research shows that the combination of physical and mental challenges improves brain function, helping you to learn and remember better. Students in CREC’s secondary physical education classes engage in a variety of climbing and cardiovascular activities for body and brain health. Come get your heart rate in check!

2-4-1 Sports * Growing Great Schools * Husky Sport

Working in partnership with national physical literacy experts at 2-4- 1 Sports, along with UCONN Husky Sport, & the UCONN Department of Kinesiology, we have created the PLUSS Club™.  This zone will highlight the benefits of our PLUSS Club programming with live BrainErgizers™ and cooking demonstrations with Growing Great Schools Chef Educators.

Celebrity guest Jerry Greenfield, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream and president of the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, will discuss the intersection of social enterprise, education and the community.  An entrepreneur by circumstance, Mr. Greenfield and his friend Ben Cohen founded Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream and then became pioneers in corporate social responsibility, one of the most talked-about, unconventional success stories in American business.

The 10^th annual Yale School of Management Education Leadership conference in New Haven last week convened an impressive array of leaders tuned in to some of the most pressing issues in our capital city: understanding the roots of institutional racism and how the past, present and future are intertwined.

Here are the highlights perhaps most relevant for Hartford:

The Importance of Collective Impact.  Finding that one in seven Chicago 9^th graders earns a Bachelor’s degree in their next 10 years, Thrive Chicago President & Chief Impact Officer Sandra Abrevaya said in her keynote address, “In Chicago this is a statistic that we collectively own.”  Discovering that postsecondary counselors were trained to varying levels of quality, she said, her organization decided to develop a certification in college counseling and set up a credential; the first 92 postsecondary advisers participated in eight monthly trainings – and the number has now grown to more than 300 advisers from more than 20 organizations.

That “collective impact” plan grew out of the mayor’s office; then became a 501(c)3    organization giving voice to many educators and nonprofits previously unconnected to the political process, she explained.  Random commissions and committees typically don’t have anyone driving the work – but by sharing data and changing practices accordingly, a coalition of collective impact organizations can work, she said (this work is a great model for the Hartford Coalition on Education and Talent to learn from – more to come on that).

Race Has Asphyxiated Our Expectations.  In a follow-up keynote address, Northside [Minneapolis] Achievement Zone President and CEO Sondra Samuels argued that children do not fail; “We fail them … we do not dream high enough for our kids.”  Following 350 years of legalized racism and only 50 years of civil rights under law, she said, we should reflect on Thomas Jefferson’s not so subtle point: “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?  That they are not to be violated but with his wrath?  Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.”  With 12 million slaves made “involuntary immigrants” and some two million dying at sea – and 400 Black men untreated for syphilis in the Tuskegee experiment, she said, racism has left a stench in our classrooms.

We need to know the history of Blacks being arrested for not having a job, walking next to a railroad track, and talking too loudly to a white woman – and understand that once-AMA President James Marion Sims bought 30 slaves to conduct gynecological experiments on them without anesthesia.  He was America’s Joseph Mengele, she said.

When people ask, “’Why can’t they just get over it?’” the answer is … not until we talk about it honestly, adopt Carol Dweck’s growth mindset approach and teach belief, grit and resiliency.

What Can Be Done to Promote Diversity in K-12 Schooling?  For one thing, learn Spanish, Hartford Public Schools Executive Director of School Choice Enid Rey advised a packed room at the Yale Conference.

“Diverse communities are here – and we’re not leaving,” she said in Spanish . . . and then in English.  “It’s an economic imperative that we adapt for the future.”

“If you don’t know Spanish, learn it – it’s coming at you,” she elaborated.  Poor people recognize quality, too, she also said, and their interests, regardless of zip code or background, must be served.  Marketing is not the silver bullet, she pointed out; “It’s all about relationships.  Who’s going to take whom to prom?  Where are we going to the movies tonight?”

Speaking as a lawyer, Executive Director Rey said, at one point, if the quandary over integrated schools, affordable housing, and workforce participation were a “mergers and acquisitions” question, experts would be talking about creating a new financing model.  In the school world, perhaps that means districts could get a bump-up in resources for doing a better job with integration – or from finding ways to attract more students from various communities.  “There’s almost a need to create a new line of business,” Executive Director Rey reflected.

The Yale conference this year had more Hartford-relevant panels and points than ever: We need to amalgamate community forces for collective impact, continue to confront institutional racism, and reinvent school choice for the modern world of both African-American and Latino cultures, paying close attention at budget time to the students who already are teetering on the edge of success … or failure.

The Bottom Line.

Five takeaways from Sondra Samuels’ morning keynote spoke volumes to us, and they were:

1. We must adopt a new mantra of “Believing is Seeing,” and not the other way around, because it’s the lack of belief we have in our students and in our ability to help them that prevents us from seeing results.  It starts with belief.
2. We don’t have to wait for everyone to believe in our students; not all will, right away.  But we must hold the belief for them until they come around.
3. Our aspirations have truly been asphyxiated; we must breathe new life into them if we are ever going to overcome our challenges.  We must stop the “deficits” model of thinking and dream again.
4. We can no longer let the experiences of America’s poorest children be known only to their families.  No more invisible children, right?  Are you feeling this?
5. The inability to talk about slavery is the same as the inability to talk today about the conditions poor children grow up in, right here in America, calling itself the greatest country in the world … but not always putting its best face forward.

Against the present backdrop of dire finances, unsustainable facilities, and doubt as to the ability of Hartford to turn around its lowest performing schools, $176,000 District Executive Director of Compliance Eddie Genao allegedly sat next to a 13-year-old girl at a March 19 Bulkeley High School event (designed to combat institutional racism, no less) and later made inappropriate, illegal text-message contact with that minor who resides out of state.  He has now been arrested.  What makes this scandal even more of a scandal is the time it took for the Hartford Public Schools to respond to notice of a child being in danger.

The impact this scandal will have on the already low level of community trust in our schools remains to be seen.

Hartford Board of Education policy 5156, adopted in 1999 and updated in 2005, describes the District’s moral and legal obligation “to protect children whose health and welfare may be adversely affected though injury and neglect and to ensure a safe and nurturing environment”(here is the policy).  The District’s response to finding out about the inappropriate contact with a minor constitutes one question; another concerns District official Genao’s actions, now bound for the court of law.

Following the March 19 community conversation, Dr. Aaron Lewis of the Scribes Institute four days later contacted Hartford school officials, to report alleged inappropriate text-message contact with a 13-year-old attendee.  After he learned of and reported the alleged inappropriate contact with the child, Dr. Lewis complained, his communications with the District and Board drew no personal response.

The Courant’s article earlier this week detailed the situation; the joint announcement by Mayor Luke Bronin and Superintendent Beth Schiavino-Narvaez called for a review of Board policies and procedures related to the reporting of any information that a child may be at risk of harm; and the Courant editorial on the matter punctuated this April 10th Hartford Courant op-ed by HPS Superintendent Beth Schiavino-Narvaez.

In our conversations – consistent with our interest in accountability for school improvement – we spoke with and emailed Dr. Lewis, who maintained that neither he nor the parent involved in the March 19 incident received any personal responses from the District or Board.

“The only ones who reached out to me were the mayor and his chief of staff,” Dr. Lewis said.  ”The handling of the matter by the District and Board, in terms of responsiveness to those reporting the incident, indicates worrisome carelessness in dealing with urgent matters.”

Most everyone would agree with Dr. Lewis here, and indeed, HPS Chief of Staff Gislaine Ngounou issued an apology acknowledging fault in the matter.

Actions, or lack thereof, to safeguard the well-being of any child, to sanction a high-ranking administrator or to communicate with the family, beg the question of whether we as a city are leading from a place of fear and risk – or hope and accountability.

Speaking to parents this morning, following the morning TV news story of Genao’s arrest, they highlighted to us the notion that when there is bad news – even as horrific of this sort – all they want from their school district is to own it with full transparency, sincerely apologize for it, and let people know how it will not happen again.

That’s the only way trust can be gained, regained, and solidified.  And we will need it to procure all the help our city needs from parents, community leaders, philanthropy and business, both now and in the future.  Reviewing policy 5156 is just one step along the road to regain trust.