Hartford Board of Education Chair Richard Wareing welcomed some 1,700 teachers back for the 2016-17 school year Monday with an observation about two characteristics he believes distinguish them: They are both realists … and incurable optimists.  This, he said, is an apt combination to unlock Hartford’s future.  “Your duality is a metaphor for our city,” he told the convocation of teachers at Bulkeley High School.

As a profession, teaching can be emotionally fulfilling but regularly exhausting, yet another duality.  Chair Wareing’s mom taught for 40 years in New Bedford, MA (and still volunteers).  Mayor Luke Bronin’s mother-in-law taught about that long; Bulkeley Principal Gayle Allen-Greene is a 37-year veteran educator.  She started her career as a student teacher at the high school she now leads, before being hired as a teacher.

When welcoming the HPS teachers Monday, Principal Allen-Greene made a thoughtful request: that the veteran educators listen very carefully to the newbies, and vice versa, as all need to play hard on one team.

Superintendent Beth Schiavino-Narvaez discussed the ways Hartford, in the first year of implementing its strategic operating plan, has demonstrated equity in action:

• The District is more than halfway to its five-year goal of full college acceptance, with 95 percent of 2016 seniors having been accepted into college.  A question remains: How many will actually enroll in college?
• The proportion of young people having access to advanced coursework and internship opportunities rose from 76 percent the previous year to 82 percent in 2016.
• Chronic absenteeism (missing 10 percent of school days) dropped 18 percent last year.
• Out-of-school suspensions continue to be reduced, down another 27 percent in 2016.
• Third Grade Reading and Ninth Grade Algebra growth was recorded last year; two of the equity indicators on which the District is focused.  Unfortunately, these two key academic indicators fell short of first-year growth targets.

Here are the superintendent’s remarks at the convocation and the video of the full event.  Additional pertinent information also warrants attention, in the form of a New York Times op-ed on “Why Black Men Quit Teaching”and an NPR program on preparing teachers for the schools that need them most.

The Bottom Line.  When you watch the video of the convocation, you will be struck by how much has indeed been accomplished in the first year – and by the optimism felt by so many educators in that auditorium.  What you won’t see is what everyone already knows:  The challenges Hartford educators must face this year loom large, with deeper budget cuts than ever and more coming down the pike and students facing more challenges than ever.  Soon after the first week of school, their optimism – like all of ours – will be tested.  The truth is we have a long, long way to go to close the achievement gap, and we will need lots of help.

We owe it to our kids and families to push each other; problems can only be addressed when honestly confronted.  We need Hartford teachers to have the courage to push for the change they need to get their jobs done without fear of repercussion, and we need Hartford principals to do the same all the way up the chain of command until it hits the Board of Education and Mayor’s office.

In Connecticut, the two foremost judicial education battles are the Sheff v. O’Neill integration case (of 27 years vintage) and the Connecticut Coalition for Justice in Education Funding (CCJEF) v. Rell case (11 years old, with the latest trial having wrapped up August 10th and a ruling expected any day now).  A new lawsuit filed just last week is Martinez v. Malloy, which seeks to drive a dagger through the heart of the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared education is not a fundamental right under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.

The Martinez lawsuit seeks to establish that education should at long last be explicitly recognized by the federal courts as a fundamental equal protection and due process right under the U.S. Constitution, making the case that students in Bridgeport, Hartford and New Haven are being forced to attend public schools the State knows have been failing for decades.  The claims are compelling:

• More than 90 percent of the state’s lowest-performing schools are located in its 30 lowest-income school districts;
• A State moratorium on opening more magnet schools put some 15,000 students in 2015 on wait lists for Hartford magnet schools or suburban public schools participating in the Open Choice options;
• Wait lists for public charter schools also are burgeoning, even as the State subjects charter networks to discouraging, annual line-item funding authorizations;
• The inter-district Open Choice lottery financially penalizes suburban districts, such that less than a third of the 2,500 students who participated in the lottery were placed in the higher-performing schools they were seeking.

What continues to astound us at Achieve Hartford! is how long lawmakers have taken to address the needs of the state’s most vulnerable children – children who represent the future workforce for the state – pretending that the same recipe for creating some of the strongest schools in the nation in our suburbs can be followed in our inner cities.

Ideological arguments against school choice options have demonized charter schools as intentionally pulling the best kids out of neighborhood schools, leaving those District schools with too high a concentration of need to be successful.  They’ve even demonized magnet schools as ruining a city’s neighborhood health by denying students access to great magnet schools right across the street from where they live.

Saddling innovative options with blame for beleaguering traditional options is no answer when the truth is that lawmakers can, with the stroke of their pen, drastically improve the fate of children in CT in so many ways.

If they don’t like the self-selection bias that impacts charter school application processes, lawmakers can change the law to mandate that charters serve the same percent of English Learner and special education students as the school down the street.  If they don’t like that Hartford kids can’t attend a magnet school across the street, lawmakers can change the magnet school applications to weight more heavily a child’s geographic proximity to the school.

There are many ideological arguments against school choice, propagated by those who want the current system systematically fixed over the next decade – and many of the arguments are good ones.  None, however, justify depriving a generation of students the higher quality school option they deserve right now.

Take it from Achieve Hartford!, one of three education advocacy groups in the state with a mission to support the local school district to become successful and economically viable.

We want nothing more than the Hartford Public School district to ensure a high quality education to every child, right now, in all schools – and for Hartford to be the first urban school district in the country to eliminate the achievement gap between our schools and suburban schools.

We can’t get there at the expense of current students’ futures.  Therefore, we embrace both school choice and neighborhood school improvement – and oppose making it a zero sum game.

The 2016-17 school year opened Tuesday with the traditional bus tour, celebrating students at the impressive University High School of Science and Engineering, the 19^th century Asylum Hill relic-turned-showpiece at the renovated West Middle School, and the impressive community Burr School on Wethersfield Avenue.  The contrasts among Hartford schools on and off the tour raise the question: Is the cup half full or half empty?

Students were the stars at each school on the tour, led by Principals Martin Folan, Lynn Estey, and Fabienne Pierre-Maxwell and their respective teachers. At Burr, Eighth Grader Nyla Cruz was the lead singer; she has her sights set on becoming a lawyer.  Her music teacher, Elida Muchollari, who trained in Albania as an opera singer, believes some of her students were born to be on Broadway!  Most of her leading singers have left for magnet schools, she pointed out.

The magnet-to-neighborhood school differential, in terms of educational opportunities, is one of the most vexing issues facing the city and region.  In light of the latest SBAC and SAT results – and the regional disparities they reveal – the bus tour was just another reminder, given the schools not visited and begging for renovation.

As Hartford is the metro area center for social services, with nonprofit organizations, rental housing, and poverty concentrated here, the inequities from boundary to boundary are stark.

Over the past two decades, the State takeover of the Hartford schools, the resignation of Mayor Perez, and the recent ballpark fiasco have created the impression that investment in Hartford will be squandered.  Mayor Luke Bronin and Superintendent Beth Schiavino-Narvaez have inherited that mistrust and have been called upon to prove competence, notwithstanding the unhelpful history.  The facile TV drumbeat, daily stereotyping Hartford, New Haven, and Bridgeport as unsafe if not uninhabitable, doesn’t help either.

The Bottom Line.  The Hartford Courant recently has editorialized about the wisdom of regionalization; 169 towns organized, way back when for horse-drawn carts, probably don’t make sense anymore.  Instead, it is time for Greater Hartford to look at the way integrated education has begun on a regional basis – and to consider whether it is time to expand that effort with suburban support rather than just continuing to look the other way.  Regardless of whether or not shared services and increased taxes feel like a bail out to Hartford, the truth is … it’s in everyone’s best interest for a stronger regional economy.