The State of the City Address from Mayor Luke Bronin Monday evening was cut to the bone, just as the City and District budgets are about to be.  At a Hartford Board of Education retreat earlier that day, District and Board leaders grappled with the implications, emphasizing the importance of clear communications that encourage public knowledge and participation.

Parting company with characteristic State of the City language, the mayor reported that “the state of our city can and will be strong — if we face our challenges honestly, with clear vision and with an unflinching willingness to do the difficult things those challenges demand.”  In blunt detail, he reported, “as directly and as plainly as I can, that while our city is strong, the state of our financial condition is dire.  We are in a state of fiscal emergency.”

The City’s debt service cost is $10 million this year – and will jump to nearly $30 million next year and some $50 million by 2019.  “We’re like a household that’s taken out a second mortgage, maxed out the credit cards, and borrowed money from family and friends to keep up with the payments,” he said.  Cuts in services and layoffs are now unavoidable; new strategies are unfolding to address benefits and pension costs, as reported by the Courant.

The Devil Is in the Deficits

At the Board retreat earlier Monday, Chair Richard Wareing described the multi-level deficits projected for Fiscal 2017: $20 million for the District, $30 million for the City, and $900 million for the State.  “You don’t have to be Nostradamus” to figure out there’s a problem, he said.

The District is faced with restructuring, because many of its buildings have inadequate features or are run down, Board Finance and Audit Committee Chair Craig Stallings advised.  “I personally have said I want to close 25 schools,” he said, calling for a full Finance Committee hearing to apprise parents why principals are cutting seven to 10 positions per school.

Here are the text of the Mayor’s State of the City Address and last week’s Education Matters article related to the burgeoning budget issues.

The Bottom Line.  With layoffs coming at every level, we have to ask the question, how will Hartford’s strategy change to still meet the goals set forth by the Strategic Operating Plan?

While that question must be answered by management, the Board of Education and City Hall ultimately have to ensure management has what it needs to carry out its plan.  The buck stops with THEM, not the superintendent.

Also, the opportunity exists right now to make some bold changes as related to school consolidation and magnet school racial quotas.  As resources for neighborhood schools diminish during this fiscal crisis, Hartford should find ways to move more of its students into magnet school seats – even if the racial proportions at those are thrown a bit out of whack.  The time to have this conversation is now.

Some call it a morning huddle; it used to be just a drowsy homeroom check-in.  Now, the platform for student-adult relationships to form in Hartford schools is a daily advisory group meeting.  As this is so crucial to student-centered learning, it was good that Hartford Board of Education members had a chance to experience it firsthand – with a group of Eighth Graders who do it every day.

At this week’s Kinsella Magnet School of the Performing Arts workshop, seven Board members had a chance to see what it means to test wits on their most important values, declare their best character traits, and hear what is important in other people’s lives; to experience what a daily advisory can bring.  It’s that memorable conversation at the coffee pot, on the bus, at the counter; a good daily exercise for everyone.

Environmental Sciences Magnet School at Mary Hooker Spanish Teacher Elizabeth Wilson has been busy, as the school’s advisory coordinator and student representative mentor – not to mention, but also to consider, being a new mom to her own child.  Tuesday evening, she masterfully put the Board members through their paces with some of her Eighth-Grade students, also masterful!

The exercise was very instructive, illuminating a foundational part of the District’s Strategic Operating Plan: Student Success Plans are one of its six high-leverage strategies … and they rely on the caring adults who serve as mentors or conveners of advisory groups.

“Advisory is just one way of connecting with a caring adult,” Superintendent Beth Schiavino-Narvaez said Tuesday evening, as she and Board Chair Richard Wareing and Board Members José Colón-Rivas, Robert Cotto, Jr., Tiffany Glanville, Craig Stallings, Beth Taylor, and Karen Taylor came to the tables with Ms. Wilson’s 12-year-olds.

“It’s easy for students to just check out,” Ms. Wilson said in a follow-up interview, by way of shedding light on why the advisories, and the intimacy of their small groups, is so invaluable.  When children get a chance to air their views, they tend to reciprocate later when they have to take on complex tasks, like reading and interpreting complex text.

“It is understood that we are all in this together … it’s an agreement, not a battle,” she explained.  Students get an entrée into speaking up instead of hanging back – but also know they must deliver in the classroom.  Another benefit of the advisory relationship-building exercise: “It kind of gets adults off their high horse!”

Here’s Tuesday’s video, which proves not only that a picture is worth a thousand words, but also that slowing down to think … and have conversations without a device in hand … might not be such a bad thing.

For Eighth Graders, as Ms. Wilson put it, “Their specialty is talking about themselves!”

In advisories, however, growth comes from exposure to a broader spectrum of ideas, rather than simply being confined to one’s own.

It is noteworthy that Tuesday’s Board of Education session – and several other recent workshops – have moved toward person-to-person dialogues, in which Board members and District leaders in small groups probe key issues.

In past years, Board workshop meetings were characterized by lecture-style presentations; this new participatory approach by the District is distinctly different … and a positive development.

As job interviews go, re-appointed Hartford Board of Education Member Richard Wareing and newly appointed Board Members Tiffany Glanville and Karen Taylor nailed it at their City Council vetting February 18.

Especially against the backdrop of the City’s long-term structural deficit, their sound advice and forthright views on school improvement elicited hope that Hartford could be prepared to do the impossible for children and families down the road, that is, actually turn around Hartford’s chronically under-performing schools.

Of course, the Q&As before Council were not actually job interviews, but if they had been, these three appointees were impressive.  In fact, they were unanimously approved by Council and then sworn in at the February 23^rdBoard of Education meeting (video here).

Taking the Council to School

Board Member Wareing, who was subsequently re-elected by his colleagues to continue as Board chair, delivered his typically trenchant answers to Council questions February 18^th, including a forecast that “a series of very hard tactical battles” will be required to address this year’s severe budget issues:

•  Hartford cannot continue to run two separate school systems – neighborhood versus magnet, he advised.
• Small schools, those with 350 students or fewer, are unsustainable – and running schools with fewer than 300 students may even be impossible, he said, commenting that it is time for Hartford to look at school consolidation.  In that scenario, administration and overhead costs would drop – but class sizes governed by collective bargaining agreements would not be in the offing.
• Asked about proactive measures he might suggest, Chair Wareing reported that the District has done well in reducing central office costs and yet can do more.
• Consolidating District and City Finance – and perhaps Public Works – efforts might not balance the budget, but it could result in progress.  “It is something that could be done and is already being discussed,” he said.
• The Hartford legislative delegation will hopefully help the District address the need for stepped-up reimbursements of special education services.
• While he is “generally a fan” of within-District school choice, children in poor neighborhoods tend to be the worst served, he observed.  “School choice is great as long as there are good choices … really, honestly, choice works if you have quality,” he told the Council.

The two newly appointed Hartford Board of Education members, Tiffany Glanville and Karen Taylor, also had colloquies with the Council. A mother of three children with number four on the way, Ms. Glanville expressed concern about the complications of school choice for the city’s most disadvantaged students and the need for dialog about housing and other issues that impact education quality.

It is a problem when younger children can’t get into the school of their older siblings – and “we don’t have the perception of an equal playing field in many of our high schools,” she said.

For her part, new Board Member Karen Taylor said she will bring a “social class, race, and inequality” focus to her work.  She spoke of “the oddity” of children who attend magnet schools having friends from several towns – but not with kids in their own neighborhood.  In reference to school choice, she emphasized, “It is really important to focus on collaborating on behalf of neighborhood kids, instead of competing for them.”

Speaking as a “narrative changer,” she said, she would like to engage parents in a different way, to interact with schools based on their life circumstances – and to change the narrative to English Language Learner and other populations that have much to contribute.

Here is the link to the February 23^rd Hartford Board of Education meeting video, at which the new Board Members and were sworn in and the officers elected. New committee assignments are here.

The Difficult Position a Parent Board Member Is In

There are two factors in particular that put the new parent Board of Education members in a tough position, along with the other parent members serving on the board.

First, the high sense of urgency to improve schools felt at the Board and District often times is not perceived in the community.   In order to combat the cynicism about whether change is possible and to inspire more people to share responsibility for school improvement, the urgency at the District and Board must be felt far and wide.

When you are at the top of the food chain, where policy is created and money is allocated, you have the opportunity and responsibility to think boldly, talk boldly, and act boldly, and the eyes of Hartford parents will be trained more on you, to see if your urgency matches other parents in the community.

The other factor that puts parent Board members in a tough position is the desire for better responsiveness to problems at the school level, for which Hartford parents regularly ask.

When a parent testified at the last regular Board of Education meeting about her First-Grade child being suspended out of school for three days, only to come back to school and get suspended again for two days out of school, the expectation is that this kind of thing would not happen again.  The pressure is now on parent Board members to ensure that these concerns actually get addressd and don’t come back to the Board.

Mayor Bronin committed to appointing parents to the Board and has followed through, even before his fifth and final appointee is announced.  In doing so, a new era of communicating urgency and responsiveness to parent concerns, has just been launched.  We hope.