Making the case for fighting for Hartford kids, we would like to suggest that when the consequential budget hearings unfold next week, a few questions ought to be not just on the table … but at its center.

The annual Hartford Public Schools budget development process runs a gauntlet of public hearings and debates every spring – and this year is no different.  A Hartford Board of Education meeting/budget hearing is scheduled for this coming Tuesday, April 18^th, at Rawson School.

An unusual aspect of the Fiscal 2018 budget planning has been a series of community forums and a Board retreat devoted to the budget, led by then-Acting and now designated Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez and Chief Financial Officer Paula Altieri.

These meetings featured close looks at the City’s nine years of flat funding, the State’s unresolved deficit, and the impending $6 million shortfall facing the District.  The next budget likely will result in positions being cut and, depending on how natural attrition and replacements are juggled, teacher and other staff layoffs.

Another Way to Look at It

At the Yale School of Management Educational Leadership Conference last week, a recurring theme concerned the complexity – and opacity – of school budgets, which, by being incomprehensible, tend to disempower parents and community leaders when the important details are buried in fine print.

For example, the bewildering nature of the State’s 11 sources for its education funding formula makes it impossible for all but the most intrepid analysts to figure out where the money goes.

Former Bridgeport school leader – and now CT Association of School Superintendents Executive Director Fran Rabinowitz – advocates a single, “coherent” formula, weighted for students with disabilities, English learners, and poverty.

Another conference speaker heard from, Hartford Board of Education Member Richard Wareing, joked that after chairing the Board and its Finance Committee, “I still don’t understand how we spend our money!”  The budget is so opaque that people are scared of it, he reflected.

State Board of Education Member Erik Clemons offered a solution: “You need to ask the people who are suffering what they need … top-down solutions won’t cut it.”

Among the many unresolved questions on the District’s Fiscal 2018 budget, these stand out:

1. Invitation to Co-Location.  Given the often-repeated guideline that a school with fewer than 300 students is unsustainable, when – and how – will the District and Board confront the fact that enrollment projections show that nine schools are estimated to be below that threshold – and another four are teetering on the edge?
2. Balancing Act.  Given the tentative projection that 50 positions are subject to being eliminated, is the forecast of 36 cuts at the school level and 14 at the central office level the correct balance?
3. Hurry Up and Wait.  If the Sheff negotiations indeed are stalled and the next phase is another court battle rather than a compromise, how will this delay affect the tuition reimbursement and other proposed Choice modifications that hang in the balance?

These questions – and more – warrant consideration at all policy making levels, including from our State legislative delegation, which could and should be more involved in tackling the disparities between the hard-pressed cities and the other 160 CT town governments that resist positive change.

At the 2017 Yale conference on educational leadership last week, parent empowerment, bitter partisanship, and cultural competence were amplified as roadblock issues.  We are mapping out a multi-part series of articles to illuminate each of these important considerations, which range from necessary improvements in classroom cultural competence to the closely-related realms of contracting, community building, and teacher recruitment. 

Several ear-to-the-ground indicators surfaced at the annual Yale School of Management (SOM) Educational Leadership Conference April 6-7:

1. Incomprehensible Budgets Disempower Parents and Community Leaders.

1. Community Organizing Can Activate People’s Voices – and Votes.

1. Cultural Competence Is Not Just a School Issue – Our Entire Society Must Wake Up.

Today we start with Point #3, cultural competence (human understanding and responsiveness to children’s needs).

At the Yale SOM conference, New Haven Principal Joe Johnson described how his well-intentioned White teachers’ comments sometimes are misconstrued as racist – and how defeating that can be for them, even as he is trying to retain the best.  “That feeling of judgment can shut people down,” he said, advising that “Each of us needs to feel comfortable in our ignorance.”

With New Haven’s 80 percent Black and Brown student enrollment – and its 80 percent White teacher corps, his strategy, he said, is to teach humility – with “an open mind and an open heart” and to urge reliance on all staff members, as that broader staff complement may have “more cultural capital and awareness” than any individual.

Another Dimension of Cultural Competence

President and Director of Business Development Derrick Diggs of Diggs Construction Company gave voice to another dimension of cultural competence: hiring local employees.

In a panel discussion regarding “Schools as a Source of Community Vitality,” President Diggs detailed how his company awarded 21 percent of its $360 million in direct work on renovation and construction at 13 Hartford schools to minority- and women-owned businesses.  About three-quarters of that $76 million of work on the schools was awarded to firms in Hartford or Greater Hartford – and local residents constituted more than a third of the workforce, he said.

In data showing the results by Hartford’s 17 neighborhoods and six zip codes, as well as for each of the 13 school projects, Diggs set goals for minority- and women-owned business as well as Hartford resident worker participation.

In the work that included the Capital Prep, Mary Hooker, M.D. Fox, Sport and Medical Sciences, and University High projects, President Diggs said, his commitment is to provide economic opportunities to the local businesses and workforce.

As his fellow panelists spoke to the need to change mindsets about city schools, President Diggs made another observation.  Amidst renovated buildings and sparkling new facilities, he said, “Kids walked, acted, and dressed differently … that’s another kind of mindset change.”  It’s about dignity.

We will follow up on the Yale conference in future weeks with deep dives into the issues most relevant to Hartford.