Since the announcement of Equity 2020 a little over a year ago, trying to follow the school consolidation and building closure process feels a bit like Waiting for Godot: there is a lot of conversation but, ultimately, not much action.  

Recent Hartford Board of Education committee discussions on Hartford’s school facilities issues are only the most recent proof-point highlighting the continuing and rising costs of building maintenance and operations, especially in the under-enrolled schools, which inefficiently divert dollars from the students who need the most support.

The Case for Consolidation and Closure Is Clear 

The case for taking action is clear and can be made in a thousand different ways.  In committee and regular meetings, District officials and Board members have trained spotlights on several interesting cost effectiveness questions that need to be addressed as the budget gets further squeezed this spring and into the foreseeable future.  Here are a few:

• Building Upkeep During Transitions.  To prevent further problems, including the threat of vandalism, the District still has to heat and maintain the vacant Clark School, even though it is closed, no longer a candidate for renovation, and subject to being turned over to the City.  Nearly $1 million was spent to investigate and deal with the school’s original PCBs problem, which could not be resolved.  Even though the District stores and re-purposes water heaters and other components from transitioning schools for other buildings (as it has done with the kitchen equipment at the phasing-out Culinary Academy at Weaver), empty-Clark upkeep and maintenance remains an $800,000 item.

• Needed Improvements.  The District has a March 31 deadline for renewal of its State Alliance Grant for building improvements and will seek $2 million for neighborhood school improvements that really could use twice that amount of support.  As an example, the Olympic-sized swimming pool at Hartford Public High School recently had its circulator pumps fail and flood the perimeter of the pool as well as a basement room over a three-day weekend.  The pump repair was $10,000 and the cost of dealing with the flooding will likely be 17 times that.

• Deferred Action Is Risky Business.  District building improvement funds have been frozen for four years – and repairs (like those at HPHS) spring sudden emergency costs that cannot be avoided.  The Martin Luther King, Jr., School (the original Weaver High School) was recommended for closure nine years ago.  A plan to renovate it fell apart in the City budget crisis, when the City could not match a 20 percent share of the $64 million approved by the State.  An independent facilities study has identified $30 million of needed work at M.L. King; band aids won’t address problems like these.

• Dithering Costs Money.  The District recently noted that a withdrawal of a school redesign plan has a ripple effect on architectural and construction costs as well as curriculum redesign, to the tune of $2 million associated with the second round of the Weaver renovation.  That redesign is now headed for a third round – and the school system, the Board, and the community are going to have to get it right this time.

Redesigning Equity 2020 

But as the Equity 2020 process revealed, the students who need the most support can also be harmed by the school consolidation and building closure process itself.  When HPS restarts the revamped Equity 2020 process – which it must do soon – the process must look very, very different than before.

Guidance for what this process should look like comes from a number of sources, including reports and articles on successful (and unsuccessful) school closures in comparable cities across the nation. Best practices learned from these cities could help prevent another Equity 2020 debacle.

A revamped Equity 2020 process must integrate these six elements:

• Be bold, goal-oriented and transparent, with
• Expert support using best practices and with
• Meaningful community input to improve the original plan, that
• Guides coordinated and aligned action, that
• Optimizes asset/liability management, and that ultimately …
• Transforms educational experience.

Meaningful community engagement is key. Take this lesson learned from an urban planning consultant hired to support very successful closure and consolidation in Kansas City as compared to failures from Chicago’s efforts taken from an in-depth analysis in the Chicago Reporter.  Kansas City’s urban planner consultant shared key learnings from the process:

“…[U]pdating the repurposing effort’s website remained a priority. There, residents and community groups can find minutes from meetings and site tours, as well as documents that provide information about each school site, compile community feedback and explain the reuse strategy for each school. Community meetings are posted weeks in advance on the website, as well as on the initiative’s Facebook page.”  

Compare this against a less successful effort in Chicago:

“On the other hand… “Chicago’s process was opaque. Each alderman involved and informed community members as he or she saw fit; many didn’t hold meetings at all. There was no central point of contact for residents, and repurposing meetings were posted sporadically, making it difficult for communities to plan ahead. Chicago Public Schools didn’t keep records of the meetings, and the district’s repurposing website lacks any documents about proposals for the schools.”  

Successful engagement in Hartford must go beyond hosting a couple of presentation-style meetings. Hartford education and community leaders charged with a reconstituted Equity 2020 process must cultivate meaningful community input to improve the original plan. This might include hosting multiple community needs-assessment and feedback meetings along with public tours to inform the creation of the plan (prior to any presentation of a “draft” that looks more like a final version awaiting a rubber stamp).

Following the collective design of a plan (with real community input), there would be open and public discussions of the proposal with an eye toward going beyond saving money to also measurably improve (and where necessary) transform the education experience. Stated plainly, the newly consolidated schools must be better than the current neglected ones and money saved in the closure and repurposing of buildings must be reinvested in long-neglected communities and high-needs areas. Our children deserve nothing less.

Furthermore, we can’t wait. The problem is not getting easier; it’s getting harder – and will get even more difficult still – the longer Hartford sits on its collective hands waiting for action. From a 2011 national report on school consolidation and building closures:

“Selling or leasing surplus school buildings, many of which are located in declining neighborhoods, tends to be extremely difficult. No district has reaped anything like a windfall from such transactions. As of the summer of 2011, at least 200 school properties stood vacant in the six cities studied – including 92 in Detroit alone – with most having been empty for several years. If left unused for long, the buildings can become eyesores that cast a pall over neighborhoods and attract vandalism and other illicit activity.”

According to a 2013 report, Pew found more than 300 unused properties for sale in just a dozen city school districts. The Chicago Reporter article notes:

“The 2013 Pew study reported: ‘Officials dealing with surplus buildings say that districts should move aggressively to sell or lease facilities soon after they become empty, make information readily accessible to prospective buyers and the public… and, when possible, get outside help in determining appropriate uses of the properties and how they fit with the overall needs of the city. Kansas City followed that blueprint to a T; Chicago did not.”

Click here to access the 2017 Chicago Report article “In Kansas City, a lesson in transforming closed schools”, the 2011 Pew Charitable Trusts report “Closing Public Schools in Philadelphia”, and the 2013 Pew Charitable Trusts report “Shuttered Public Schools”.

The Bottom Line 

A national model, Kansas City enacted a policy of repurposing and re-using buildings, while consolidating and transforming schools.  Notably, City and school leaders came together to design creative financing and reuse solutions to ensure neglected and vacant schools become resources for the community again.

This point bears some emphasis in Hartford: The District and City already have failed impacted communities. Significant efforts should be made to ensure that the failures resulting from building closure should not further deplete resources for the impacted community.

A principle of “repurpose and re-use” is that vacant schools become resources for the community again.  Such a principle is fully consistent with the mayor’s laudable efforts to bring in a staff expert to combat blight on a comprehensive city-wide level.  This is the type of vision Hartford must have for a revamped Equity 2020 process to consolidate schools and close buildings.  This is the type of vision and leadership Hartford’s future and current education leaders must bring to the table.

Winnowed down from two dozen aspirants, Acting Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez and Capital Region Education Council (CREC) Assistant Superintendent for Operations Tim Sullivan are the two final candidates to fly the District plane into the fiscal 2018 budget storm.  It’s going to take an extraordinary captain to seize control of the HPS cockpit at this time and land in a good place.  But, as we see it, it shouldn’t be all on their shoulders.

With upcoming community forums featuring the two candidates, the question on everyone’s minds is: Which one of these two candidates can do a better job?

The question on our mind, however, is can either of them do the job, given the seemingly intractable challenges at hand?

Answering that question depends on your understanding of what is needed in Hartford. There is no question that the two finalists have incredibly impressive track records – but so did the past two superintendents.  Yet most would agree that previous leaders did not fully address the long-simmering and hence subtle challenges that only recently have turned into crises.  Alas, what’s needed in Hartford goes beyond a 12-point job description.

What’s needed includes at least these four capabilities and many more:

• The ability to leverage all of Hartford’s assets to both mitigate the effects of multi-generational poverty and inspire students to reach their potential in a way not fully supported before;

• The ability to build an effective team of complementary skill sets – one of which has to be more effectively engaging the community;

• The ability to structure a partnership with CREC that would allow for more HPS resources and attention to be focused on neighborhood schools;

• The ability to take industry-themed high schools and turn them into legitimate career pathways; and

• So much more that will be part of a blueprint we will offer education leaders shortly.

Amidst all the challenges and opportunities, one thing is clear:  We can no longer expect one person to solve it, plan it, and then execute all of it.  That narrowed field of expectation is a recipe for disaster, and we know this because it is a road we already have traveled.

Bottom Line 

If Hartford leaders, stakeholders, and families put the responsibility for fixing Hartford schools solely on the new superintendent, we should not expect either finalist to be successful.  The responsibility must be shared amongst the Board of Education, City Hall, the corporate community, philanthropy, nonprofit partners, and even our robust institutions of higher education.  In the coming weeks, we look forward to hosting a candidate forum to explore more on this topic of shared responsibility and encourage other planning forums to do so as well.

For bios of the finalists, read our past article on the search process. Here is the Courant article on the two finalists.

Juan Hernandez came to Hartford from a far NE Chicago neighborhood, where he earned his chops at an innovative high school – and vaulted into a Posse Foundation leadership scholarship to come to Trinity College in downtown Hartford.  Now, about to turn 26 years old, he is on our Board of Education.  Who is he – and what does he bring to the game?

No games with this guy.  He’s a scholar, like we hope our students might want to be.

Undergraduate and master’s degrees at Trinity, done.  Now heading to the University of Hartford for a doctorate, to dig even deeper into his passionate research, on why Black and Latino men don’t graduate from college.  This is a problem our society has not yet been able to address … but warrants real solutions.

He got to know the neighborhoods while working for City Council officials Shawn Wooden and Glendowlyn Thames, through attendance at NRZ and other community meetings and also currently serves on the superintendent search committee.

Now director of the Myatt Center for Diversity and Inclusion at the University of New Haven, Board Member Hernandez commutes from Hartford.  In his past work, staffing Hartford City Council members since 2015, he learned the city’s neighborhoods, heard the citizen (and non-citizen) concerns, and gleaned a fine-grained knowledge of both the youth and priority issues facing our city.

Here are some indicators of his views, as expressed in an interview Tuesday:

• Education policy, with strong analysis and implementation, and both public service and justice taken into account, is paramount.  At his high school, Mr. Hernandez said, autistic children walked the same halls and attended the same classes as other students, rather than being plucked and isolated all day among a handful of kids “without remorse” … an integration as it should be;
• Whereas his Posse Foundation scholarship could have taken him to the University of Wisconsin-Madison or Pomona College in California or other places, he chose Trinity.  As he tells it, in his words, his trajectory has taken the exact road it should have, to right here;
• Knowing the national patterns of white flight to the suburbs, he is well aware of how neighborhood, city, and metro area economies have gone off the radar or been cut off by unfortunate riverfront highway building;
• At his Uplift Community HS in Chicago, Mr. Hernandez said, he and his freshman class [established under its former city school superintendent, then U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan], had no students above them … and hence could find ways, at a young age, to learn and lead.

Board Member Hernandez, at this time, is “pretty sure” he will run in the fall for the vacated seat to which he has been appointed.  “I don’t know if nine months is enough to get things done,” he said, thinking about taking this temporary appointment forward.

Some of his most important concerns, Board Member Hernandez also said, relate to the special needs and English Language Learner students he has known so well, coming out of his social-justice themed, 97 percent Black high school in Chicago.

He believes academic achievement stems not from assessment, but from the highest-quality teaching and learning, yielding growth.  Moreover, he recommends culturally-committed reforms, recalling the special education and English Language Learner students from his high school – and now highlighted by the Office of Child Advocate report regarding abuse and neglect in Hartford schools.  The legacy of mistrust he has observed in Hartford, he says, could delay progress for years, if unattended.  He asks good questions:

• Why can’t central office be relocated from the G. Fox site to a school building that has space for it, like the top floor of Bulkeley HS?
• Why can’t the superintendent and Board better convey to the community a clear vision of what the Hartford schools should look like?
• Knowing that the name “Weaver High School” has a deep meaning across generations, how can the North End be persuaded that it is not getting the short end of the stick once again, in the latest Weaver re-design?

These are good questions from our newest Board member – questions that many others on the Board, in the District, and among parents and community members, are asking as well.