Mayor Segarra and the Board of Education could intervene any time to stop outgoing Superintendent Kishimoto from pushing an agenda that the community has loudly spoken against. They could urge her to focus on addressing the actual concerns that School Governance Councils want addressed at their respective schools. Instead, residents continue to scratch their heads over how someone whose contract was not renewed could stay on for an entire school year and wield power after being slammed on her own performance review, which incidentally, was the only review the Board of Education officially conducted for her.
In November, parents said “No” to the proposal to toss SAND School to a newly formed private management company linked to Capital Prep Magnet School’s principal, Steve Perry. Just days before that, Clark School parents said “No” to the plan to hand the public school over to the Achievement First charter school chain.
Opponents of public schooling have framed this as a grand conspiracy led by unionists; while the teacher’s union has had involvement, it has been minimal, which is plain to anyone who has been paying attention. Parents have been leading the fight against disrupting their children’s educations by closing schools.
Now, Superintendent Kishimoto is pushing for Clark and SAND to become part of the Commissioner’s Network; the Milner school, which had been previously redesigned, was accepted into the Commissioner’s Network and given to Jumoke Academy to be managed in 2012. Teaching staff at Milner were all dismissed and it was misreported by the mainstream media that very few teachers reapplied for their jobs. Sources affiliated with Milner have indicated that very few teachers received calls back from human resources. Then, Milner/Jumoke teachers that began at the re-opened, re-branded school did not approve the MOU because of problems with the hiring process.
Unlike Clark and SAND, it was expected that Milner would be the first to go to the Commissioner’s Network, despite Superintendent Kishimoto’s disregard for meeting deadlines in the process of school “redesign.”
The choice of SAND and Clark may seem odd to those looking just at data. Test scores, while not on par with that of many suburban elementary schools, are not the lowest in district. One of the lowest pieces of data from the 2012-2013 school year actually came out of Milner at Jumoke Academy, with only 10% of its third graders at/above proficiency for math. (That score showed a decrease in proficiency from the previous school year when it was simply a public school, not in the Commissioner’s Network). Still, there are problems with assessing a school’s so-called performance with test scores; Betances illustrated that.
High absenteeism has been said to factor into this decision, but there has been no word yet as to how firing all teaching staff and repackaging a school would address that serious issue.
Nothing about the Milner process nor the attempted giveaways of Clark and SAND have been going smoothly. Now, the superintendent is forced to step back and follow more steps to at least give the appearance of community support. In the next few days, committees including parents, teachers, and administrators are said to be forming, with no mention as to how this involves the existing School Governance Councils. This is not unexpected, as the Clark SGC was vocal in its opposition to the previous attempted land grab. For those not familiar, the SGC is supposed to work as a “parent trigger” to shut down schools that are determined to be broken; when the SGC pushes back and says it does not want to actually close the school down, well, those are some unintended consequences. Additionally, there is a wish to get the teacher’s union to formally support this. Oh, and everyone gets about two weeks to make these decisions.
Joining the Commissioner’s Network means getting money — money our public schools should be receiving without having to jump through Stefan Pryor’s hoops to get. Some have called this big game a form of extortion. Playing ball to get the green means enabling a system that has moved from funding public education to funding someone’s agenda-based version of education. Mayor Segarra and members of the Board of Education should ask themselves if this is the legacy they want to leave.
Bruce rubenstein
Kerri, why are you surprised about mayor segarra given his prior votes for privatization and his tea party republican endorsement that he sought and received.
Kerri Provost
Bruce,
I think you confuse reporting with “surprise.”
There is not an ounce of me that is surprised by any of this. Read carefully. You’ll know when something surprises me.
Bruce Rubenstein
Well then,I am surprised that Mayor Segarra has the balls to call himself a progressive,given his republican inclination to privatize the schools.No real progressive would undertake what he has voted for or will permit Kishimoto to do in this case.
Matt O'Connor
The significance of affirming that the initial and most vocal opposition to the previous attempted hostile take-overs of both schools by parents cannot be overstated — particularly when compared to the reporting on the response to both schemes in the mainstream media.
Many were caught by surprise by the strong reaction of parents at both Clark and S.A.N.D. to the proposed giveaway of their schools. Given the city’s historically low participation in civic and political affairs, some in the press apparently assumed there must be someone orchestrating their outrage.
As was stated so clearly in this post, anyone paying attention could see otherwise.
But what makes this false assumption even more problematic is the false “neighbor vs. neighbor” narrative that it allows school officials and those seeking to benefit from a hostile take-over to create. Considering the critical importance of Hartford’s communities coming together to demand better for their children’s education, that is a shameful consequence.
Thank you to Real Hartford for not playing that game.
Kerri Provost
I’ve been around the block enough times to know that if unions are the force behind organizing something, they don’t blink an eye letting you know about that.
Linda Hall
Interesting to note when a part time magnet school principal organizes his staff and parents to support his planned takeover it’s “grassroots and choice”, but when parents and teachers from neighborhood schools rally to fight for their schools, they were manipulated by the union.
Once they give these two schools to Pryor, he can then hand one or two to the same part time principal, Mr. Perry.