With irony bouncing around the auditorium like ions, immediately following the public’s condemnation of the Hartford Board of Education’s attempt to pay Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez a bonus at the December Regular Meeting, Chairman Rigueur gave an update on the BOE’s new initiative; meeting the public.

The new initiative is being called “Community Office Hours.”   It is, said Rigueur, “our way to interact and engage with the community” outside of BOE meetings.  Once a month a “subset” of board members will present themselves to the public at various locations around the city with members rotating monthly.

The first of these community “meet and greets” occurred on December 11th at Tisane’s.  Rigueur stated that there was “great conversation” but “few attendees.”  The second will be held on January 17th at the Urban and Hope Refuge Church in Hartford.

This is a great initiative on the part of the board…in theory, the jury is still out on its practice.  Although Rigueur stated that there had been “great conversation” at the first of these public meetings, and that the purpose was to “interact and engage” with the public, we have to remember that the agenda for the Regular Meetings labels the public comment section of the meeting as a “dialogue,” even though there is no verbal response by board members to any comment made by a member of the public (unless you infer a negative upon being appointed to the board versus being elected).  Do these “community office hours” really offer an opportunity for a back-and-forth with board members?

This question becomes important when you view the language from the district’s web page which advertises these meetings:

“The Community Office Hours are a chance to meet members of the Board of Education and learn about their role in Hartford Public Schools.”

This language does not offer any hope for actual interaction or engagement, but “a chance to meet members of the Board of Education and learn about their role…”  “Learn about their role;” to learn about that you can read the Hartford Schools Report Archives.  But seriously, this phrase conjures up thoughts of visitors being given a lesson on rhetorical leadership.  The public may be more inclined to visit one of these meetings if terms such as “conversation” or phrases such as “bring your voice” were used in the advertisements.  But no, they appear to want to school you.

Perhaps I am incorrect in pre-determining the likely structure of these meetings based on this board’s propensity to underwhelm, and these will be honest attempts by the BOE to listen, learn, and act on public interaction and engagement.

Why stop here?

The BOE ought to consider inviting a teacher or three to sit in on and participate in board committee meetings.  Similarly, it would be a culture and climate coup if HPS had a superintendent who was inclined to hold this type of “community office hours” event with teachers (without the shotguns).  What? Former Superintendent Christina Kishimoto engaged teachers like this?  That’s innovative!