No, this is not a report on the low salaries of Hartford teachers, it is a report on how a group of Hartford teachers, despite their lower-than-average salaries, are working to effect change at HPS for the betterment of students.

Apparently, school district leadership ignoring the voice of teachers is not just a Hartford Public Schools issue.  The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) union states that in 2011 they “noticed the lack of teacher voice in education policy discussions in our country and decided to do something about it.”  “Why,” they asked, “weren’t experts in the classroom being asked for their input on how to ensure that our children have the best opportunities to learn?”  Similarly, it appears that the Torres-Rodriguez/Rigueur board of education in Hartford is not the only board which dismissed the idea of a teacher’s advisory council to the board.

Born from this commonsense inquiry, the AFT began the Teacher Leaders Program (TLP).  TLPs across the country “meet with their union colleagues to discuss current federal, state and local policy issues; talk about their personal action research projects; develop plans to build community support for their schools; network with local leaders; and share in camaraderie with like-minded teachers.”

In conjunction with the AFT, the Hartford Federation of Teachers (HFT) under President Carol Gale has brought back the TLP program to HPS, now in its second year under current union leadership.  Nine HPS teachers met one Saturday a month during the current school year networking with community, political, and educational leaders to gain insight for their personal action research projects.  That research and networking culminated in final presentations of the research projects to invited guests at Sports and Medical Sciences Academy on May 30th.  Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez and Assistant Superintendent Daisy Torres-Hill briefly attended the presentations (you will get a sense of why that visit may have been short lived after reading the brief reviews of the presentations below).  The new Chief of Academics at HPS, Kondra Rattley of North Carolina, who stated that New England has a “different kind of cold,” stayed for the entire show.

The HFT TLP, facilitated this year by Global Communications Academy (GCA) teacher Richard de Meij, hopes to schedule member project presentations to the Hartford City Council and the Hartford Board of Education.

So, the projects and presentations this year focused on what the TLP members consider to be issues at HPS which need help, correction, and change.  This year’s members were not attempting to reinvent the wheel or education, they were however, presenting the critical need for greasing the current wheel for efficient and equitable education opportunities.

Summer Tate, a teacher at HMTCA, presented that enrollment in offered Black and Latino Studies courses are woeful as only 9% of the student body at HMTCA are enrolled in such courses.  She recommended several curriculum fixes that HPS must consider in the spirit of equity and inclusion while emphasizing the crucial importance of a diverse curriculum.

Elizabeth Krajewski, a teacher at Capital Prep, presented that the district must work on outreach to parents to become partners in the use of technology used by their children at school to mitigate the negative addictive behaviors developed and influences encountered by children as a result of overuse of tech devices, as well as to create parent partners who are up to date on current technologies used by their children in school.

Geraldine McHugh, a social worker at Milner, presented that based on the 8th grade class at Milner, teachers do not feel strongly that they are prepared to support students who have experienced trauma.  Her research showed that there is a lack of comprehensive and consistent rules, practices, and trauma education for staff.

Rachel Turner, a special education teacher at HPHS, presented research which showed that 67% of teachers surveyed said that due to the large size of their classes (25+ students) they are in need of additional in-class support staff.  Although small class sizes are considered to be best practice, due to budget and staffing constraints, this is not always possible, thus creating the critical need for additional staff in the over populated classes they currently have.

Lisa Kessler, a veteran of 40 years of teaching and currently at Kinsella, sought to show that smaller class sizes would mitigate the number of students who are referred to special education status.  This is important as she states that “misidentification has grown…doing more harm than good” to the student while increasing the cost of education.  Ultimately, her research found mixed and limited data on the subject, and her own surveys at Kinsella did not find a nexus between smaller class size and reduced special education referrals.  However, she states that with larger classes, the burden of special needs identification and intervention shift to the general education teacher, which results in unmet student needs and misidentification.

Alicia Morales, a teacher at Naylor, presented the need of elementary teachers at HPS to be given more prep time.  Her research of national and international resources found that there is a positive correlation between increased prep time and student achievement.  Evidence of decreased prep time for teachers at HPS is evident by the number of students who are not at grade level in math and reading.  She discovered that HPS elementary teachers have less prep time per day than what is recommended by the National Council on Teacher Quality.  She states that increased prep time is an investment in the quality of education for all learners.

Sheena Brown, a teacher at Kinsella, gave an impassioned presentation on the insufficient and inconsistent onboarding practices of new teacher hires at HPS.  With a data rich presentation, Ms. Brown stated that the training and supporting of new teacher hires at HPS is not a district priority and that the common problem of teacher turnover is evidence of HPS’ neglect.  Her research found that of those HPS teachers surveyed, 14% of them stated that as new hires they received no training or onboarding support.  She found that if a newly hired teacher is teamed with a supportive mentor, the chances of that teacher leaving after year one decreases by 35-50%.

Akeem White, a teacher at GCA, presented on what school staff consider to be insufficient support and services for special education students, which negatively impacts these students academically and socially.  White’s staff survey disclosed that 55% of respondents at GCA said support and services for SPED students was only “moderately sufficient,” while 45% of respondents called it “inadequate.”  While his research showed that assistive technology practices for SPED students has a “significant” impact on the learning experience, half of staff surveyed at GCA said that they were “dissatisfied” with the assistive technologies available for their SPED students.

And lastly but certainly not least, there was the presentation of Lida Xhoxhi, a TESOL teacher at GCA.  Ms. Xhoxhi’s presentation hammered the district on its sham world languages program.  Stating what has become standard and best practice everywhere except in Hartford, her presentation highlighted the cognitive, cultural, and 21st century benefits derived from a child learning a world language.  At HPS, the world language program was derided for its lack of an adequate curriculum, lack of instruction time offered, and the discrepancy and misalignment between HPS’s graduation requirement for world languages and college admission requirements.  Ms. Xhoxi’s research showed that if a student followed HPS’s world languages requirement, they would not have access to over 200 higher institutions of learning.  Zut alors!  Surprisingly, her survey of staff found that 47% of respondents said that cultural biases at HPS play a significant role in world languages being under prioritized.

Absent a formal and consistent network through which teachers may voice their concerns and solutions about education at HPS, such as a teacher’s advisory committee present at BOE meetings, the work of Hartford’s TLP group is critical for all stakeholders to hear the real story of education at HPS.  These presentations highlight many critical problems with education offerings at HPS, but they also bring forward many viable and tenable solutions.  All Hartford stakeholders, from the individual to the business owner, to the government official, should all stand and support the TLP group in their endeavors to create change at HPS.  Their voice, their work, will affect all of us.