The web site WebMD states that one sign to watch out for to diagnose a person as having “trust issues” is  that “individuals with trust issues have a tendency to ‘fact check’ what others tell them.”  This may be true; I haven’t stayed at a Holiday Inn in some time.  However, that same sign could also mean that the person watches far too many Hartford Schools Board of Education meetings and fact checking what’s being said is a requirement of vigilance to the truth.  The public can rest assured, no member of the board of education has trust issues, they have many other issues, but blind trust in whatever is told to them, they have in spades.

A segment of the BOE’s most recent Committee of the Whole Meeting (see the segment here) is prima facie evidence that anyone interested in what is happening at HPS must bring in their “trust issues.”  It is ironic that this segment came immediately following a report on school construction projects (where no shovel has yet hit the dirt and they are already $60 million over budget).  While one segment deals with the construction of buildings, the next segment deals with the deconstruction of the truth and the construction of lies.

The offending segment was titled “Secondary & Post Secondary Success” on the meeting’s agenda.  Now, before we get into the silliness that is a natural element of central office presentations to the board, lets turn back the clock to November of 2022 and a presentation to the board by Chaka Felder-McEntire and her “non-profit,” Higher Heights (“HPS Stops Reaching for Higher Heights”). 

You remember Ms. Felder-McEntire, the woman who runs multiple non-profits while running other businesses, being named a principal in Naugatuck, and then while her non-profit Higher Heights is under a half-million dollar contract with HPS, Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez hires the woman to a $157,000 position in central office!

During that November 2022 board meeting, Felder-McEntire discussed FAFSA applications, college applications, college tours and fairs.  All of these things, she said, were to “increase enrollment into post-secondary education.”  The kicker comes when she is asked about the post-secondary enrollment numbers.  That’s not our job, she said.  Felder-McEntire stated that the contract with HPS didn’t require them to track post-secondary numbers, and apparently whether or not her non-profit met the aim of the contract, “increase enrollment into post-secondary education,” was not a priority for her.    All she had to do was ask central office because HPS does track post-secondary enrollment, at least that is what they are telling us in 2024.

So, as the roosters come home to roost in 2024, Ms. Felder-McEntire is still listed as an HPS employee (see the listing here) with the title of Executive Director of Post-Secondary Success and Alternative Programming.  And since we are currently discussing agenda item 2.1, “Secondary and Post Secondary Success,” one would expect to see Ms. Felder-McEntire at the meeting.  This was too much to expect for HPS, and in fact, Ms. Felder-McEntire has not been present at a BOE meeting since July of last year.

At any rate, somebody at HPS is doing some post-secondary tracking and during the recent meeting they gave data dating back to 2022.  Don’t get too excited, it’s laughable data.  Back in 2022, Ms. Felder-McEntire stated that her tracking method of determining whether or not a student goes on to post-secondary education was to “confirm” that the student received a school acceptance letter and applying to the school.  Based on this confirmation system, she stated that 77% of Weaver seniors were going to college, 84% of Buckley students were doing the same, and at Hartford High, 72% of seniors were headed to post-secondary education.  I think there is a bug in her system.

Based on the data presented by HPS, we cannot pull out numbers for individual years, their data has combined numbers for graduating classes of “2022-2024,” as is stated.  The data from HPS shows enrollment in the “top 10” schools as chosen by HPS students over this time span.  According to the data, 5336 HPS students “applied” to the top 10 schools dating back to 2022, but as of 2024, only 736 are actually attending a post-secondary school, which is a percentage of 14%.  If we used Ms. Felder-McEntire’s confirmation system on the HPS data, we see that of those who applied, 1440 were accepted, for a percentage of 27%, but only 14% are tracked as actually being enrolled.  Her system is ridiculous.  These actual numbers pale in comparison to the phony numbers given by Felder-McEntire in 2022, which said that more than 70% of HPS seniors were off to college.

EdSight, the state’s official source for education data, which uses data submitted by school districts, like HPS, shows that for the HPS graduating class of 2020-21, only 50% entered college within a year of graduating, and for the graduating class of 2021-22 there was a slight drop to 49.8%.  Both numbers showing that the pie-in-the-sky numbers presented in 2022 by Felder-McEntire were most likely…bullshit.

Don’t go away, it gets better, which actually means it gets worse.

As part of the recent meeting segment, Superintendent Torres-Rodrigeuz sent out her troops to give “on track” data.  Which is data showing the percentage of high school students “on track” to graduate.  I would have said, no, you give the presentation yourself, I don’t feel comfortable with presenting this BS to the public.  But, that’s me, central office folks are protecting their own agendas and their paychecks so they oblige the superintendent’s skewed approach to reality and her strategy of graduating kids rather than educating them.

To wit:

HPS trumpeted the numbers which show that “on track” seniors this year has “surpassed pre-pandemic levels” by reaching the 74% level (sophomores and juniors still trail 2019-20 levels).  Speaking for the district and obliging the world of Torres-Rodriguez, Tory Niles-Outler stated that these numbers are a result of HPS’ “strategic interventions that are working at all grade levels.”  Hmm hm.

However, today’s seniors are yesterday’s juniors, and EdSight data shows that those juniors, who are seniors now, scored only a 42 out of an expected 75 on the District Performance Index (DPI) for ELA, a 39 on the Math DPI, and a 42 on the science DPI.  But HPS ignores this failing and states that 74% of them are on track for graduation!  And in Felder-McEntire’s world, 75% of them will be going on to college!

While HPS tells the public that 74% of seniors are “on track” to graduate, EdSight, using data from HPS, shows that in 2022-23, only 22.3% of juniors and seniors demonstrate post-secondary readiness based on state SAT and ACT scores.  Yet the district stated, through Felder-McEntire, in 2022, that between 74% and 84% of seniors were off to college…ready or not I suppose.

So if the public, business leaders, politicians, and board members, are asking why we are not seeing more local kids become Hartford police officers, business folks and entrepreneurs, teachers, superintendents, board members, blog writers, and the like, it is because the majority of them are not graduating with the academic skills necessary to obtain such positions.  The superintendent’s strategy of graduating rather than educating may result in accolades and little maple plaques for her office wall, but it is not doing the students of Hartford any favors and is actually building a wall to a successful future for the majority of Hartford students.

WebMD states that one way to deal with people who have “trust issues” is to be more honest and transparent with them.  In other words, HPS is just bad medicine.