Hartford’s Board of Education will meet for its monthly Regular Meeting on Tuesday, February 21, at 5:30 pm, at Weaver High School.  This is your opportunity to offer up your comments, kudos, and complaints.  Understandably, the later is the most popular choice.  I urge all of Hartford’s 120,000 residents to attend, they’re your schools too!

Tonight’s opening act, will feature the election of board officers.  Current officers are:

• Chairman:            Phillip Rigueur

• Vice-Chair:          AJ Johnson

• Second Vice-Chair:  Kim Oliver

• Secretary:             Yahaira Escribano

No, we can’t vote in that election.  However, remember this, elections have consequences.

However, following that election, in the “Dialog Session,” you are able to play CNN pundit and speak your mind on the election, or any other issue that has been gnawing at your craw.

Following the public comment session, the Reports session of the agenda allows the Chair, the Superintendent, and Committee Chairs to give their monthly reports to the full Board and public.  Well, that’s what the agenda states.  The Chair and Superintendent do offer up their announcements and what have you in the form of a “report,” however, there is no Committee Reports as outlined in the agenda.  It just looks professional to include it on paper.

The Business Agenda is the portion of the agenda where the Board approves all contracts, policies, and appointments that come before them each month.  This month’s Business Agenda consists of the following:

• For the first time in my recollection, the Board will go beyond their normal 6-month or 1-year contract length and grant a contract to Eli Patrick & Co. for the sum of $215,000 which will run until the end of the 2024 school year. A curious award.  This contract did come before the Board in January, however, once they realized it was written for only the rest of the 2023 school term, it was tabled to be corrected.  Eli Patrick & Co. will run a career prep program for 7th and 8th graders at Milner Middle School.

• 2-4-1 Care will then be granted a 6-month, $70,000 contract to provide a physical, emotional, and educational development program for kids at Breakthrough Magnet South and Noah Webster.  The programs are run outside of school hours and last month was featured on NBC Connecticut news.

• Stay Plugged In is back after being approved for a contract in January to build an Esports lab at University High.  This month they will be approved for another $178,000 to outfit Betances, Classical, and SMSA with the same brain-killng lab.

• The Board will accept state grant money and approve a total of $510,000 be paid to the Hispanic Health Council and The Village for Families & Children to operate Family Resource Centers in Sanchez Elementary, Burns, Rawson, SAND, and Wish Elementary schools. This contract with HPS runs until June of this year.

• The Board will then accept state grant money and approve a total of $130,000 be paid to ConnectiKids and The Village (again) to operate their Extended School Hours program at West Middle, Naylor, Burr, MD Fox, and SAND schools. This contract also runs until June 2023.

• The Board will then discuss the re-write of two policies.  The first, their Theory of Action policy, which is long winded, rhetorical statement on a vision for Hartford Schools.  The second will change the structure of the public meeting agenda.  This new policy will split the public comment section of the agenda, with a Parent and Student Comment section up first, followed by folks who wish to speak but are not students or parents.  The time given for this Public Comment Session is 60 minutes.  At the end of the meeting, there is a section reserved for any public comments that did not fit in the first 60 minute block.  This is how the edits of this policy currently read.  Previous discussion was to put non-agenda related comments to the end of the meeting.  Which was how things were left hanging during a February 6th meeting.  The new edited policy occurred sometime between the 6th and the 19th, out of the public eye. It is amazing that something so simple as a meeting’s Public Comment session can be so fragmented and screwed up.  The Board of Education, stewards of your child’s education.

Following the approval of all business, the Board will approve some more.  The Consent Agenda session consists of, or, is customarily consisted of, business matters needing approval but are considered to be “cut and dried,” with no discussion or debate required, and are approved en masse.  The following are on this meetings Consent Agenda:

• A $100,000 contract amendment for Caring Nurses, which will run until June 2023.  Caring Nurses provides substitute school nurses to the district.

• The acceptance of funds from the Baldwin Fund, not the piano guys, a private fund which has existed since 1955 in Hartford.  The Fund is offering HPS $57,000 to help fill the music gap in one or more Hartford Schools.  Introduced at a Board meeting on February 1, the Superintendent’s minions could not identify which schools were actually going to get the money and the music.  We should learn that detail at this meeting.  Well, no, we won’t.  This item is on the consent agenda – no discussion required.  The mystery of where the money will go lingers into the slamming of the gavel.

That concludes our show for tonight folks, please tune in next month for another exciting episode of, The Board of Education.