Is your school short on art teachers and arts programming?  Apparently, Hartford Public Schools has a solution.

According to the Hartford Performs website, in 2009 HPS created a “community partnership in which the school district and the arts community work in concert to infuse arts education throughout the city’s schools.” 

This creation was the non-profit group, Hartford Performs.  HPS created their own non-profit to which they funnel hundreds of thousands of district dollars each year.  Naturally, HPS Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez sits on the non-profit’s board of directors.

Apparently there exists within the employees of this non-profit group, a group of trained and qualified arts professionals who can provide art instruction to students, provide professional training to other subject matter teachers on how to integrate art into math, reading, science, etc., and they are qualified to run family engagement programs.  This is, as I wrote last year, “Hartford’s Stand-Alone Arts Program.”

At the board of education’s Regular Meeting tonight (July 16th, 5:30 p.m.), the superintendent will once again ask the board to funnel $314,000 of state Alliance grant money into HPS’ non-profit group, Hartford Performs. Last year, the Rigueur-board funneled $400,000 to the group because they had $86,000 in COVID relief money to play with. 

State Alliance grant money is provided “in an attempt to increase student achievement in Connecticut’s lowest-performing districts and schools.”  HPS is one of thirty-six Alliance districts in Connecticut.  In, at least, each of the past two years, no data has been shown and no data has been asked for by board members which would show that HPS students involved in Hartford Performs programs are showing an “increase in student achievement.”  On the flipside however, Torres-Rodriguez did present data this year which shows that a third of teachers surveyed said that Hartford Performs did diddly-squat for student attendance.

Wearing her superintendent’s cap and the cap of a board member of Hartford Performs, Torres-Rodriguez has stated in each of the past two years that HPS funds which are funneled to Hartford Performs are matched 3-to-1 by other organizations, which has resulted in Hartford Performs reported receiving $857,000 in total revenue in 2021 and $913,000 in total revenue in 2022.

The matching of HPS district funds funneled to HPS’ non-profit by other organizations is great, but it is also needed. 

In 2021 Hartford Performs stated that they used 39% of their total revenue for “Salaries, other compensation, employee benefits.”  In 2022 this line item increased to 42% of total revenue received by the non-profit.  This includes the six-figured salary of Hartford Performs Director, Rie Poirier-Campbell, which is 12% of total revenue and 13% of total spending by Hartford Performs.  A 2015 study by Syracuse University showed that the salary of leaders of non-profits from the American Red Cross to the Wounded Warrior Project equals less than 1% of their non-profits total spending.

While the Hartford Courant reports that Hartford Schools Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez is “under fire” from school unions over mismanagement of grant money coming into district coffers, and since the superintendent has led HPS into state financial oversight, this Hartford Performs case is an audit pimple waiting to be picked.