The Hartford Board of Education’s regular monthly meeting in April brought out many students, parents, teachers, community leaders, and union leaders who proceeded to describe how the board of education’s failure to provide common sense oversight to the failed financial strategies of Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez has threatened the few good things these folks have found at Hartford Public Schools.

These folks used words to describe the budget and how they felt about it, words that we would expect to hear from a legitimate board of education, yet we do not get this kind of truth from the superintendent’s board.

Some folks were “deeply scared,” “deeply concerned,” and the budget was described as “distressing,” “threatening,” will result in “negative impacts” and “repercussions, “and lacked “oversight” and “clarity.”  Keep in mind, many of the folks saying these things were kids, students of HPS.  Find me a board meeting where board members, the alleged adults in the room, talked of this budget in the same manner.

No, what we get from the banana heads on the superintendent’s board is, ‘I feel your pain, but…”  And we all know ‘but’ means forget everything I just said, here’s my real response.  Rather than display even feigned concern over this budget, the board takes the protect-the-interests-of-the-superintendent path, not the interests of the students and staff, and unanimously supports the budget.

Shortly after telling folks who are opposed to this budget that they should go and read his Hartford Courant Op-Ed from the previous week (print copies can be currently found wrapped around dead flounder), Phillip Rigueur, board member and lead cheerleader for Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez, stuck with the pre-planned meeting script and asked this rhetorical question of the superintendent: what if we reject this budget?  Inferring that the members of the superintendent’s board knew the answer to this question, Rigueur stated that he was just asking this for “public consumption.”  For show.  For support.  For lack of anything worthwhile to contribute.  Dead flounder.

The short answer to that question would be that, in at least as far as the city is concerned, the district would be funded exactly as it was last year since the state’s Minimum Budget Requirement law forbids the city of Hartford from funding education at an amount lower than it did the previous year.  Real boards of education reject budgets and tell the superintendent to try again…but be serious this time.

Voting “Nay” on the budget would also remind the superintendent that the board is her boss, and with a strong spine they reject her failed financial strategies while also showing support for the school district and the community, rather than showing the community that they are the superintendent’s wet noodle.

Voting “Nay” on the budget would also send a message to city, state, and federal purse holders that it is not possible to operate effectively with current funding.  Instead, these banana heads unanimously approve the budget which basically sends the message, it’s all good, we got this.  Then they run around the neighborhood telling everyone who will listen that the budget is no good, and they need more money! 

However, Torres-Rodriguez followed the pre-planned meeting script and offered the following explanation on what would occur if pigs could fly and the board rejected her budget.  Before getting to that explanation however, she reminded her board that it is their “responsibility to approve the budget.”  No, their duty is to approve a responsible budget and reject what they consider to be trash.  Torres-Rodriguez’s prefacing comment is basically telling the board, you cannot reject this budget, end of story.  Go to FedEx Kinkos and get a rubber stamp and do away with the board of education.

The superintendent then talked about how union bargaining agreements require the district to notify staff of placements and potential reductions by May 31st (nearly two months down the road), and she stated that June was just around the corner when you have “over 380 positions to think through and work through.”  Later she said of this possibility, “that’s a lot of work to do in 10 weeks.”  Hey, no one said the job of executioner was an easy one.

She then went on about how a delay in approving a budget would mean that the hiring of new staff in central office would be really, really hard because of something she referred to as a “realignment of central office” was already underway and positions had to be created, job descriptions had to be created, etc., etc., etc ( a “realignment” is you admitting the way you’ve been doing  things over the past seven years hasn’t been working).  Seriously?  You are facing a room full of students and staff who are about to be short-changed and you’re lamenting the hardships which might fall on central office?!  This is so revealing about who she is and where her educational leadership philosophy falls.

The third potential impact on a rejection or delay of the budget would be, said the superintendent, “talent flight.”  Never using the word ‘teacher,’ Torres-Rodriguez explained that “staff,” unsure of whether they will be retained or pink-slipped, may seek greener pastures outside of the district.  Hey, 11% of your total “staff” and nearly 20% of your teachers resigned last year, retention ain’t your strong suit to begin with.

The reality is that school boards routinely reject budgets proposed by superintendents and their world does not end, they suck it up and do that “lot of work in 10 weeks.”  What these districts have that Hartford doesn’t have is a school board which plays a role in crafting the budget.  Our school board says, yeah, whatever, just give us the rhetorical narrative you want us to follow, such as “systematic inequities,” which Torres-Rodriguez uses at the board meetings on the budget and which Rigueur used in his Op-Ed.  Rigueur liked the phrase so much he used it twice.  And in case you are wondering, in 2019, the vote to adopt the budget was in May, and in 2020 it was held in June.

Torres-Rodriguez said at the meeting that, quote, “every, every, every, every, every” person and program, every field trip, every stipend, etc., which they have “invested” in during the past few years has been needed.  However, not once during this time did her board of education tell her to prove it, and they continue to accept everything she puts in front of them like it was a free meal at Denny’s.

Taxpayers of Hartford, the superintendent has her board requesting more money from the city of Hartford.  City funding of this unqualified, failed superintendent’s little project already represents 44% of Hartford’s budget, yet the superintendent and her board, as a collegiate little team, join in one voice in wanting to raise your taxes to pay for their malfeasance.  Show me the money?  Show me the results!