After two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars paid by Hartford Public Schools without ever proving the effectiveness of their work, it appears that HPS may be giving a well deserved ‘good night’ farewell to the Avon marketing firm of Adams & Knight.

Adams & Knight was first contracted by HPS in November of 2022 to spin their marketing magic and bring Office of Talent and Management Chief, Tiffany Curtis (“OTM Chief’s Questionable Background”), some teachers to fill the many vacancies in HPS classrooms.  With two months remaining in the 2022-23 school year, HPS was reporting that 224 teachers had left the district during the year (“Thirty-two Teachers Will Leave Hartford Schools This Month”) and the folks from Adams & Knight could only tell us how many people ran across their ads on the internet, intentionally or otherwise.  Never once did they stand up at a board of education meeting and say, “due to our advertising, X number of teachers applied to HPS this month.”  Yet they still received a renewal contract from the diligent and vigilant BOE.  Wouldn’t it be great to have an employer who never makes inquiries about your success?

During board meetings concerning Adams & Knight, Superintendent Torres-Rodriguez and her propaganda guru Jesse Sugarman spoke of there being a point in the future where HPS had mined all the resources and marketing materials created by their partner and would then be able to run their own teacher recruitment efforts, sending Adams & Knight back over Avon Mountain and saving the district a few bucks.

It appears that now may be that point in the future where this lopsided partnership comes to an end.

In order to fulfill a new state law enacted last year (Public Act 23-167), HPS has come up with their version of an Increasing Education Diversity (IED) Plan (read the entire plan here).  The purpose is to increase the “recruitment, hiring (Adams & Knight never proved the difference between “recruitment” and actual “hiring”) and retention of educators of color.”  HPS puts it this way, their “theory of action”:

“If we improve employment, recruitment, onboarding, retention practices, development, leadership, and recognition with a lens of equity… Then we will build a diverse workforce that is representative of our students and community.”

Yup.  That would probably do it, but they have a row to hoe.  Data provided during the introduction of this plan to the BOE, shows that while the state has a 42% gap between the percentage of students of color and educators of color, HPS’ has a 62% gap between the two groups.  Only 38% of new teachers hired last year were teachers of color and 11% of all teacher resignations were minority teachers.  And of course, the wild card in this new plan is Torres-Rodriguez herself, who has proven to be more toxic than Chernobyl.

To this end, HPS has created four committees (Jesus, do they think they are the legislature?):  a Guiding Committee, a Recruitment Subcommittee, a Selection Subcommittee, and a Hiring Subcommittee.  According to the district, “stakeholders from across the district” were invited to serve on one of these committees, only one teacher was selected, and I know of one board member who was not “invited.”  In the end, central office folks make up the bulk of the committees, three board members, and a few principals and vice principals join them: “stakeholders from across the district.”

So, this all begs the question, will Adams & Knight actually remain as an HPS partner and concentrate on recruiting white folks, or will they continue to be paid to run social media ads for HPS?  Or, will they remain an HPS partner and concentrate on their latest district contract which is to recruit students?

It took a state law in 2024 to get HPS on this track.  One would think a qualified superintendent with knowledge and experience of teacher hiring and retention would have created this type of in-house system, I don’t know, EIGHT YEARS AGO!!