Thomas Breen photo
Conte West Hills Magnet School: Exiled 3rd-grader can return.
A Conte West Hills third-grader can finish out the last few months of the school year at her Wooster Square “magnet” school — thanks to a Board of Education vote to reverse the district administration’s decision to bar the young student from her New Haven classroom after finding out that she lives in Hamden.
School board members made that decision Wednesday during a special Board of Education meeting hosted online via Zoom.
While the Board of Ed’s vote was precipitated by one particular Conte West student who has been out of school since March 13, the decision extended further than just that single student’s situation. It could affect up to around 30 students who have been involuntarily withdrawn from New Haven public schools this year because they no longer live in New Haven.
The school board’s vote itself overruled the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) district’s mid-year residency determination policy. Wednesday’s vote allows all students currently enrolled in city public schools who have been unwillingly withdrawn from the system due to mid-year residency changes — that is, because they have moved out of town and no longer live in New Haven — to return to school until the end of the 2022 – 23 school year in June so long as they can provide their own transportation.
Board of Education members Darnell Goldson and Ed Joyner worked together Wednesday evening to push for the temporary solution that would “do no harm” to the students and minimize disruption to their education.
Wednesday's Board of Education meeting.
During the public comment section of Wednesday’s meeting, Ashley Lugo, who is the mother of a Conte West school third-grade student, spoke up about why her child had suddenly been removed from her public education mid-year — and why she wanted her to be able to stay at the school she’s long gone to, at least for the next two months.
Lugo said that about a week and a half ago she tried to get her daughter on the district bus route so that she wouldn’t have to drive her to school every day, which has been a challenge to do as a single mother.
After providing the necessary information to have her daughter put on a bus route, her daughter, who’s been attending Conte West since kindergarten, was withdrawn from the school after the NHPS administration confirmed Lugo does not reside in New Haven. The family lives in Hamden.
“I did update the information and the address but I guess it wasn’t updated in the school system and I was not aware of that,” Lugo told the school board on Wednesday.
In an email Lugo sent to the school board in advance of Wednesday’s meeting, she said she disclosed her address to the school — which is named Conte West Hills Magnet School — under the impression that Conte was still a magnet school. She said she told the district about her Hamden address in her daughter’s most recent physical and the emergency forms requested by the school at the start of the year.
“I was not trying to abuse the system. I did everything on my end. I was just trying to make life a little bit easier and put her on the bus, ’cause I’m a single mom, but it ended up causing more chaos,” Lugo said.
Lugo asked that the school allow her daughter to return to the 511 Chapel St. school to finish her final weeks of the school year with the understanding that her daughter would have to transfer schools next year and be provided transportation for the remainder of the year.
“It’s going to really affect her if she has to start a new school with two months,” she added.
In a Saturday email on this matter sent to NHPS Supt. Iline Tracey and Board of Ed President Yesenia Rivera, Goldson requested that the parent in question “be granted a stay of the withdrawal from the school system for the remainder of the year or that a formal hearing be held” by the school board.
In an email response on Sunday, Tracey wrote, “Conte West Hills is not an Inter-district Magnet school. It retains the name magnet, because it was once a federal magnet under a grant. As we plan for the magnet lottery and addresses need to be updated, we are finding out that there are several individuals who register to New Haven Public Schools who should not be here.”
Goldson replied by again requesting a hearing.
"Never A Wrong Time To Do The Right Thing"
Conte West Hills.
Goldson made the motion on Wednesday night to allow all students unwillingly withdrawn from the system this school year that haven’t yet enrolled in another school system to return back to school through June.
His motion also included a requirement for the Board of Education’s Governance Committee to review the district’s residency policies with the help of district staff to make any changes to give school administration more discretion in these situations.
“I believe that as an education system we should have the same moral principle that medicine has, first ‘do no harm,’ ” added Joyner, “and having run at least two schools I’ve had the occasion to have kids who would move in the middle of the year and at that time I had the discretion as a principal to make a decision. And in every single case, if the parent wanted the kids to remain in the school and could provide transportation, I allowed the child the stay in the school.”
Joyner suggested the Board of Education allow those students who are affected to return to school and that the school board continue the conversation around its policy, and that the Governance Committee be tasked with revising the policy “as necessary so that we protect the psycho-emotional welfare of the student and in many occasions the family as a whole.”
Joyner continued: “I’ve had kids that were transferred in fleeing domestic abuse and of course you have to take them, if they’re coming in May, you got to take them, and so there’s never a wrong time to do the right thing.”
District: Trying to Follow The Policy
Recently promoted NHPS Supervisor of Magnet and Grant Programs Michele Bonanno and Director of School Choice Marquelle Middleton cautioned the school board during Wednesday’s meeting about the broader implications of the board’s decision.
This year, 28 students were administratively removed from school due to not residing in New Haven.
“This is a pervasive problem in New Haven Public Schools in terms of families not residing in the district and staying for quite some time,” Bonanno said. “So when we are doing our work it’s really important for us that we do abide by the Boards policy. We have worked with attorneys on this in the past and certainly we are open for feedback or if there are changes to the policy to changing our process, but it’s really important for me to state for the record that we have followed through on the policy that exists that was passed by the board a year and a half ago.”
Middleton clarified the policy’s requirement that students attending non-magnet schools must reside in New Haven. When a school has suspicions about a student’s residency, Middleton said, administrators are asked to call the parent to verify residency and send mail to the city address on record to get an additional confirmation that way.
“We try our very best to uphold the policy. I believe in grace but I want the board to know that we also don’t get this same grace from our surrounding districts,” Middleton said.
Middleton said since he joined the district parents have not requested hearings and have instead met the district’s decision with understanding.
The policy in question was last approved by the Board of Education in 2021. It’s called Policy 5188, and it outlines the rules for “The Enrollment and Handling [of] Non-Resident School Age Students.”
Board members spoke on Wednesday in favor of relaxing the residency determination until the end of this school year to give the board’s committees time to tweak the policy with the goal of avoiding disruptions to students’ education.
“There’s also some tweaks that we can make to how we enforce the policy,” Goldson said. “We’ve already not followed the policy because we’re supposed to offer some parents the ability to have a hearing and it wasn’t clear in the documentation that was given to the parent that that was entirely explained well.”
“According to our own policy students are supposed to be allowed to remain in school while the hearing process is happening, and that has not happened in the case that we know of, the young lady that spoke up today and probably in other cases the student was immediately withdrawn from school.”
Governance Committee Chair and school board member Abie Benitez agreed to updating the policy and requested support from district staff to do so effectively.
When asked by the board attorney about the effective date of Wednesday’s vote and if the decision will be retroactive, Goldson clarified that the decision would be effective Wednesday and would apply to all students affected that haven’t yet enrolled in another school.
When asked about next steps by Bonanno, who said the district is currently dealing with two currently pending residency decisions and four investigations related to residency, Goldson again clarified that all students enrolled in NHPS that don’t reside in the city would be given an exception to attending a non-magnet school until the end of this school year.
“We’re in the business of the welfare and protection of our children,” Joyner said.
It is common sense to allow students to finish out the school year so as to disrupt the students and classrooms as little as possible when they leave the school district whenever it’s possible to do so.
Sometimes students have no choice due to home life issues but to switch schools and then accommodations should be made.
Schools that no longer are magnet schools need to remove the word magnet from their name to avoid confusion.
If the schools all used common sense and first priority is the students well being, then we would have less issues.