The state Department of Education was given the green light Wednesday to intervene in the operation of Bridgeport Public Schools amid growing concerns regarding special education services, a looming budget deficit and conflict among local board members. At a special meeting Wednesday, the Connecticut Board of Education unanimously approved state intervention into the Bridgeport school system that would involve at least three measures, including the establishment of a “technical assistance team” made up of education experts who would guide local initiatives in special education, and report progress to the education department. The state board also approved mandatory training “to improve the operational efficiency and effectiveness” of the Bridgeport Board of Education, which includes financial and policy oversight and developing goals for the board. The third intervention granted Education Commissioner Charlene Russell-Tucker the right to approve the permanent hiring of a superintendent in the district. “This is not a call out on the district,” Russell-Tucker said at the meeting. “This is about the need for all of us to be working together and support the educators that are supporting and making a difference for students.” Bridgeport Public Schools educates nearly 19,600 students, a majority of whom — 92% — are identified as “high-needs,” including students who face economic hardship or homelessness, students with disabilities, language learners and other groups. Within the district’s student body, more than 16,800 children qualify for free or reduced lunch, nearly 4,000 students have a disability and about 5,500 are English language learners. Data from the state education department shows that less than 20% of students in Bridgeport are reading at grade level, and about 12% are proficient in math, Russell-Tucker said. “That to me, is the urgency of this moment,” Russell-Tucker said. Interim district superintendent Royce Avery responded positively to the board’s action, saying the initiatives would “strengthen our efforts and ensure we stay aligned in our work.” In a written statement, Avery said he was “pleased” with the outcome of Wednesday’s meeting, and he thanked the commissioner, along with state and local board members, for their confidence in his leadership. But despite Avery’s praise, the board’s decision was met with a split response from Bridgeport residents during a public comment period at the meeting. Many of the speakers said they opposed state involvement, noting the district recently went through a leadership change and suggesting it hadn’t yet been given a fair chance to right the ship. Leadership turnover, board member clashes Avery was appointed interim superintendent in November after the district’s previous leader Carmela Levy-David took a leave of absence. Levy-David’s departure followed a survey from the Connecticut Education Association that revealed 93% of district teachers and staff found Levy-David unprofessional and not open to differing points of view, and they feared retaliation for voicing their concerns. Levy-David had been hired in August 2023, and she pledged to serve 10 years in the district to form a “new era of stability.” During her first year in the role, she announced a system overhaul, beginning with its organizational leadership, schools and classrooms. But over the summer last year there was pushback on the superintendent’s plan to close six schools, and contention grew as educators issued a vote of no confidence and said the district was changing its class and bus schedules, teacher assignments and curriculum “on the fly.” Avery is the district’s fifth superintendent in seven years. “After a year and a half with a prior superintendent with a lack of transparency, unilateral decision making and the exclusion of union and the community, our current interim superintendent is working with us and listening to teacher input,” Jeff Morrissey, the union president of the Bridgeport Education Association, said during Wednesday’s meeting. “This does not mean that all our concerns from this fall have been remedied, but we are feeling more confident that things will improve.” Some local board members — including Vice Chair Joseph Sokolovic, Secretary Albert Benejan Grajales and members Robert Traber and Willie Medina — voiced support for Avery at the meeting, urging the state to take a step back. “We have a new board chair elected at the first meeting in December, new committees formed over the holidays that are just beginning to meet and we’ve begun making cuts in the 24-25 budget,” Traber said. “We have only begun to start working. … We would appreciate the chance to be allowed the opportunity to complete the task we’ve begun.” But Traber wasn’t speaking for everyone on the Bridgeport Board of Education. Board member Andre Woodson instead pleaded for state officials to “take over.” “It’s time for a decisive intervention to ensure child civil rights with quality education,” Woodson said. “A state takeover offers opportunity for a fresh start, free of political and bureaucratic challenges that have ended effort over effort.” The Bridgeport board members’ clash at the meeting is just one of ongoing disagreements over the district’s management from budgets to leadership change. It’s also why the state board Wednesday is mandating more training for Bridgeport’s board members. Mike McKeon, legal director for the state education department, said the training is intended to help local board members “understand how the process works.” “For any school district to work appropriately, they have to work on the same page. They have to be able to interact. They have to be able to recognize the respective role and responsibilities of the board and of the superintendent,” McKeon said. “Board members might have different opinions — happens all the time — but nonetheless, there needs to be a certain level of decorum. There needs to be a certain level of exchange of ideas.” Financial troubles came as COVID funds expired For several years, the federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund program, known as ESSER, has provided fiscal relief to school districts across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic. Beyond investing in academic recovery efforts, schools also used the funds for innovative teaching programs, school upgrades and temporary contracts to fill staff vacancies. The expiration of the funding last September caused school districts across the country to lose between hundreds of thousands up to tens of millions of dollars. Urban districts were among those hit the hardest. To balance a $309 million budget entering the 2024-25 school year, Bridgeport Public Schools depended on state grants, closing vacant positions and draining its reserves. Sokolovic, a longtime member of the Bridgeport Board of Education, predicted that the district was prolonging an inevitable fiscal cliff. In June 2024, Sokolovic, in an interview with the Connecticut Mirror, said the district would face “approximately $39 million of need [in 2025-26] with no savings to cover if all things remain equal.” His estimate was close. In November, Bridgeport Public Schools announced it was facing a $38 million deficit and said it would work to cover the shortfall through “downsizing and reevaluating all positions, programs, and services, using $14 million of the reserve during the 2024-25 school year (instead of $26 million), charging $6.5 million expenses in grants” and reducing costs by over $10 million. The approved 2024-25 school budget was another controversial decision among board members, passing 5-4, with several board members opposing the budget because it was “not properly vetted and gone over,” according to minutes from the board’s March meeting. “The decision to balance the budget, with almost the entirety of our internal service funds, was carelessly made, … [but] the majority of the board supported it,” Sokolovic said Wednesday. “We really must hold the board accountable for past actions and, more importantly, future actions.” At a recent state Board of Education Accountability and Support Committee meeting, Avery reiterated to board members that the district was enacting a “three-phase plan for mitigating the deficit by reducing positions, reviewing cuts to programming and contracts and possibly closing facilities pending the result of the [Bridgeport Public Schools’] facilities study.” The Bridgeport Board of Education, as of January, had approved the elimination of more than 75 positions, including administrative and central office roles, school counselors and social workers, according to the Connecticut Post. This has particularly worried state board members and state Department of Education leaders who said in addition to cuts to support staff — who often play a role in providing extra resources to students with disabilities — the district also had about 31 certified special education staff vacancies as of November. Bridgeport isn’t alone in its teachers’ shortage, particularly in special education. Across the state, there were over 430 vacancies for special education teachers as of August 2024. The state Department of Education has recently honed in on fiscal challenges in Hartford also — conducting an audit of district spending on special education, magnet schools and other operations. Preliminary findings were presented to the state Board of Education last week, and the auditors said “special education teacher vacancies undermine all other efforts” to provide special education services in Hartford. Bridgeport, however, has faced compliance issues for several years, including a “systemic complaint” filed against the district in 2021 for failing to provide special education services for children with Individualized Education Programs (IEPs). That complaint led to an investigation, which found hundreds of Bridgeport special education students were not receiving services. The technical assistance team approved Wednesday would focus on special education services and would help “set up educational benchmarks,” McKeon said, adding that “they would come up with recommendations as to how the physical operations, the pedagogical operation, particularly with respect to special education students, could best be served and those recommendations would be shared as the Commissioner of Education.” Russell-Tucker said the state Department of Education intends to schedule listening sessions with district leaders soon. “We want to hear from the community directly. We want to hear from the educators and the staff in the district, and we want to hear from students that will continue to guide the work that we’re doing here,” she said. “We’re holding everyone accountable in this space, because that’s what’s deserved … [for] the students, the educators and families in Bridgeport Public Schools.”