Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller, calling on NHPS to apply for bonding before the master plan is complete: Constituents “want these things resolved now.” Metro Business Academy student Brandon Daley: “School is one of the first places a student learns how much their community actually values them.” Teachers, students, and union leaders spoke up at an aldermanic meeting held at Wilbur Cross High School on Wednesday to condemn the state of school facilities in the city — and to question whether the district is really in need of another “master plan” to improve them. That discussion of what it might take to improve facilities, as well as what an improved and more transparent system might look like for addressing work orders, arose at Wednesday’s Board of Alders Education Committee meeting. It marked the second time in a month that the aldermanic committee has hosted a public hearing on school facilities. This time, alders met in the Wilbur Cross atrium, following a tour of the school alongside members of the New Haven Federation of Teachers (NHFT). Committee alders reported seeing mold around the school, particularly in vents and the ceiling. New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) Supt. Madeline Negrón and Chief of School Operations (CSO) Paul Whyte addressed alders, alongside NHPS Transportation Director Sequella Coleman, and responded to questions regarding the timeline for necessary building improvements and challenges facing the district. Alders then heard from members of the public. Whyte began the meeting by listing facilities improvements completed since 2022, as well as upcoming projects for the 2026-27 school year, totaling nearly $4 million (including more than $500,000 to replace the Hillhouse High School cooling tower and more than $800,000 to replace the fire alarm system at Conte West Hills Magnet School). The district has received approval for state funding to repair the roofs at Truman School and Wilbur Cross, totaling $7.5 million. The district is still awaiting approval for the $8.7 million needed to repair the Hillhouse roof, after the initial application was held up due to numerical errors. The district will next submit applications (which are accepted monthly) to the state Department of Administrative Services (DAS) for the roofs at Sound School, Fair Haven School, High School in the Community, and Betsy Ross Art and Design Academy. Celentano, Clinton Avenue, and Conte are also in need of roof repairs. The total price estimated for all necessary roof repairs across the district is more than $44 million. The district is also estimating a total of $6,251,000 in HVAC repairs across city schools. Repairs are in progress at Lincoln-Bassett, Edgewood, Daniels, and Celentano. Similar to the last meeting, Whyte and Negrón discussed the commissioning of a comprehensive “master plan” to identify how the city should improve school buildings across the district. That plan will be produced by contractor Perkins Eastman and is anticipated to be completed by December of this year, with community input. The latest facilities study was published in 2023. Alders Elias Theodore, Christine Kim, and Caroline Tanbee Smith. Downtown/Yale Alder Elias Theodore, a Wilbur Cross alum who graduated in 2023, expressed disappointment that the Wilbur Cross pool is still closed due to its needed roof repairs. “It is really sad that the pool I only got to swim in once is completely drained,” he said. “We have this incredible asset in our biggest high school in the city, yet no one’s using it.” Theodore was skeptical about the need for another master plan. “We do have a lot of information about what needs we have,” he said. “This is where we take into true action what we need to be doing,” Whyte said. It’s how the district will be able to say “this is what we need to do, this is what we need to work on for the next 10 or 15 years.” Fair Haven Alder Sarah Miller wondered why the district couldn’t begin applying for bonds now, in rounds. “What is the barrier to putting in a bonding application for everything that is not DAS eligible on this list now?” Whyte said the district wanted to be informed by a comprehensive plan so that, when bonding for projects, the district can consider all priorities for any work that needs to be performed. “So there’s no barrier other than you’d rather do it all at once,” Miller said. “If we’re going to bond, we should be bonding to do an overhaul like it was done in this district under a previous administration decades ago,” Negrón said. That way, Negrón said, the district could decide how many buildings will be fully renovated and how many might be closed. “It cannot just be roofs, HVAC, the tiles, the mold,” Negrón, whose own child graduated from Wilbur Cross in 2022, continued. “We have to update our buildings to meet the needs of the 21st century, that’s why I’m insisting that it be comprehensive. We cannot make that commitment as the people working for the [Board of Education], it has to be the city making the commitment.” Miller said that her understanding was that even during the last major NHPS facilities overhaul, bonding occurred in rounds. “It wasn’t one big package at that time either. And I can tell you what I have heard from constituents is that they want these things resolved now,” she said. “I’m not hearing a reason why we need to wait for a comprehensive plan on these items.” During a tour of Wilbur Cross, ahead of Wednesday night’s meeting, alders present — including Miller, Theodore, Gary Hogan, Mildred Melendez, Caroline Tanbee Smith, Frank Redente, Jr., and Christine Kim — saw what seemed to be mold, they said. “There is a lot of mold. Like a lot of mold, everywhere,” Miller said, particularly in the vents and open holes in the ceiling. “If that was an apartment and [the Livable City Initiative] came to inspect it, the landlord would be required to remediate it within 48 hours.” Asked how the district would address the mold, Whyte said that the facilities crew would need to visit as quickly as possible and identify the substance and then remediate it. He said that the district would communicate with building managers to make sure everything they see is recorded. Miller requested a list of all open or potential mold cases. “It’s The Same Problems” Lincoln-Bassett teacher Alexander Oji: “It’s the same problems.” Teachers who testified provided other examples of failing facilities, including classrooms without AC, elevated levels of formaldehyde in an East Rock Magnet School classroom, an improperly kept pool at John Martinez, and faculty bathrooms that don’t lock at New Haven Academy. Ashley Stockton, who has taught in NHPS since 2006, currently teaches at Truman School. “We have roof leaks at Truman,” she said. Over Memorial Day weekend, “it rained so much it leaked into our elevator, leaving our elevator nonfunctioning for the rest of the school year.” Truman School has three floors. “I hope when I walk into my classroom this year it will be fixed,” she said. “As the master plan is being recalibrated or synthesized or whatever is happening now, these day-to-day things that occur … there has to be a plan for them.” Alexander Oji has been teaching in NHPS for 21 years. First he was at Lincoln-Bassett, then at Wexler-Grant, and now he’s back at Lincoln-Bassett. “It’s the same problems,” he said. “I remember having to have all the kids leave the classroom and go teach in the library because the room was too cold. Now I’m back, like 20 years later, and we still have hot spots and cold spots.” The toilet in his classroom isn’t working, he said. It was replaced and then a month later, it began to leak again. “There’s real structural problems,” he said. “Something’s just got to be done. I just need some urgency.” Teachers union President Leslie Blatteau and Vice President Jenny Graves — who noted a mouse in the building while the meeting went on — also testified to the state of facilities and their role in hindering student learning. The school district is considering moving Graves, who currently is released from teaching so that she can fulfill her union responsibilities, back to the classroom. Blatteau said that Graves triages teachers’ facilities concerns by communicating with the administration and facilities team as well as the teachers themselves and keeping them in the loop. “We’ve worked hard on a system from the union perspective to manage the influx” of work orders, Blatteau said. Sometimes work orders get lost in the system. So Graves is known as the facilities person to 1,800 NHFT members. “This is no fault, but we often hear from our members, ‘Thank you, you’re the only one who responded.'” So if Graves isn’t able to respond, Miller said, it’s possible no one will be responding? Blatteau said that’s what the union has been hearing. “I’d like to offer, especially in the absence of Jenny being in that role, that we maintain a list with the supportive staff, and we meet with the district on behalf of those who are raising them to try to keep tabs on some of these issues,” Miller said. She listed some of the concerns raised in other teachers’ testimony that she had noticed. “Let’s get parents involved, too,” Blatteau said. Parents have been hard to engage since Covid, when they weren’t allowed in schools. “Now we want them back.” NHPS parent Delana Williams shows alders photos of broken facilities. Many students testified as well on Wednesday, including former Wilbur Cross student Isaac Kleppner, who spoke of spending months in the wrong classroom because of a leak in his psychology classroom. Fellow Cross grad Manxi Han described seeing students become disillusioned with their education. New Haven Academy grad Grayce Howe said that the presence of mold at Cross has never been a secret among the student body. Brandon Daley, a student at Metro Business Academy and lead liaison for the Citywide Student Council, said that he speaks to students across the district. “School is one of the first places a student learns how much their community actually values them. Every hallway, every classroom, every ceiling, every broken fixture tells a story,” he said. “When we ask students to dream big, work hard, believe in themselves, our schools should actually reflect that.” He called on the people in the room to consider if it was their child in those classrooms every day. “This is about confidence and about opportunity,” he said. “It’s about telling every student that walks through the halls every morning that you matter, your future matters, and your city actually believes in you, and it’s worth investing in.” The post Teachers, Students Sound Alarm On State Of School Facilities appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less