Hartford Public Schools teachers were denied services for a recent graduate who never learned to read or write, as are many students because of cost, the president of Hartford’s teachers union said Tuesday night. At the same time, the Board of Education approved a resolution calling for more money for the chronically underfunded district.
A recent report from the Connecticut Mirror uncovered the story of Aleysha Ortiz, a 19-year-old who graduated from Hartford Public High School this year, even though she never learned to read or write during her 12 years as a special education student in the district.
On Wednesday, during the first board of education meeting since the article’s release, Superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez said the district is “deeply concerned” about the student’s allegations and “deeply committed to making sure that each and every one of our students receives everything that they’re in need of, especially our most vulnerable students.”
Torres-Rodriguez said the district is examining the “entire chronology” of the student’s case, including how the district staff responded and any gaps in processes, protocols, services and support that will be “swiftly” addressed.
“We have an expectation that if anyone sees something of concern, you say something. That goes across everything that we do at all levels of the organization. And accountability and advocacy, those two things are not an exception in our district. They’re not an exception, and I also believe there’s shared accountability,” Torres-Rodriguez said. “While we’ll provide … the professional learning necessary to our staff, if there were gaps and failures, we will address those as well.”
“Our commitment remains to making sure that each and every one of our students has access, equitable access,” Torres-Rodriguez added.
During the public comment portion of the meeting, Hartford Federation of Teachers President Carol Gale said “Teachers advocated for this student all along her journey.”
According to Gale, educators “requested the special ed and related services and supports that were assessed along the way as needed” but “some of these attempts met roadblocks at many levels.”
Gale said the union has raised concerns in the past about district practices that lower expectations to increase graduation rates as well as “the denial of services due to lack of funds.”
“The state legislature is already calling for restricting funding and increasing oversight. Neither of these are things that Hartford needs, and I feel that they’re missing the message that the student is trying to portray, which is our need for more funding and the ability to provide every student to support that they need,” Gale said.
“I can’t speak to the specifics of that one student’s journey, but I can speak to the repeated scenario that teachers share of making recommendations at PPTs for what students need, and that these recommendations are often denied because of a lack of funding,” Gale added. “Hartford must address these funding needs and not mitigate them by lowering graduation standards or denying recommended services for our students.”
On Wednesday, the board unanimously passed a resolution to call on state and federal leaders to provide full, permanent funding for education.
“Connecticut is one of the wealthiest states in the country, also Connecticut has one of the highest income disparities in the country. While there are 169 municipalities that are fiercely independent, the funding of education that the state does is through property taxes,” Board Secretary Kory Mills said during the meeting. “While there are many things this district needs to do better, the reality of our situation is that the state also needs to do better when it comes to equitably providing funding for Connecticut Schools.”
In addition to pressing state lawmakers for action, the resolution urges Congress to pass the Keep Our Promise to America’s Children and Teachers Act, a proposal that would require the federal government to adhere to funding commitments legislated in Title I Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.
“That legislation was amended in 2004 to … commit the federal government to fund 40% per expenditure for students with special needs. In the 50 years that the bill has existed, the federal government has not funded more than 18% of that cost. And today, it’s about 12% or 13%,” Board Member Steven Tatum said. “Similar is true for Title I … We receive a lot of Title I funding in Harford and it is still not what is needed in order to actually fully address the inequities, social inequities that impact the educational experience of our students.”
During the meeting, Tatum encouraged the district to step up its advocacy efforts to put education on leaders’ political agenda.
“These political changes … sometimes feel like they’re beyond our control or too big or too complicated for us to influence,” Tatum said. “But the reality is that these are political decisions that our legislators, our representatives are making and we can play a part in making sure that investment in education is a priority for them.”
Earlier in the meeting, the board approved a motion to request that the Hartford City Council approve a $3.6 million transfer from the non-lapsing fund to cover the remainder of a $4.99 million deficit the district incurred during fiscal year 2024.
Torres-Rodriguez explained that in budget surplus years, excess dollars from the district are funneled into the city’s non-lapsing fund. According to Torres-Rodriguez, the account has held roughly $5.4 million for the last three to four years. During this time, she said the district has avoided dipping into the funds by “leveraging ESSER.”
According to a Sept. 17 letter to Torres-Rodriguez from Deputy Superintendent of Administration, Strategy, and Performance Accountability Paul Foster, the $3.6 million transfer “will leave slightly less than $2 million to mitigate deficits in FY2025.”
On Wednesday, Torres-Rodriguez said the district is already projecting a deficit for Fiscal Year 2025, despite millions in cost-cutting measures and additional state and city funding that aimed to close gaps for the current school year.
At the start of 2024, district leaders projected a $77 million deficit for the 2024-2025 year as the loss of federal pandemic relief coincided with years of flat-funding at the city level and ballooning tuition costs for Hartford students who attend magnet, open choice and special education programs outside of the district.
In April Hartford Public Schools announced that the district planned to slash nearly 400 positions to defray expenses. City and state leaders eventually pledged a combined $10.5 million to save most of the positions. The financial crisis drew the concern of the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate, and prompted the Connecticut State Department of Education to take action to oversee Hartford Public Schools’ finances.
Amid the fiscal strife, the board approved the appointment of a new chief financial officer. Caitlin Richard, a graduate of Brown University and the Yale School of Management, and a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, will join Hartford Public Schools in mid-November at a salary of $177,500.
Richard is currently the director of budget at Tulsa Public Schools in Oklahoma where Richard said she supported the district with “strategic resource use decisions” and deficit reductions “furthest away from the classroom.”
Speaking before the board Wednesday, Richard said she shares a “very aligned vision” with Torres-Rodriguez “in terms of thinking about resources as something that can support students directly and thinking about the types of decisions and trade-offs and priorities we need to make to make that a reality, especially for our highest-need students.”
“I know there’s a lot of challenges, but I really view those as opportunities to understand, learn more about the community and really figure out what are the most important things to resource to support the students of Hartford,” Richard said.
