Settled In Job, Negrón Eyes Decaying School Buildings

Madeline Negrón knew she had challenges to tackle when she took over as New Haven’s schools superintendent. She didn’t know about all the sinks with no levers to turn water on and off or the broken HVAC systems leaving people shivering in the winter and sweating in the summer.

One year into the job overseeing a 19,000-student system, she has learned plenty about that. She plans in her second year to tackle the challenge of addressing the schools’ widespread disrepair while also tackling fiscal headwinds causing public education systems nationwide to slash costs.

“I have to admit, the one surprise, the one thing that I did not expect when I walked in, was the conditions of our facilities,” Negrón said during an end-of-first-year conversation Tuesday on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven” program. She said she’s happy with the progress the district has made in her first year on challenges like decreasing absenteeism, and feels energized to continue making progress in year two. Negrón is the first Latina superintendent for New Haven’s public schools, in which Latino students now comprise a plurality and are projected soon to comprise a majority.

New Haven spent close to $2 billion rebuilding its schools through the 2010s. A report commissioned by the Board of Ed revealed this year found only two out of 43 school buildings in good condition.

“There were no preventative measures. When funds are tight, you know you’re going to make cuts. Unfortunately, a lot of those cuts went into what it takes to maintain facilities.

“Right now the amount of dollars that have been invested in our facilities is just enough to keep the lights on and to keep things running. But we know these buildings have come of age, and they need a lot of repair. But I’m an optimist. I am here to work with community to solve issues. So now it’s about: What are we going to do, knowing what we know?”

The Board of Ed just passed a new fiscal year budget that begins with a $2 million hole. So it’s fair to assume new pots of repair money won’t come flowing into town in the near future.

The same report about the schools’ declining condition also noted a continuing decline in enrollment.

Negrón said she’s looking at eventually having fewer school buildings, thereby making the existing maintenance budget go further and ​“salvage mechanical systems that have more life in them.”

She’s not rushing to close schools. Not even a school like Brennan-Rogers, where the most recent 8th grade graduating class had only eight students.

“People were saying, ​‘Well, you have a very small enrollment there, just close it.’ We still have students that we have to place elsewhere. We still have staff that we have to place elsewhere. At the end of the day, that was only going to amount to less than $500,000 that we would have saved by closing that particular school,” Negrón said.

“I am not going to arrive at decisions very hastily. I need to consider multiple points of data. [And] our schools are rooted in community. These are things that you cannot do absent of your community. You have to bring community to the table.”

So Negrón has ordered a second study to assess the state of mechanical systems more deeply in school buildings. She’s launching a 10-year plan to factor in enrollments and school needs of different neighborhoods.

In conjunction with the teachers union, she said, she’s also looking at combining some classrooms with only, say, seven or eight students in them in order to save money. Given the city’s teacher shortage, that would not entail laying anyone off, she said.

Click on the video to watch the full discussion with New Haven Superintendent of School Madeline Negrón on WNHH FM’s ​“Dateline New Haven.” Click here to subscribe or here to listen to other episodes of Dateline New Haven.