The School Governance Council is seeking input from community members regarding the principal they hope will begin at Burns for the next school year.
You can leave anonymous feedback via survey, which will close on April 4th. They are seeking feedback from parents, staff, the community, and students in seventh and eighth grade.
They have invited the public to join the SGC meetings on the third Thursday of the month at 3:30 if they have any questions or concerns.
Just in time for National Poetry Month, the Center Without Walls has booked four spoken word artists to perform at the Studio at Billings Forge:
There is free on- and off-street parking in this neighborhood.
About forty students and a few staff allies at Trinity have drafted an open letter dealing with safety issues on campus. They have said that a number of students have been critical of the recent rally
Dear Trinity Community,
We write to you as fellow Trinity students. We come as individuals who are deeply
saddened in regards to last weekend’s assault against our classmate Chris Kenny. We
hope for his speedy recovery and will continue to keep him and his family in our prayers.
We have come to understand that some students feel the answer to stop crime is to isolate
the Trinity Community from the Hartford Community. This letter is not a response to
the unfortunate events of last weekend, but rather, it is a response to the ever-present
discourse of erecting a gate. We understand the emotional impulse to create a barrier
but this is not a sustainable or sensitive solution. For the following reasons, we urge the
campus to consider other means of increasing safety and security for ALL students:
It goes without saying that safety is important to everyone. However, we must consider
that safety does not mean the same thing for everyone. There are Trinity students
from Hartford. A gate threatens to not only estrange them from the community they
call home but also causes conflict within Trinity. If we continue to perceive all Hartford
residents as “the other” we alienate fellow Trinity students whose family and life-
long friends may be considered “Hartford locals” as well. In addition, we regard the
term “Hartford Local” to be a racially charged epithet. The phrase often conjures the
image of a Black or Latino, marginalized, working class individual. Many of our Black
and Latino classmates have cited incidents of Campus Safety being called on them or
being denied entrance to College facilities. How might our understanding of “the other”
further alienate students of color on campus?
A gate would only give us the illusion of safety. Trinity cannot and should never
become a fortress. Continue reading 'Trinity Students Oppose Gating Campus'»
The lawn was covered with broken glass, candy wrappers, cigarette butts, canine feces, and numerous empty dimebags. In one nook of the schoolyard, there were four large, empty bottles of alcohol. Leaves had been left in piles, but never removed or placed in a compost heap.
And that was just one small corner on the Putnam Street side of the Latino Studies Academy at Burns, a k-8 school in Frog Hollow.
On Saturday morning, volunteers were working on every imaginable task, as well as they could with few cleaning supplies beyond what they had brought with them. Continue reading 'Community Helps Improve School Conditions'»
Photo courtesy of Christopher Brown
Every speaker at yesterday’s emotionally-driven rally began by expressing support for Chris Kenny, but then each commented on safety, with the overwhelming message from those allowed to speak being “we must fight for our safety.”
Students whose perspectives did not align with the push for one interpretation of safety were not permitted to stand behind the lectern Continue reading 'Trinity Students Rally'»
People show up hours before the parade begins to claim their viewing spots and have roadside picnics, but festivities officially begin at 11 on Saturday.
The Hartford Police Department has released a traffic advisory for March 10th:
The I-84 Eastbound Capitol Avenue Exit Ramp will be closed from 9:00 a.m. through 3:00 p.m.
The following streets will be closed to vehicular traffic beginning at 10:30 a.m.:
Capitol Avenue between Main Street and Broad Street
Main Street between Capitol Avenue and Church Street
Asylum Street between Main Street and Spruce Street
Ford Street to Trinity Street
Trinity Street between Ford Street and Capitol Avenue
Conlin Whitehead Highway at Columbus Boulevard Exit (Columbus Exit will be open)
Streets will begin to reopen at approximately 3:00 p.m.
Besides knowing which streets to avoid, another way to manage traffic headaches is to show up early and stay late. Independent coffee shops in Downtown and Frog Hollow will be open, as will the Starbucks on Trumbull Street.
This is the description of suspects, according to the HPD press release:
According to information gathered by MCD [Major Crimes Division] Detectives the suspects are described as three White females and two White males in their 20’s. They were last seen fleeing in a Black, possible new, two door coupe traveling south on Summit Street.
Anyone wishing to cooperate with police by providing information about the assault on Chris Kenny can contact them:
Sergeant Brandon O’Brien at 860-757-4089. Confidential, anonymous tips may be made both on-line and by phone at Hartford Crime Stoppers, 860-722-TIPS (8477).
Despite the fact that the recent attack of Chris Kenny happened off campus, some students are planning to rally to “try to persuade [Trinity] to close our campus with gates,” according to a Facebook group intended to support the victim. They are calling on the school to change its priorities so that students can “start feeling safe again,” writes Carlito Barreto.
The planned rally appears to be less about showing support for Kenny’s recovery and more about persuading Trustees, who will be on campus this weekend, that closing off the campus is necessary.
Not all students at the college desire a gated campus. In an email among student leaders who have self-identified as being opposed to barriers, they write: “this incident has been a catalyst for racial, classist assumptions, and I worry that our neighbors might not take too kindly to our building a partition between one another.”
There are efforts underway to prepare for a counter-rally, should one in favor of gating the campus occur. Continue reading 'Student Leaders Prepare to Speak Out Against Gating Trinity College'»
When our understanding of reality is filtered by a medium, do we really understand it? Continue reading 'Reactions to Crime (Part Two)'»
Miguel Cardona, Susan Marks (Superintendent of Norwalk Public Schools), and Gary Highsmith (left to right)
“We have a bad way of looking at things, that what gets tested is what gets taught,” Gary Highsmith, said at an education forum on Thursday. Highsmith is the Principal of Hamden High School, where he said students are taught things that are not tested, such as arts and music.
At a forum about inclusive housing policy and its impact on education, it seemed both incongruous and inevitable that the conversation would include the buzzwords of reform and accountability.
The forum — “Connecticut’s Achievement Gap: How Housing Can Help Close It” — held at the Lyceum explored the philosophy of housing policy as school policy, focusing on “Montgomery County,” a single example.
An inclusionary zoning policy — mixing housing affordable to those at different income levels — was adopted in Maryland’s Montgomery County (suburb of Washington, D.C.) in 1974. Heather Schwartz, a policy researcher with the RAND Corporation, conducted a longitudinal study from 2001-2007 of students in public housing who attended schools with very low-to-moderate poverty rates and those who attended schools with a moderate-rate of students living in poverty. Additionally, the moderate-level poverty schools received more resources, enabling smaller classes and more academic supports. The study found that while students in public housing at both types of schools scored about evenly for the first few years, students attending the schools with a low-to-moderate poverty level outscored their peers eventually. Students were placed randomly in these schools, taking out the option for more involved parents to steer their children into the “better” schools.
This study — and the speakers at the forum — failed to address some variables. Continue reading 'Student Transiency and Concentration of Poverty Tied to Academic Success'»
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