Hartford Public Schools needs to change to a customer-oriented mindset — where students and families are the priority — and the district needs the regional business community to help show the way, says the city’s new superintendent.
Beth Schiavino-Narvaez, who took over as head of the Capital City’s education system in July, is launching an aggressive plan to shore up Hartford’s achievement gap to ensure all the district’s schools provide equitable education and opportunities for students.
As part of the initiative, which started with the Oct. 20 release of the school district’s transition report, Schiavino-Narvaez will meet with members of the MetroHartford Alliance on Oct. 31 at its Rising Star Breakfast, where she will outline ways the business community can help with the change, particularly educating the educators on how to concentrate more on the student experience and outcomes.
“That is a unique kind of ask to the business community, but we are looking for a new way of thinking,” Schiavino-Narvaez said. “Starting with our customers — our families and our students — is the sort of thinking I hope our business community can help us realize.”
The report was the culmination of Schiavino-Narvaez’s first three months on the job, where she appointed a transition team that interviewed 1,700 stakeholders about the school system’s strengths and deficiencies.
The findings criticized all aspects of the school system starting with leadership and communication from the central office that created a situation where magnet and specialty schools performed relatively well, while neighborhood schools and their students were left behind.
Among the 89 recommendations were short-term fixes like clarifying central office leadership roles, reviewing spending patterns, and evaluating each school’s capacity, along with long-term fixes like communicating the findings of funding research to schools, strengthening knowledge in how to better engage student’s families, and developing an organizational structure that focuses on improvements in teaching.
The challenge is executing the plan in an achievable way, Schiavino-Narvaez said. The district is now prioritizing the recommendations.
“Focus is so critical for any improvement effort. You can’t do everything at once,” Schiavino-Narvaez said.
The business community has a huge stake in the Hartford school system’s ability to churn out career-or college-ready pupils, particularly as Greater Hartford companies face an increasingly graying workforce that will need to be replaced in the coming years.
The top three focuses should be improving underperforming neighborhood schools, making sure all students are ready for high-school-level learning when they leave junior high, and giving students more options in choosing the school they want to attend, since school choice is very unequal by district right now, said Paul Holzer, executive director of the nonprofit education reform advocacy group Achieve Hartford!, which is supported by city businesses including Robinson + Cole, Aetna, Travelers, Hartford Hospital, and Webster Bank.
“You can’t say you are about equity and not focus on everything being equal,” Holzer said.
For the business community, the biggest takeaway is to continue its support — serving on advisory boards, providing internships, shaping curriculum — but across the city, rather than focusing on individual schools.
Currently, the business community’s strongest contribution is at the five National Academy Foundation schools that focus on workforce development for particular skills and industries like the Academy of Engineering & Green Technology and High School Inc., said Judy Resnick, executive director of the Connecticut Business & Industry Association Education Foundation. Companies like United Technologies and Travelers sit on the advisory boards for these schools. They also offer student mentoring and internships.
These roles are crucial, said Schiavino-Narvaez, because they create marquee programs where students can engage in personalized curriculums. NAF schools like the Academy of Engineering & Green Technology also are neighborhood schools — which lag behind magnet and charter schools in terms of student performance — so business participation boosts an area of weakness for the district.
But the school district’s focus has, for too long, been on school design, Schiavino-Narvaez said, rather than district-wide improvement. Schools like the Academy of Engineering & Green Technology have created incredible opportunities for individual students, but not the student population on the whole.
Ways that businesses can expand their involvement throughout the school district include offering internships to a greater portion of the student population, working with underperforming neighborhood schools to create better curriculums that serve business community needs, and making sure the school system keeps its focus on the individual student experience and the outcomes that produces, Schiavino-Narvaez said.
“I really appreciate the level of commitment the business community shows in our schools. It is unprecedented in my experience,” said Schiavino-Narvaez, who previously worked at school districts in Maryland and Massachusetts.
Oz Griebel, president and CEO of the MetroHartford Alliance, said Schiavino-Narvaez’s decision to use her first three months in office to develop a comprehensive strategy will give the business community a better idea of what is needed when they meet with her on Friday.
“The devil is always in the details. It is always in the execution,” Griebel said.