Culture & Community | Downtown | Education & Youth | New Haven Board Of Education
ala ochumare, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter New Haven, and Mayor Justin Elicker. Elicker said that NHPS Superintendent Dr. Iline Tracey told him that the district will be making the investigation public by Monday June 21.
The investigation into a former New Haven school principal who used “the n-word” in an anti-racism training will be made public by Monday, June 21. In addition to her demotion, Laura Roblee will be moved to the central office. She will receive sensitivity training. And she will not be inside a classroom again for the foreseeable future.
Mayor Justin Elicker gave that news to nearly two dozen activists, parents, educators and students who gathered outside the Board of Education’s Meadow Street headquarters Thursday afternoon. He said those updates are based on discussions with Schools Superintendent Iline Tracey, who did not come out to speak with the small crowd. Tracey did not respond to a request for comment.
“Dr. Tracey has told me that the report will be released by Monday,” said Elicker. On an apology from Roblee, he added that “I can’t control that. Do I think she should make an apology? Yes. Her words were offensive and don’t represent the views of this city. I’ve said it multiple times and I will continue to say it publicly.”
Delores Williams, who co-runs People Get Ready Books with Lauren Anderson, with Teresa Johnson and Keren Prescott of Power Up Manchester.
The new information comes two days after activists first gathered at the site to protest the Board of Education’s vote to demote former Brennan Rogers School Principal Laura Roblee after her use of the n-word in an anti-racism training. Since then, both activists and at least two board members have called for a public statement and apology from Roblee, as well as for the district’s investigation into the incident to be made public.
Thursday, the action moved quickly from a protest to a candid, at times tense conversation between activists and a mayor they see as upholding the status quo. Stepping forward, Black Lives Matter New Haven co-founders ala ochumare and Sun Queen presented Elicker with a list of eight demands from the group, including apologies from both the Board of Education and from Roblee herself. BLMNHV has asked that the investigation, which was done by the district’s human resources department, be released by June 18.
In addition, ochumare said, the group wants to see greater accountability from the New Haven Board of Education—including more options for students and parents to publicly testify and prerecord testimony, make formal complaints, and access services related to wellness and mental health.
BLMNHV members want to know how federal funds are being allocated, particularly as an influx of pandemic relief dollars come into the city. They want cops out of schools and a plan for how the district will implement “restorative practices” for every child in the district. Read all of the demands here.
“She is a Black woman and a doctor,” ochumare said of Tracey. “I’m always gonna ride for her. But [with the affirmative vote] you told them [parents] that a white woman is more important than thousands of Black and Brown children.”
“Our children are being traumatized,” she later added. “When are y’all going to be like, ‘White privilege is a thing.’”
As they moved in to listen—and sometimes to vent their frustrations—parents and activists asked Elicker to justify his vote to demote rather than to terminate Roblee. The mayor, who was quiet during Monday’s meeting, said that he voted in support of Tracey’s decision to demote Roblee because he trusts her judgement, and respects Tracey’s role as superintendent of the city’s schools.
He called it an imperfect and complicated vote, beset by “legal and union ramifications.” He added that he would not have called the epithet “a slip of the tongue,” as Tracey did on Monday evening.
“I’m not cosigning every word that Dr. Tracey says,” he said.
Teresa Johnson, a real estate agent and property manager who came out as a concerned parent, said she wants to see the vote revisited. A few years ago, Johnson’s eldest two daughters graduated from the city’s public schools. Her third daughter is a rising senior at Hill Regional Career High School. She has a grandchild entering the first grade at L. W. Beecher Museum Magnet School of Arts and Sciences.
She doesn’t want them to be subject to unsafe and degrading language among their teachers, she said. She proposed reopening the vote with new opportunities for parent and student input, as well as a chance to read the investigation in full.
“I am disgusted,” she said as she headed out to pick up her granddaughter. “I am disgusted that she [Roblee] thought it was okay to say it at all. And I am doubly disgusted by our superintendent. It was horrifying to listen to our superintendent condone racism … That board needs to be dissolved.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass about an apology,” she added. “I want her gone.”
For many who gathered, the vote to demote Roblee is indicative of a more deeply entrenched racism that they see in the city’s schools. An anti-racism, anti-bias facilitator herself, ochumare pointed to the fact that Roblee, a white woman, dropped the n-word in an anti-racism training because she was upset about the use of the term “white privilege.”
ochumare sees that imbalance as a living example of white privilege, she told Elicker. While Roblee has kept a position with the district, students of color are disciplined, failed, and expelled at a rate higher than their white peers. For many of them, their first interaction of the school day is with a school resource officer.
“Do you understand?” Queen said later in the conversation. “Our children go from schools to prison. To prison. She’s going to a desk.”
“She’s getting so much grace,” said Nataliya Braginsky, an English and social studies teacher at Metropolitan Business Academy who teaches a course on African American and Latinx History. “And our kids are getting punished for much less.”
Delores Williams, a parent advocate and mom who co-runs People Get Ready Books with Lauren Anderson, decried the lack of diversity among the city’s teachers. In 2019, New Haven’s student body was 46 percent Latinx, 37 percent Black, and 13 percent white. Its educators, meanwhile, were 9 percent Latinx, 15 percent Black, and 73 percent white.
City Wide Parent Team President Nijija-Ife Waters, who pointed to the lack of resources for special education that her son receives, echoed that call. She said that current materials often feel outdated and revisionist.
“Where are our abolitionist teachers?” Williams asked. “What does the [hiring] process look like?”
Queen, flipping on Facebook live, asked attendees to give Elicker a chance to speak. After he announced that Roblee would be moved to the main office and would receive sensitivity training, advocates pushed for more details.
Queen said that it pains her to think about Roblee working anywhere in the district after causing potential harm to students and fellow staff members. It was her subordinates who first reported the use of the word.
“I want to know who is running the sensitivity training,” Braginsky said, adding that Elicker had just received a free hour of anti-racism training himself. “She proved herself to be incompetent … to say that the solution is sensitivity training—why should we believe she’s going to change what she’s doing?”
In afternoon press conference at 5 p.m. Thursday, Board of Education members Darnell Goldson and Tamiko Jackson-McArthur blasted Elicker for fundraising in the wake of the incident. Read more about that in the New Haven Independent.