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Co-Op Principal To Step Into Retirement

Lucy Gellman | January 11th, 2023

Co-Op Principal To Step Into Retirement

Co-Op High School  |  Education & Youth  |  Arts & Culture  |  New Haven Public Schools  |  New Haven Board Of Education  |  Education

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Belton: "At 38 years, I'm really looking to impact students in another direction." Lucy Gellman Photos.

Val-Jean Belton never saw herself in school administration. But when Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School called with an offer, she stepped up to lead. Now, after 38 years in the school district that raised her, she’s preparing to say goodbye. 

Belton spoke about that move Wednesday afternoon, just two days after the New Haven Board of Education announced her retirement at a regular Monday night meeting on Zoom. After nearly four decades in the New Haven Public Schools, she will finish her career at the end of the academic year in late June. As she looks toward a new chapter, she said she’s focused on remaining a student advocate.

Her decision is one of eight retirements and 15 resignations included in a January personnel report from Superintendent Iline Tracey. Read that here. 

"For me, education has changed so much,” Belton said Wednesday at Co-Op, as a steady stream of students popped into the main office to speak to her. “At 38 years, I'm really looking to impact students in another direction. I think that right now for me, I really want to be a student advocate. I want to be that person that advocates for students, especially those that don't have a voice for themselves." 

Born and raised in New Haven, Belton’s first love was visual art, not education. As a student at James Hillhouse High School in the 1970s and 80s, she fell in love with her art classes, encouraged by her teachers to pursue graphic design. At 14, she became an assistant art teacher at the Dixwell Children’s Creative Arts Center, then nestled in the Dixwell United Church of Christ. Her senior year of high school, she got an acceptance from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). 

Her dad, a transplant from South Carolina who worked for Armstrong Rubber Company, was hesitant about the prospect of art school for his daughter. So when she graduated from Hillhouse in 1981, Belton ultimately went to Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) to study arts education. Co-Op, then in its most nascent stages, was just starting to find its footing as the arts brainchild of Keith Cunningham and Charles Warner, Sr. She kept an eye on its work, she said, but never imagined that she's one day be there. 

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Then-graduating senior Jizir Feliciano, who starred as a groovy priest in Sister Act, with Belton at the Shubert Theatre in June 2022. Lucy Gellman File Photo. 

It turned out that Belton loved teaching. In college, she balanced her studies with work for the Dixwell Creative Arts Center, ultimately serving as the director of the program while she finished her undergraduate degree. In 1985, she got her first job as an art teacher at Fair Haven Middle School. She stayed there for 12 years, teaching summers in UConn’s TRIO Programs. 

“I really liked that job, but then I started feeling as though I wanted to do high school,” she said. “I wanted a different experience. So it was like a full life turnaround for me, going back to Hillhouse.”  

At Hillhouse, where she taught for 15 years, Belton served as an art teacher and lead teacher. Like her work in Fair Haven, she loved interacting with the students, and guiding young people through the place she had once been a teen herself. It was there, several years ago, that Assistant Principal Nadine Gannon suggested that she try out a position in school administration. Belton didn’t think it was for her, she said. Gannon pushed back. 

She kept tabs on Co-Op as it grew, “but I never thought that I would be here in a leadership capacity,” Belton said. But in the summer of 2011, she applied to a job as arts director at the school, a position for which she later hired schools champion Timothy Jones. She got a call asking if she would be interested in becoming the school’s assistant principal instead. It was unexpected, Belton said—and she took it. 

For three years, she worked under then-Principal Frank Costanzo, who ultimately left for the Norwalk Public Schools in 2015. She savored it: it was the first time she had spent entire days around the fine and performing arts. During her years as the assistant principal, she would sometimes grab her drawing pad, and join students in Christopher Cozzi’s art classroom. She taught a few visual arts classes. She watched artists who she had known for decades—dance teacher Christine Kershaw-Hobson chief among them—excel as educators. When Costanzo left in 2015, the city’s Board of Education appointed her principal.

During her tenure, Belton navigated proposed teacher cuts, a renewed investigation into sexual misconduct at the school, multiple New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) superintendents, and most recently, the Covid-19 pandemic and sudden and devastating loss of a student, senior Camryn "Mooka" Gayle, last year. When schools braved the online pivot in March 2020, she watched Co-Op’s teachers continue to innovate with virtual band arrangements and mail-in theater productions and after-school recording projects that took on a life of their own. She said that the work faculty does each day dovetails with her goal to “work as a team and stay student focused."  

"I'm just proud of the kids,” she said. “I'm proud of their passion. They have done great things here—all the musicals, the plays, the artwork, the music. Being a Grammy school ... I'm just proud of everything that has occurred here with kids. I'm that administrator—it's all about kids for me. It's not about adults. It's about kids, and we're giving them what they deserve, and that's an education."

Many educators, from both within and outside Co-Op, said that she will be missed. Dr. Edward Joyner, a member of the city’s board of education who was a teacher at Hillhouse for years, remembered meeting Belton when she was just a freshman in his advisory. As a student, “she was just a joy, very talented, very humble,” he said in a phone call Wednesday. After she graduated, he took pride in watching her soar as an educator, a partner, and a mom. He now considers her “one of my spiritual daughters,” he said.

“It's a tremendous accomplishment for her to come back and serve the district that served her,” he said, noting that he lasted only 35 years before retiring. “Val-Jean is stoic in the best sense of the word and she does not let stuff get to her. She has a strong moral compass. She's the embodiment of what it means to be a strong woman of any ethnicity.” 

Assistant Principal Amy Migliore, who arrived at Co-Op in 2019, praised Belton as a steady presence and mentor in the field. Coming from a similar background—Migliore grew up in Bridgeport, fell in love with the arts as a kid, and has been with the district for two decades—she’s seen Belton forge connections with not just students and graduates, but whole families. “You get these communities of people that you're embedded in,” Migliore said. 

“I think that her commitment to the district is always evident in everything that she does and the people that she's connected to,” she said. “She's been a great mentor. She’s a calming presence, and that’s been really helpful in my development as a leader, because we lead very differently. We balance each other out.” 

Gratitude for Belton’s service, and the service of all eight teachers who are retiring, also echoed through Monday night’s Board of Education meeting. Tracey said it is especially hard news to process as teachers, administrators and support staff continue to leave the district. 

“That’s a great loss to New Haven Public Schools, but I must commend them for giving so much of their time to New Haven Public Schools,” Tracey said. “That’s what you call dedication and staying with it. Their sticktoitiveness, their perseverance, their commitment to New Haven Public Schools is to be commended. I want to thank them.”  

“We are going to definitely miss these people,” added Dr. Abie Benitez. “These are people who, of course I’m biased, I work with, and [I] know how hard they’ve worked throughout the years in New Haven, how committed they are to our children, and I’m sure that their colleagues will really miss them.”

“It is a wonderful thing to be retired, and if you’re a New Haven resident, think about doing Board of Ed work,” Benitez added. “Or if you’re in any other district, you might want to consider that so you continue to contribute to education. Thank you for your service. We are truly humbled by this group of people who are leaving.”  

There is not yet a plan for who will fill the position after Belton has left in June of this year. Reached Wednesday evening by text message, NHPS Director of Marketing and Communications Justin Harmon said that the Board of Education “will make administrative appointments in the spring.”