Job Hunt On At Schools: With Reorganization, Little Is Sure In City

By Rachel Gottlieb Frank, The Hartford Courant, Conn.

Feb. 23–A mix of excitement and dread is pulsing through Hartford public schools as the human resources department begins the massive job of selecting teachers and administrators for schools that will be redesigned or open as new schools next year.

Postings for teachers and principals are expected to begin going up next week.

Each year the district hires 250 or more teachers to replace retirees and people who leave for jobs in other towns. But this year, teachers who work in schools being redesigned must reapply for their jobs, and they may find themselves competing against teachers in schools that are scheduled to be phased-out and applicants from outside Hartford.

Hundreds of jobs will be up for grabs across the district.

Hartford Public High School is the largest school going through redesign next year. Most of its 100 certified staff have expressed interest in staying in the school when it is divided into academies next year, said Freeman Burr, acting director of human resources.

Some middle school teachers also will be looking for other positions. Fox Middle School fades down to a single grade — eighth grade — in its final year as a middle school. Ultimately, Quirk Middle School will be phased out, too, Burr said, as most city elementary schools convert to Pre-K-8 format. While Quirk opens next year with seventh and eighth grades, some teachers looking ahead to the future may apply for jobs at Hartford Public or other schools.

Teachers at Milner and Burns Elementary Schools will be reapplying for their jobs as Milner converts to a Core Knowledge School and Burns becomes a Latino studies academy. Barnard Brown and Twain will close as elementary schools, so their teachers will be looking for new places to land as well.

Opportunities will exist at new schools that will start up with two or three grades next year. Those include Breakthrough school, focusing on character education, and new Montessori and International Baccalaureate schools. The Baccalaureate school, to be called Global Communications Academy, is based on a successful model that operates 2,145 schools in 125 countries. As part of its college-prep curriculum, all students will study either Spanish or Arabic through all of their years in the K-12 school.

The Achievement First School, that is being opened as a charter school by the operators of New Haven’s Amistad Academy, will also be looking for teachers.

It’s impossible to know at this time how many jobs will be posted before schools opens in September, but the district expects to find jobs for all its teachers, Burr said.

Those teachers who have to reapply for their jobs feel insulted, said Cathy Carpino, president of the teachers union. “We understand that with No Child Left Behind and redesign that can happen, but it doesn’t make it any easier.”

The transition to a budgeting system in which each principal controls their school’s budget is compounding the sense of uncertainty, Carpino said. Some principals may decide they can’t afford to have two social workers or art and music teachers.

“Guidance counselors, special education teachers, social workers, support personnel — we’ll see a lot of them looking elsewhere,” Carpino said. “There is a lot of uncertainty around this.”

Still, some teachers do look forward to the changes in the district, she said. “Some see these new academies and models as an exciting opportunity to make change.

“Hartford teachers are very resilient. We go with the punches. It’s going to be a hard year. This is going to be really significant stress on the system,” she said.

Contact Rachel Gottlieb Frank at .

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