An Open Letter to Mayor Rilling, members of the Board of Estimate and Taxation, and the Common Council

It is a difficult time to lead.

This is a long one, and I hope you’ll stick with me until the end. In past years, when I have come to address the Council, Mayor, and BET at public comment during the budget process, I have spoken to what I know is the desire and motivation that got you all into public service in the first place – the genuine desire to make the world better. When I was elected to the Board of Education, I almost immediately realized how much more difficult that is than most people understand. People think it’s easy, and that they could do it better, but I know it’s hard, and getting harder. It’s also a very scary time to be in government. I imagine you have all had these moments of reckoning with yourselves.

The tone of the conversation about our schools is making it harder to fix problems.

I know many of you, and I know that none of you has negative motivations for making budgetary choices that will damage our schools or our youngest residents. I know that your intentions are good. Despite this, I am consistently surprised by the adversarial way many of you choose to have these conversations in the public eye. Tone matters almost as much as content, particularly when you are saying things that directly cause legitimate fear in our teachers, families and kids. A friend whose wife teaches in Norwalk approached me today and said, “I know you’re not on the board anymore, but my wife is really scared – do you think she’s going to lose her job?” Her fear will directly impact her ability to do the work of teaching, until and unless her fear is allayed. Causing that fear is partially your responsibility, and will continue to be until the tone and rhetoric around these tough budgetary conversations are consistently collaborative.

People can’t learn or teach when they’re scared.

People can’t teach, learn or work effectively when they are scared, or hungry, or living with uncertainty, and that is a practical, logistical, and pedagogical part of the problem facing American public education that requires intervention at the school level. Please don’t tune this fear out. I’ve been teaching for a long time. I’ve taught kids in general and special education, and kids from all kinds of socioeconomic backgrounds. I used to run a program to teach music to children and adults in the shelter system. It does not matter how smart someone is. It does not matter how motivated they are to learn. You can’t learn well if you’re hungry and you can’t learn well if you’re scared.

Many of Norwalk’s kids and families have the deck stacked against them.

Everyone I know involved in Norwalk Public Schools at every level – students, teachers, paraprofessionals and administrators — is knocking themselves out trying to create academic and future success. In spite of this, Norwalk’s education system is never going to be able to produce the same results as Darien or Westport or Wilton. In Darien, Westport and Wilton, 80 to 90% of the children have their material needs met. Most students don’t need to work to support themselves or their families, they aren’t worried about where their next meal will come from or if they’ll be living in the same apartment next month. In Norwalk, 70% of our families are “high needs,” meaning they are experiencing poverty or have other social or economic factors statistically against them.

Our administrators and teachers aren’t causing the problem.
Children with money tend to do well in every school system, because their needs are more likely to be met. It is the same in Norwalk. Our kids who are well-to-do, do well. Our kids who are not, do less well, but they do better here than in our peer districts. You can look at this disaggregated data, and I encourage you to do that.  We just have a higher proportion of kids with needs here, and the way you communicate around this issue feeds the beast. Every single one of you holds Norwalk’s diversity as something that you love and cherish – and you chose to take on leadership here. You have an obligation to try to ensure the needs of our beautiful diverse kids are met. In order to do that more effectively, you need to understand that the systems that are failing those kids are bigger, and older, than us in this community, center that priority and understanding, and commit to meeting those underlying needs as best you can.

We need all our kids to be well educated for the world to survive.

Effective cognition can’t occur when children’s needs aren’t met. I know I am being repetitive, but it’s crucial that this is understood. Johnny can’t read when Johnny isn’t eating, or when he’s scared mom won’t have a job anymore. When we ask our schools to educate our kids, ignore the decks that are stacked against them, and then fault the schools for “failing,” we are complicit in setting our schools and our children up for failure. It is an unwinnable game. The “extras” that are in jeopardy with these potential cuts are not extras for our kids. They are an attempt to meet the needs of children so that education in the fundamentals can actually take place successfully. You may feel that this goes beyond the traditional definition and role of schooling, and perhaps it does. I ask you to consider that we need the role of education to evolve, and to view it in the context of the great challenges humanity is facing and may not be able to meet. Not only do our kids deserve the opportunity to succeed, but our community and world need their success to survive.

Underfunding our schools will just cause different financial problems for many Norwalkers.

Times are hard and money is tight. Believe me, I get it. I would invite you to just consider, though, that rather than making a choice that will ease the financial burden of your constituents, you’re proposing a choice that will actually severely financially burden us too – everyone talks about the potential for property values to suffer, but I wonder if you’ve thought of the damage caused to the lifetime earning potential of each of our 12,000 youngest citizens. That’s a financial burden. The cost to the community when those children grow up and require subsidies to live because they couldn’t access the education required to get higher-paying jobs will be high too. Choosing to fund mental health and medical services through the city-side, or through a patchwork of outside providers, is inefficient and disruptive for the kids, when those services already exist and can be  executed well and with continuity through NPS. Please remember that your choices don’t just affect now – they affect the next 50 years, for tens of thousands of people, just to start with, and not only financially, but personally. This isn’t a can you’re kicking down a road, these are human lives.

You didn’t create the difficult circumstances you’re working within, but we need you to inspire us to band together instead of seeing each other as adversaries.

You didn’t invent redlining. You aren’t responsible for the legacy of segregation, or the state and federal structures of funding that pits communities against each other perennially. You are, however, responsible for talking in a way that encourages Norwalkers to see each other as competing for resources, instead of talking in a way that inspires us to be a community where we all work together to ensure everyone’s needs are met as best we can.
If you aren’t able to succeed in balancing all these needs and priorities, and you may not be able to, please understand how graciousness and dignity can also powerfully impact communities, and let that be your goal. Then, please consider:

• For the Mayor, City and NPS finance directors and Committee chairs of the Board and Council to meet regularly throughout the year, so that these discussions are less likely to veer off the rails.
• In those meetings, consider creating and sharing 2-, 5- and 10-year draft budget trajectories, to help educate the community in understanding how budgets work in a city of 90,000.
• Please remember that the way you talk directly and practically impacts the quality of people that the school system is able to hire and retain, and directly impacts the quality of the foundational education the system is able to achieve.

I genuinely thank you for your time and your service.

Sarah LeMieux

Board of Education member, 2017-2021

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