By CHRIS POWELL
New Haven’s Board of Education, of which Mayor Justin Elicker is a member, says city residents should not be told how well School Superintendent Madeline Negron is doing her job.
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The New Haven Independent reported this month that the board conducted Negron’s evaluation orally and in secret in August, putting nothing in writing because a written evaluation would have become a public record while an oral evaluation could be conducted without leaving any traces.
The mayor told the Independent: “If you have a written document that’s going to be in the newspaper, it doesn’t facilitate a very honest and frank conversation and it certainly doesn’t facilitate a back-and-forth.”
So how is the public to know how the superintendent is performing? How is she to be held accountable to the public? How is the board to be held accountable?
Of course the mayor’s rationale for secrecy for the superintendent’s evaluation — to make it easier for evaluators to be frank — can be used to conceal the performance of all government employees. Indeed, teacher unions long have been so politically influential in Connecticut that 41 years ago they persuaded the General Assembly and Gov. William A. O’Neill to exempt their performance evaluations from disclosure under the state’s freedom-of-information law. No other government employees have been given such exemption, only teachers, even though teachers think their work is more important than the work of other government employees.
Mayor Elicker and New Haven school board President OrLando Yarborough agree that Superintendent Negron is doing a great job, though the mayor admits that New Haven’s schools have serious problems. But if the superintendent is doing so well, why can’t the public know how she has been evaluated? And if she’s not doing so well, isn’t that just as important for the public to know, so improvement can be demanded and measured?
State Education Commissioner Charlene M. Russell-Tucker and Governor Lamont seem not to have been asked about New Haven’s brazen repudiation of open government. But then the governor and the commissioner long have presided over the erosion of student academic performance and the general decline of standards in Connecticut’s schools.
The arrogance demonstrated by New Haven’s school board and mayor is another reminder that the biggest problem with public education in Connecticut is that it’s really not public at all.
TOO MUCH INDIFFERENCE: Can any inferences be drawn from the Connecticut voter registration data published the other day by the Connecticut Mirror?
The changes over the last five years have been small. Unaffiliated voters have remained the largest group, at 41.2% of the electorate, up from 41% in 2020. The Democratic share of the electorate has fallen by almost 2%, from 37% to 35.1%. The Republican share is up slightly from 20.4 to 21.1%. While Democrats outnumber Republicans by five to three, the larger number of unaffiliated voters sustains the possibility that, with compelling issues, a Republican might win a statewide election.
While Republicans in Connecticut don’t always seem to want to raise compelling issues, the state is full of them, like high electricity and housing prices, high taxes, the high cost of living generally, faltering public education, and low economic growth.
But more than the possibility of political competition, the voter registration data implies alienation among a large number of voters.
Connecticut has “closed” party primaries for nominating candidates. That is, only party members can vote in a primary. But enrolling in a party requires only a voter’s desire to have the right to help choose the party’s candidates.
In municipalities whose voters lean heavily to one party or the other, primaries — not elections — are often where the real choosing of elected officials is done. But 41% of Connecticut voters want nothing to do with choosing nominees, and about a quarter of the state’s eligible adults haven’t even bothered to register to vote. The state’s sad situation is evidence of far too much political indifference.
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Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 
How dare you suggest that the city’s highest paid employee be subject to such scrutiny? It’s downright un-American to ask whether she is worth the money she is being paid.
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