Author Archives: Ben Prawdzik

Amid ongoing allegations of grade tampering, the New Haven Board of Education issued Hillhouse High School Principal Kermit Carolina a suspension-without-pay order on Wednesday — discipline that Carolina’s attorney said was “bully ball” from Mayor John DeStefano Jr. The charges levied against Carolina, which he has denied, date back to last fall, when his assistant »

New federal job data reveals dim prospects for Connecticut as it struggles to lift itself out of recession. After 14 months of steady job gains, the state economy battled a rough summer — Connecticut’s August labor statistics, released Thursday, reported the biggest one-month unemployment increase in 36 years on top of job losses in June »

New Haven Promise will dole out $323,807 in tuition checks this year — more than triple the amount the scholarship program distributed in 2011 — and at the same time relax its GPA requirements, administrators announced Wednesday. The Promise program, which awards college tuition scholarships to New Haven public high school graduates and is funded »

In his seventh-grade class at King-Robinson Interdistrict Magnet School, Kevin Miles’s favorite class is math, where he is learning how to do parentheses, division and fractions. He wants to go to college, and then play in the NBA. “This year I’m going to learn more about writing skills and math skills and I’m going to »

After years of anticipation, Yalies will soon have a local venue where they can enjoy the famous braised barbacoa and adobo chicken burritos they have been calling for — Chipotle Mexican Grill is finally on its way to setting up shop in New Haven. A Tweet sent Wednesday night from the official Chipotle Twitter account »

Parents of the 18,000 New Haven students who take the bus to and from school can breathe a sigh of relief — the school district’s bus company has reached a “tentative deal” on new contracts with the unionized bus drivers, defusing a situation that many feared would devolve into an extended strike. The bus company, »

Marking another step toward City Hall’s goal of creating a “college-going culture” in New Haven, city and state officials are announcing today a college scholarship and preparatory program that will serve about 3,000 seventh-grade students in New Haven, East Hartford and Waterbury. The new initiative, which school officials are calling the Gaining Early Awareness and »

For more than a year, City Hall and New Haven school board officials have been trying to create a “college-going culture” among youth in the Elm City. This past weekend, they took their message to the streets. On Saturday, 78 community and school district volunteers went “canvassing” in the Dixwell and Newhallville neighborhoods. Based out »

After more than a year of planning and regulatory review, Yale-New Haven Hospital officially acquired the Hospital of St. Raphael for $160 million Tuesday morning, making the newly merged 1,519-bed institution the fourth-largest hospital in the United States. Marna Borgstrom, the CEO of Yale-New Haven, and St. Raphael’s CEO Christopher O’Connor signed the closing documents »

GOP Senate candidate Linda McMahon announced Monday that her campaign has filed a formal complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics against her Democratic opponent, U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy, over a home equity loan. The issue dates back to 2007, when Murphy, who represents Connecticut’s fifth congressional district, missed several payments on his mortgage and »

After being discovered through the federal Secure Communities program, Mexican national Jose Angel Lopez-Garcia was sentenced in New Haven’s U.S. District Court for illegal re-entry into the country on Friday and currently awaits deportation. Federal officials cite the case as an example of the program’s merits, but state criminal justice officials questioned whether Lopez-Garcia’s crime, »

After Amtrak announced the route for its proposed new high speed rail line in the Northeast — which promises to deliver passengers from Boston to Washington, D.C., in just over three hours — city officials began a vigorous campaign against a program that they argue will leave New Haven in the dust. The current railroad »