Courtesy of Mia Comulada Breuler

Mold has shuttered the library, the music room and the swimming pool. Teachers arrived for the first day of school last month to find dead rodents and cockroaches. Classrooms are routinely flooded. 

Such are the conditions at Wilbur Cross High School — the city’s largest comprehensive high school — as described by over a dozen parents, teachers, staff and students in an hour of public comment at a New Haven Board of Education meeting on Monday.

Local leaders agreed the situation was dire, but traded blame for decades of deferred maintenance.  

“Here’s the truth of it, this is a crisis. Our school is rotting from the inside,” Jake Halpern, president of the Wilbur Cross Parent Teacher Association, said before the Board. 

Teachers and students speak out

Mia Comulada Breuler, a school counselor and a member of the New Haven Federation of Teachers (NHFT) executive board, told the News that conditions at the high school have reached a breaking point.

Comulada Breuler shared with the News a handout with images capturing the deterioration of the school. 

“Wilbur Cross is over-populated, understaffed, underfunded and overburdened,” Comulada Breuler said. “We cannot stand complacent as a survival skill any longer. Our patience, resilience and sense of dignity have worn thin.”

John Carlos Musser, a student representative on the Board of Education, told the News after the meeting that facilities issues have been detrimental to student morale. 

Students are constantly distracted by the pervasive poor conditions at Wilbur Cross, he said. Just trying to find a bathroom has been a struggle. There are about a dozen working toilets in the school for 1800 students, Musser said. Over 400 more students are enrolled at Wilbur Cross than the building was designed for, according to the New Haven Independent.

Two Wilbur Cross teachers reported having to deal with safety issues themselves whenever they arise. 

History teacher Brian Grindrod returned from winter break in 2023 to find his classroom flooded, with textbooks and computers ruined. Though the ceiling tiles were patched, the room flooded again when the next rainstorm came. 

Justin Harmon, director of communications for NHPS, wrote to the News on Tuesday that NHPS believes that the current roof can last another five years, and they will continue patching it in the meantime.

Akimi Nelken, who has taught at Wilbur Cross for 15 years, complained about numerous instances of having to clean up after a custodial worker failed to fully clean or fix the roof. Jobs half done have left behind pink, sticky liquid and blankets of mold and debris. 

Nelken has seen the Wilbur Cross principal standing with a mop and vacuum, trying to dry classrooms with two inches of standing water. Teachers reported concerns that these maintenance issues will lead to health risks.

Many teachers at the Board meeting blamed the privatization of custodial services beginning in 2011. Private companies often do not follow through, multiple teachers complained, and outsourced custodial workers do not take pride in maintaining their schools like in-house ones do.

As Wilbur Cross facilities languish in disrepair, teachers described the burden of explaining the inequities they face to their students. 

Ashley Stockton, parent of a Wilbur Cross senior, spoke out against the unsafe condition of Cross athletics. She pointed out that the building has no working ice machines. Every game, coaches have to pay out of their own pockets to provide ice for their players.

The conditions are “embarrassing” when Wilbur Cross athletes face off against other schools, Stockton said. According to Musser, a soccer and lacrosse player, students refer to Wilbur Cross’ soccer field as the “rice fields” because it doesn’t drain when it rains. 

“Why was the school clear to open, given the current state of facilities? How did summer come and go? How did millions and millions in ARPA funds come and go? How were repairs and routine maintenance ignored?” Leslie Blatteau, teacher and president of the NHFT, said, demanding more accountability from the board.

Musser criticized how the state is focused on banning phones in the classroom instead of upkeeping facilities and filling teacher vacancies. “We don’t have the luxury of phones being our biggest problem.”

While most students hold the Board of Education responsible for their facilities’ deterioration, Musser blames the state. His goal, shared by many teachers, is to advocate for more funding at the state level. NHPS received $11.8 million less from the city this year than requested.

Harmon, NHPS communications director, wrote that the NHPS operations lead has been working closely with the Wilbur Cross principal to identify repairs. Sources of mold spores in the library and music room have already been remediated, and custodians and carpenters have been fixing floor and ceiling tiles.

Future plans include upgrading the chillers and installing a new cooling tower — renovations that are projected to cost $548,000. They are also bringing in an architect to address flooding issues and a pest management contractor to address reports of mice and cockroaches. Future plans include replacing the library carpet with tile and installing insulation to prevent mildew growth, as well as other small repairs around the school. 

City and state leaders trade blame

Leslie Blatteau, president of NHFT, the city’s main teachers union, blames the state’s funding model for the crisis. Mayor Justin Elicker, State Senator Martin Looney and Board of Education Vice President Matt Wilcox all expressed concern about Wilbur Cross facilities. 

She lambasted the state government for failing to address lasting inequalities in the state’s education funding model and called on Yale to contribute more to NHPS. Blatteau also acknowledged the city’s lack of funds to address the facilities crisis but insisted that the city and Board of Education must do more to find the necessary funds and speed critical repairs. 

“This is what happens when a state government divests from public education,” Blatteau said. “This is about systems that are rooted in racist and classist ways.” 

Looney, who represents New Haven and serves as Senate President Pro Tem, largely dismissed concerns about inequalities in state education funding, blaming local property values. 

Connecticut is unique in taking on the full burden of all teachers’ pensions statewide — especially in wealthy suburbs with smaller teacher-student ratios — a contribution that often goes unacknowledged, Looney argued. 

Looney expressed concern that state investments in NHPS facilities were being squandered by the district’s failure to complete routine maintenance.

He holds the Board of Education primarily responsible for failing to complete basic maintenance, but praised Superintendent Negron for beginning to address long-standing maintenance failures. 

“They always claim that the amount of money that they receive from the state is not adequate, but the amount they receive from the state is certainly highly significant, and the damage that’s done when maintenance is not properly taken care of…[results in] a much greater expense,” Looney told the News. 

Unlike Looney, Mayor Justin Elicker placed most of the blame for the lack of funding at the state capitol and identified the legislative session beginning in 2025 as a critical target for New Haven education advocates seeking a larger state contribution. Elicker is a member of the Board of Education and appoints four of the Board’s seven members. 

Elicker emphasized the dangers of excessive borrowing and the lingering effects of decades of irresponsible fiscal policy at City Hall. The challenges at Wilbur Cross are widespread across the district’s schools, but the city and district simply have no funds to support long-overdue maintenance, he said.

“We need to find pathways to identify more funding to fix our schools, and the main pathway is through the State of Connecticut,” Elicker said. 

The city allocated around $9 million for maintenance and renovations at NHPS as a part of its latest capital budget, but Superintendent Negron, not the city, decides how those funds are spent, Elicker told the News.

Elicker praised the teachers, students and parents who shared their experiences on Monday. He called for the state to make more funds available for routine maintenance in schools.

According to the mayor, any additional city funding for NHPS would have to be accompanied by an increase in property taxes.

“People often point fingers at the city and say it’s not giving enough money. But I rarely hear people say, ‘Raise my taxes to pay for it,’” Elicker said. 

The only other solutions would be further support from the state or from Yale, Elicker told the News. All three funding sources — higher property taxes, state support and university investment — need to be explored, he said.

Wilcox, who sits on the Board’s Citywide School Building and Stewardship Committee, attributed widespread delay of critical maintenance to lack of funding. The committee’s latest monthly report listed dozens of critical maintenance projects “delayed” due to funding issues. 

Delayed repairments later balloon into major crises if left unaddressed, Wilcox said

He emphasized the importance of the district documenting long-standing maintenance issues, so they can be included in the city’s next capital budget cycle. 

Wilcox echoed Elicker’s call for more state support, criticizing the inequalities in funding levels for wealthy suburban schools and urban districts like NHPS which face a number of additional challenges.

After a round of cuts to the facilities budget last year, the district was forced to cut it by around $620,000 again in June to fill a $2.3 million budget deficit, according to Wilcox. He placed blame for these cuts and the shortage of tradespeople in NHPS squarely on the state.

For the teachers and students at Wilbur Cross, the issue remains immediate, despite the funding difficulties. 

“That building over there at 181 Mitchell Drive, that’s our home, and it’s teetering on the brink. My question to you all is, what are you going to do about it?” PTA President Halpern told the Board.

Wilbur Cross High School is located next to East Rock Park. 

Correction, Sept. 25: The article has been updated to correct Breuler’s and Grindrod’s names and to add another quote from Halpern.