Elijah Hurewitz-Ravitch, Contributing Photographer

Last month, Ashley Stockton walked to see the Taj Mahal. 

That, the New Haven Public Schools teacher and parent explained, is what her colleagues called the district’s newly renovated administrative building at 21 Wooster Place. With its terrazzo floors, millwork, light fixtures, floor-to-ceiling windows and view onto the 19th century Wooster Square Park, the building was “beautiful,” Stockton said. 

Meanwhile, school buildings across the district suffer from decades of deferred maintenance. 

At the monthly meeting of the Board of Alders Education Committee last week, Alder Sarah Miller ’03 asked New Haven Public Schools Superintendent Madeline Negrón about reports that the district was paying for “a very high-end renovation” to the secondary office building. These reports of luxury have been circulating for weeks among NHPS teachers and have been categorically denied by the district.

“I want to clarify the rumors,” Negrón told Miller, declaring the claims unsubstantiated. “The project went along because … to stop it would have been a loss of funds. When it came time to say, ‘Can we order new furniture?’ that was when I immediately said, ‘Absolutely not.’”

At their Feb. 26 meeting, the Board of Education approved an increase in the funds allocated for renovations at the Wooster Place facility for a total of $1,230,964.00, paid to A. Prete Construction for the project. Justin Harmon, NHPS communications director, confirmed this number via email. This expenditure comes in the midst of a deferred maintenance crisis in the city’s public schools and the mayor’s recent proposal to redirect $5.5 million in unspent federal pandemic funds to the district’s capital budget. The News spoke with alders, teachers and labor leaders who expressed concern about the district’s use of capital funds. 

According to Negrón, the project was begun before she was appointed in July 2023 “to create more spaces to bring people together” by moving the district’s “academic team” to Wooster Place. 

The project was intended to save money on rent for the district’s Gateway Center at 54 Meadow St., Harmon wrote. The district aimed to save money on renting office spaces for their over 100 administrative employees by vacating the eighth floor of the Gateway Center.

According to Harmon, the Wooster Place facility required significant renovations before it could be used, especially after asbestos was discovered. 

The district has long planned to move out of the Gateway Center entirely, but that has not yet occurred, Negrón acknowledged.

“We’re still trying to figure out a way that we can basically move out of [Gateway],” she told Miller. “I believe part of [the Wooster Place project] was how can we begin that process of eventually being able to move out of Gateway, but we are nowhere close because the reality is that there are no spaces where we all fit at this point.”

Negrón wanted to halt the project when she first learned of it, she told the committee, but soon realized canceling the project would have its own financial consequences. 

“I wanted to put a hold on it,” she told Miller, “but the assessment would have been that if I would have put a hold on it we’d have lost money that had been already invested. So that project continues.”

According to Harmon, the project to renovate over 4,000 square feet of the facility — including major HVAC, electrical and mechanical upgrades — is already complete. Harmon also confirmed that the district will not purchase new furniture for the facility, instead repurposing furniture from Meadow Street. 

Rent for the eighth floor of the Gateway facility, Harmon wrote, was $102,342 in the 2020–21 fiscal year, the last before administrators in that part of the building were transferred to Wooster Place. The rent would have increased nine percent in the last fiscal year alone. 

Stockton, a teacher at Truman Elementary School, addressed the committee after Negrón’s comments. She described reading about the project in public documents and feeling frustrated that the new facility appeared to have new blinds for its floor-to-ceiling windows while her school has waited more than five years for the district to address broken blinds and shades. 

“Teachers at Truman School literally move their 26 children around their classrooms all day long to try to keep the sun out of their eyes. They can’t use their smart boards at certain parts of the day because the glare is so bad that you can’t see it,” she told the committee. “It’s disruptive to learning.” 

Stockton expressed distrust of the district’s spending priorities and frustration with continued maintenance issues. 

Speaking to the News, she also questioned the size of the district’s administrative staff. 

“Having lots and lots and lots of middle management is a real luxury if you’re in a budget crisis,” she said. “And so it’s frustrating to sit here as a taxpayer, and hear we can’t hire enough security guards, or we can’t hire enough plumbers or carpenters because we’re in a financial crisis. … Maybe we can’t have all of these executive management positions until we meet our basic needs.”

Leslie Blatteau ’97 GRD ’07, president of the New Haven Federation of Teachers, praised Negrón’s fiscal approach, but acknowledged that the Wooster Place project raises real concerns about spending priorities. 

“It is incredibly concerning that decisions were made prior to Dr. Negrón’s arrival that led to money being diverted from classroom needs, from students’ direct needs, into a renovation project for folks who do not work with students everyday,” she told the News. “This isn’t about pitting one level of management against rank-and-file teachers or students. This is about, how do we make decisions that are in the best interest of our school communities? How do we make decisions that are going to instill trust?”

A number of her union’s members are “disappointed” and “disheartened” by the district’s decision to continue the Wooster Place project, Blatteau told the News.

She and her union are calling for the Board of Alders to set up a “labor-management community taskforce” to oversee the district’s capital fund and the mayor’s proposed allocation of federal dollars.

Blatteau called for a more open and collaborative approach to budgeting in the district.

“We need more transparency on this issue, and we need to continue to scrutinize budgets and budget plans to ensure that every dollar, every penny is going to improve the learning conditions for students and the working conditions for the hard working people who show up for students every day,” she said. 

Speaking to the News, Alder Miller echoed Blatteau’s praise for Negrón’s approach, but emphasized that it is the responsibility of district leadership to find the money for basic necessities in New Haven schools.

Miller also shares Blatteau’s concerns about the district’s spending priorities in regards to the Wooster Place facility.

“​​Why were those dollars approved for administrator offices, a pretty high-end facility, when we have such basic, basic unmet needs — needs, not just desires — in schools?” she said. “We used to have issues in the district where stuff like that happened all the time. I have confidence that Negrón wants to stop all that … but I think whenever this stuff starts to creep up again, we really need to call it out.”

21 Wooster Place is located between Chapel and Greene streets.