THE INNER-CITY NEWS - March 01, 2023 - March 07, 2023
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Good Times Roll home of Orchid Café, chef and pitmaster Jose Perez looked around, taking in the moment. Perez, who is now in his early 40s, grew up in Fair Haven in the 1980s and 90s. As a kid on Fillmore Street, the Grand Avenue branch location became his second home. Tuesday was like coming full-circle. “Growing up in Fair Haven, we didn’t have money for books,” he said. He remembered checking out a book he’d first seen on the show “Reading Rainbow” about whale watching, and holding on to it because he loved it so much. He never got in trouble with the library. Three decades and a move to Morris Cove later, he still visits the branch—now as a dad, with three kids who love books as much as he does. Perez joined Bear’s Smokehouse five years ago, after hearing they were looking for a pitmaster. In advance of Mardi Gras, he started building a recipe that would pay homage to New Orleans’ kaleidoscopic culinary culture, and to his own Puerto Rican upbringing. After starting with the “holy trinity” of onions, celery, and peppers, he seasoned and cooked the sausage beneath the smokehouse’s brisket, so it would collect the drippings for flavor. “It feels like Night at the Museum,” he said with a big, broad smile. “I love seeing people here.” On the dance floor, Maia was closing out the night with “New York New York.” There with Newhallville neighborhood champion Jeanette Sykes, Jennifer Tillman raised her arms above her head, burst into a huge smile, and slid back onto the dance floor for one more time before the end of the night. A former psychiatric social worker, Tillman praised the library as “a place of fellowship,” where patrons could find so much more than books. Growing up in New Haven, Tillman has always loved the library, she said. As a mom, she spent time there with her kids, and now brings her grandkids. When she decided to pursue her real estate license a few years ago, the Mitchell Branch Library became her one-stop-shop for resources and study materials. It echoed Morand’s reminder from much earlier in the evening, that the library is no single thing to any one person. Between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, he remembered visiting each of the library’s five branches. At the Courtland Seymour Wilson Branch in the Hill, he arrived to see a line already outside the door, waiting for the library to open. For him, that was a testament enough to the role that it plays every day. As people trickled out of Ives and burst back into the damp night, the library fell quiet once again, ready for another day.
New Principal Sets Sights High For Wilbur Cross by THOMAS BREEN New Haven Independent
One month and one day into his new job as principal of New Haven’s largest high school, Matthew Brown hopes to help make Wilbur Cross “the premier urban comprehensive high school in the state of Connecticut” — even as he, his colleagues, and the school’s 1,642 students face head on the challenges presented by pandemic-era disruptions to public education. Brown offered that take during a brief interview with the Independent Friday morning while hustling between an outdoor press conference celebrating a $4.35 million sports complex overhaul and a planned meetup with a group of students inside the halls of the Mitchell Drive high school. A former High School in the Community Building leader who left the New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) in 2021 for a job as chief turnaround officer in Waterbury’s public school district, Brown was tapped in December to be Wilbur Cross High School’s new principal. He replaced the high school’s interim principal, NHPS Supervisor of Youth, Family and Community Engagement Kermit Carolina, who filled in since October when his predecessor, John Tarka, left his job as Wilbur Cross’s principal after only five weeks of classes. Brown formally began his new Wilbur Cross head job on Jan. 23 — making Friday the one-month- one-day-iversary in the role. He’s begun the job as the district as a whole struggles with low test scores in math and literacy, high rates of chronic absenteeism, and teacher shortages citywide, all as NHPS looks for a new superintendent to replace the soon-to-retire
THOMAS BREEN PHOTO Wilbur Cross Principal Matthew Brown on Friday.
Iline Tracey. How’s it going so far? “It’s going great,” Brown said about his time at Cross so far. “People have been incredibly welcoming.” Brown lives in the city. Three of his children are currently students at Wilbur Cross. “There is an enormous amount of pride in that building,” he said. He said he’s been “impressed by the amount of love people have for this school, both what it has been and what it can be.” What are some of the biggest challenges he’s seen facing the Cross community one month in to his new job as principal?
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Transparency Up
Cinnamon St. John, a senior health policy specialist at the Center for Medicare Advocacy, said proper staffing is at the heart and soul of every nursing facility. In Connecticut’s 233 nursing homes, over 4,100 residents have suffered COVID related deaths, and there have been over 28,000 COVID cases. “Perhaps one of the most important lessons to come out of the COVID-19 crisis is the realization that nursing home facilities must have the right numbers and mix of nursing and direct care workers on hand,” A study in 2020 found that among facilities with one confirmed positive case of COVID, every additional 20-minute increase in nursing staff per resident, per day was associated with a 22% reduction in confirmed COVID cases, and a 26% reduction in COVID deaths. Aside from staffing, lawmakers heard from the public about the importance of family visitation and air conditioning in nursing facilities.
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“Education prior to Covid and education post-Covid, the scale of the challenges has changed.” He said he’s worked in education for three decades. This moment — three years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic — feels unique. “How do we make sure that we’re really utilizing our strengths and helping students to understand that they are resilient despite the fact that all of them have had interrupted educations because of Covid?” he asked. While New Haven may be nearing the other side of Covid as a “public health emergency,” “the effects of that, of having your schooling interrupted, are going to be with students for
years and years.” Thus one of the biggest challenges — and opportunities — he and his colleagues face. “How do we help [students] feel strong in what they know how to do even as we’re pushing them to be open to some of the things that they still have to learn. That’s something that, quite frankly, is going to take years.” Any big-picture goals for his tenure as Cross principal? Brown said he thinks that the school, which currently has around 1,642 students, making it the largest in the city, can be a “premier urban comprehensive high school” in the state. “I believe that’s a worthy goal.” He said that “Getting some of the resources and facilities” that the school needs — like the now-started $4.35 million overhaul of the athletic complex — “will be reflective of that. That’s the type of school that all of our students deserve to go to.” What is a moment or experience that has stuck with him in his first month on the job so far? Every morning, Brown said, “I stand right there in the atrium and welcome in all the buses and the walkers and the students getting dropped off. It’s this wave of diversity, in the age of students, the background of students, what they’re coming in with, who’s excited to show up, who’s a sleepy 15-year-old who maybe just rolled out of bed and maybe is not excited to show up. Just being able to connect with the students as they start their days, it’s the best part of my day. And those get to happen every morning.” “It really affirms for me that Wilbur Cross is New Haven,” he continued. “It’s what our city is.”